The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has successfully enrolled all Department of Defense (DoD) service members, civilians, and contractors with a security clearance, meaning that 3.6 million people are now in DCSA’s continuous vetting program.
According to Heather Green, assistant director of vetting risk operations for DCSA, the continuous vetting program brings the agency and the Federal government one step closer to its trusted workforce (TW 2.0) goal, providing continuous vetting for all of DoD, and government personnel outside of the department. TW 2.0 is expected to be incrementally implemented over the next few years.
Continuous vetting will eventually replace periodic reinvestigations conducted every 10 years for employees with a secret clearance, and five years for those with a top-secret clearance. Green said in a press release that will also include DoD personnel who do not have a clearance.
In its current state, the continuous vetting program ensures that DCSA receives automated records from government and commercial data sources based on Federal investigative standards. And according to Green, the National Background Investigation Services – a sector of DCSA – leverages an automated system that scans data for any alerts that might indicate potential issues or other suspicious or criminal activity.
“We [want] to provide that initial version of continuous vetting, focusing on high-value data sources through automated record checks. Those continuous record checks that are turned on right now mean that issues of the potential risk to an individual’s trustworthiness that may have taken years to discover in the past are now identified and addressed in very near real-time data,” Green said.
However, while the continuous vetting program is now operational, Green encouraged personnel who may be facing any issues to report it to their security manager proactively.
“Self-reporting is a critical piece of continuous vetting, and we prefer to have already known about the incident before an alert being generated in the system,” she said.
Additionally, Green noted there are policy discussions underway if social media monitoring will be added for TW 2.0.
