OPM Issues Guidance on Vetting New Employees

On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued guidance relating to properly vetting employees during the coronavirus pandemic. Many federal, state, and local offices that take fingerprints are currently closed due to measures associated with the coronavirus, raising questions about how to properly vet new employees.

In a memo to agency leadership, Acting OPM Director Michael Rigas explained that agencies will experience challenges collecting fingerprints to meet the requirements for a fingerprint check in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) criminal history records as part of vetting new hires (including for waivers of pre-appointment investigative requirements) and contractors, completing appointments to the civil service, and determining eligibility for issuance of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials.

To allow for continued hiring when fingerprints are unavailable, Rigas implemented the following guidance, effective immediately:

·       Agencies that are able to collect and process fingerprints will continue to do so and to follow established guidance for vetting new hires and determining eligibility for issuance of PIV credentials.

·       Agencies that are unable to collect and process fingerprints due to measures associated with COVID-19 (e.g. closure of offices that take fingerprints) and wish to proceed with onboarding at this time, consistent with the agency head’s determination of risk, must follow established guidelines to proceed with vetting, except that the collection and submission of fingerprints may be delayed until fingerprint processing is feasible, and no later than the date of termination of this temporary guidance.

·       Agencies will delay reporting the final adjudication of the background investigation until a fingerprint check has been completed and considered in the adjudication. Existing mechanisms for measuring the timeliness of adjudication compliance will continue; however, agencies will not be held accountable for adjudication reporting timeliness during the period this guidance is in effect.

·       For agencies that utilize the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), the primary background investigative service provider for the government, but are unable to collect and process fingerprints at this time, DCSA is instituting a procedure for the processing of background investigations that allows for deferral of the fingerprint submission requirement. Once an agency is able to collect fingerprints for an individual whose investigation was submitted without them, the agency must submit the fingerprints to DCSA as described in DCSA’s procedure.

·       DCSA will issue separate technical guidance directly to its customer agencies via each agency’s DCSA liaison following the issuance of this policy.

The guidance also notes the importance of exercising discretion in temporarily deferring the physical presence requirements associated with Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9).