Federal Employee Vetting Doctrine Advances Security Clearance Reform
A senior policy adviser at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reports that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Office of Management Personnel Director Kiran Ahuja will soon finalize the Federal Personnel Vetting Core Doctrine.
This latest iteration of the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative was the result of feedback from a proposal published in the Federal Register and subsequent public comments.
By enhancing uniform vetting procedures, the doctrine ensures that federal agencies, government contractors, and industry leaders work together to foster "mobile individuals across and within federal agencies and contractors, and to enable efficient reentry into federal service from the private sector." Taking this approach, an individual will be able to move from one position to another with the exact security clearance — a concept known as "reciprocity," as previously reported in FEDmanager.
Further, ODNI and OPM plan to consolidate the five investigative standards (pre-investigation, investigation, adjudication, appeal, and reinvestigation) into three. The recent shift in Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) practices that focus on continuous vetting and the significant administrative reforms that have been implemented under the Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) are consistent with this.
While it has been reported that the timeline for obtaining a security clearance is steadily decreasing, the process does not appear to meet the federal requirements.
