Expansion of Continuous Vetting Nears, Agencies Asked to Prepare
Through the continuous vetting (CV) process, an employee’s background is regularly reviewed to “ensure they continue to meet security clearance requirements and should continue to hold positions of trust.” Now, continuous vetting will be expanded to employees across the federal government who hold non-sensitive public trust positions.
The expansion of CV will begin in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is telling agencies to increase preparations to expand the program.
This follows a successful pilot program for non-sensitive public trust positions that was run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) in June 2023.
Enrollment will happen iteratively with the goal of enrolling the entire non-sensitive public trust workforce in the CV program by the end of FY 2024. Besides those in the competitive service, CV will apply to the excepted service, contractors, and others.
For continuous vetting, agencies gather information and conduct automated record checks of government and commercial databases, security programs, insider threat program data and more, looking for any red flags involving an employee.
The automated data checks allow the government to continuously monitor a worker’s fitness to retain their security clearance and/or their employment.
If a potential issue is found, it may be referred to an investigator, which might include interviews of work colleagues or personal references and/or the individual themselves.
“The near real-time identification of potential concerns will often allow the agency to work with the individual to address the issue, as appropriate, (e.g., Employee Assistance Programs, if applicable) and reduce the risk to the people, property, information, and mission,” said OPM in a Frequently Asked Questions document.
OPM says there are numerous benefits to CV including:
· Reducing the amount of work and time when an individual moves to a new position, transfers agencies, or returns to government.
· Provides the opportunity to support an individual who is experiencing a problem through early detection.
· Better protects our Nation’s people, property, information, and mission by proactively identifying and managing risk.
CV replaces periodic reinvestigations. However, until CV is completely implemented, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja wrote in a memo that periodic reinvestigations will continue.
“Until agencies begin enrollment of their non-sensitive public trust populations into continuous vetting, they must continue to initiate reinvestigations for individuals occupying these positions in accordance with existing policy and established protocol. Doing so will ensure that agencies are in compliance with the regulatory requirement and avoid potential delays in mobility for applicants or employees caused by out-of-scope investigations,” wrote Director Ahuja.