The Department of Defense (DoD) needs another month to determine the future development strategy for its IT systems supporting background investigations, a top DoD official told lawmakers on Wednesday.
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Milancy Harris, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, told lawmakers that the department needs another month to “re-baseline the requirements and re-do the funding model and oversight” of the department’s National Background Investigation Service (NBIS) modernization effort.
NBIS is the Federal government’s one-stop-shop IT system for end-to-end personnel vetting, covering everything from initiation and application to background investigations, adjudication, and continuous monitoring.
“NBIS is critical to the department’s and the Federal government’s implementation of Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiatives,” Harris said. “Although the department has successfully deployed some key capabilities in the eight years since the program started, we are significantly behind in delivering the complete, end-to-end NBIS that has been promised to Congress and our customers.”
Originally scheduled for deployment in 2019, the NBIS system has faced persistent development challenges, resulting in ongoing delays. And building a foundation enabling the department to deliver NBIS will take up to a month, according to Harris.
“We are looking to make sure we can use what has been built. We are exploring exactly what needs to happen going forward to ensure we meet the full level of capability that is expected from this system,” Harris said, emphasizing that this pause does not mark a restart of the program.
According to Harris, the department’s 90-day sprint to address NBIS’s IT system challenges led to the development of a month-long action plan with several objectives designed to guide the NBIS program back to a successful course.
A cross-functional team from across the department – including the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer – began that effort on April 1.
The department plans to improve “oversight and governance going forward” by ensuring decisions are made at an appropriate level, including “elevating the program decision authority from DCSA to the Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment.”
The department is also elevating program sponsorship to the Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security. DoD is also creating a “robust governance process that will allow [the department] to translate requirements from interagency customers while providing the necessary protections to prevent cost, schedule, and performance erosion.”
“[DoD] remains committed to the NBIS program and providing secure and effective personnel vetting processes, services, and systems so that government agencies and members of our nation’s industrial base have confidence in their trusted workforce. While we cannot undo the missteps of the past, I am confident that we are on the path to success for NBIS,” Harris said.
