“First Line of Defense Against Insider Threats to safeguard the integrity and trustworthiness of the Federal workforce. Over 95% of the Government’s background investigations are provided by NBIB.“
Millions of service members, federal employees and contractors undergo background checks on a periodic basis — every 15 years for a confidential clearance, 10 years for a secret, and five for a top secret — but an employer can request a background investigation at any time for cause or suspected cause.
The National Background Investigations Bureau Moves to the Department of Defense April 25, 2019
President Trump signed an executive order April 24, 2019 that, in combination with the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, section 925, shifts the primary responsibility for conducting background investigations for the federal government from the Office of Personnel Management to the Department of Defense. This executive order reflects the administration’s commitment to reform the personnel vetting enterprise to ensure a trusted federal workforce and achieve an efficient, effective, and secure operation that meets all government-wide needs for background investigations.
The DOD will reorganize the Defense Security Service to best position the department to assume primary responsibility for the government-wide background investigation mission. DSS will be renamed the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency and will conduct all activities currently assigned to DSS and serve as the primary entity for conducting background investigations for the federal government. DSS (and subsequently DCSA) reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Efforts to undertake the transfer of OPM’s background investigation function and associated personnel, resources, and facilities to DOD will begin immediately.
For more than a century, NBIB’s predecessor organizations have provided background investigative services to a wide array of Federal departments and agencies. Per Executive Order 13467, as amended, the investigative service was restructured as NBIB specifically to: “serve as the primary executive branch service provider for background investigations for eligibility for access to classified information; eligibility to hold a sensitive position; suitability or, for employees in positions not subject to suitability, fitness for government employment; fitness to perform work for or on behalf of the Government as a contractor employee; fitness to work as a nonappropriated fund employee, as defined in Executive Order 13488 of January 16, 2009, as amended; and authorization to be issued a Federal credential for logical and physical access to federally-controlled facilities or information systems.” NBIB also provides background investigator, suitability and investigative systems training.
During your investigation, an Investigations Service Provider (like NBIB), may conduct searches at police departments, sheriff’s offices, courts, creditors and other record repositories. Your friends, co-workers, landlords, family and neighbors may be contacted to verify where you lived, worked or went to school. Additionally, an investigator may interview you to verify, expand upon and/or clarify the information you provided on your investigative questionnaire.
Several Investigators may work on your investigation at the same time depending on the locations of your listed activities. They may be federal employees or contractors to an Investigations Service Provider, all doing the same work and following the same laws, rules, and regulations. The investigators submit results of record searches and interviews through a report of investigation. Once the investigation is complete, it is sent back to your sponsoring agency so that your sponsoring agency can make a suitability, fitness and/or security determination concerning your employment.
Artificial Intelligence Could Aid Future Background Investigator
Problems with the Current System
There are several problems with the current system of background investigations, Nehmer said.
— There aren’t enough investigators to do the work.
— The process takes too long.
— Investigations of individuals occur only once every five or 10 years and something amiss could occur in the intervening time that the system doesn’t catch.
— The investigations are limited in scope and don’t always focus on the right variables.
Using Artificial Intelligence
The use of artificial intelligence, or AI, could significantly reduce the time it takes investigations and ease the strain on already-overworked personnel and reduce the backlog of cases, Nehmer said.
Additionally, AI could help prevent “a Snowden-like event,” he said, referring to the former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor who stole and leaked highly classified information from the NSA in 2013.
Situations like that could be prevented because AI would continuously monitor data shared from various agencies like banks and police records, together with such things as social media activities, Nehmer said.
AI would look for suspicious or unusual activity or patterns, using its algorithms and machine learning to alert that there’s a potential problem, he said.
AI Could Benefit Employees
The use of AI might seem like an intrusion on the privacy and rights of government workers, Nehmer said, but detection of a problem wouldn’t necessarily result in someone being fired or reprimanded.
For example, if an AI algorithm found that an employee is going too far into debt, that person could be offered financial planning assistance and counseling, he said.
AI could also point out other problems, such as stress, depression or possible suicidal ideation, Nehmer said. In that case, he said, professional counseling and treatment would be the preferred steps for an employer to offer that employee.
It’s somewhat difficult for an investigator to look at human behavior and try to understand that behavior and what it means and what the level of risk might be, Nehmer said. But, he noted, AI will never replace human investigators or their decisions. What AI will do is become a valuable tool to assist in the investigative process.
Nehmer did not provide a timeline for AI being incorporated into background investigation, but he did say work is being done to make this happen should a decision to roll it out be made.