Politics
DCSA backlog of security clearance investigations down 24%
Since standing up a tiger team last year to tackle a persistent backlog of security clearance background investigations, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency has reduced its caseload by more than 24% — from a peak of 290,000 cases last September to 222,000 in May.
Investigation timelines also improved by about 10% in April.
“We haven’t seen a rise in inventory or timeliness since last year,” DCSA Director David Cattler said during the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee (NISPPAC) meeting on Wednesday. “We anticipate we will continue to drive improvement in our performance numbers, even as we are reducing our workforce through the various workforce shaping methods.”
The background investigation inventory for DoD industry currently stands at approximately 33,000 cases — a decrease of 6,000, or 17%, so far this fiscal year.
Source: The National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee meeting
Of those cases, 19,000 are tier 5, or top-secret clearance investigations and 14,000 are tier 3, or secret investigations.
The number of pending background investigation cases has been rising since fiscal 2023. By the end of fiscal 2024, DCSA’s inventory of cases had climbed to just under 300,000 — the highest level since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019. Cattler set up the tiger team last September to address the backlog and identify ways to streamline the investigations process.
At the time, Mark Pekrul, then DCSA’s deputy director for customer and stakeholder engagement, said the tiger team had identified three main challenges contributing to delays in the agency’s background investigations process — workload forecasting, workload management and throughput.
Donna McLeod, senior policy advisor at DCSA, said one bottleneck the agency has worked to address is delays in FBI name checks, which have affected thousands of cases. After the FBI introduced a new prioritization tool in late 2024, the backlog of name-check cases went from 42,000 to 20,000 — a 48% drop. Although recent staffing changes at the FBI Enterprise Vetting Center have slowed progress, McLeod said DCSA expects the caseload to continue decreasing in the coming months.
“Apparently, 11% of the total investigation inventories awaiting are of the FBI nature,” McLeod said.
Part of this turnaround for the agency can be attributed to the use of virtual interviews. In the last four months, about 75% of all interviews have been conducted virtually, compared to 50% in April of last year. The agency has also implemented an expedited review process for lower-level investigations and the use of overtime for both federal investigators and quality review staff has further contributed to inventory reduction. When asked whether the use of overtime might drive up investigation costs, McLeod said there won’t be an immediate impact since the costs are already set and published.
“I’m quite sure our finance group will look at and reassess if there will be a long term impact, but the immediate impact is no because those costs are already out there,” McLeod said.
As of the third quarter of fiscal 2025, the average end-to-end processing time for background investigations is 243 days, including 19 days to initiate a case, 215 days to investigate and nine days to adjudicate a case. For tier 3 cases completed through April, the average timeline was significantly shorter — 18 days to initiate a case, 73 days for investigation and 47 days to adjudicate a case.
“Investigation timeliness are expected to decrease as the inventory reduction efforts continue. But please keep in mind as we continue to close those older cases, the overall timeliness will increase. The inventory is coming down, but we’re addressing some of the older cases,” McLeod said.
NBIS program ‘reimagined’
Meanwhile, the agency has been working to get the National Background Investigation Services, its key IT program for managing the personnel vetting process, back on track. Cattler said the team “reimagined and rebuilt” the program over the last year.
The agency implemented a new governance structure, with the office of the under secretary of defense for intelligence and security serving as the program sponsor and requirements manager, while the acquisition and sustainment office serves as the acquisition decision authority.
“This governance structure is the entry point for industry and customers to provide the requirements,” Cattler said.
DCSA also developed a digital transformation roadmap and architecture for NBIS.
The program has faced significant delays, but Cattler said it is slated to be completed by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2027, with legacy systems set to be decommissioned throughout fiscal 2028.
In March, the program reached its first milestone on the product roadmap by releasing the initial version of the personnel vetting questionnaire for non-DCSA investigative service providers.
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