DoD CAF Touts Milestones in Case Inventory

A little over a year ago the background investigation case inventory stood at 212,000 during the transition of transferring responsibility from the Office of Personnel Management’s National Background Investigation Bureau to the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA). In May, the Department of Defense Consolidated Adjudications Facility (DoD CAF) reached a milestone two years in the making when the inventory of cases dropped below 80,000.

“We are now able to maintain 60,000 to 80,000 cases in inventory, but that means little if we are unable meet the timeliness requirements outlined by IRPTA,” said DoD CAF Executive Officer Jeffrey Robison. “IRPTA requires that the fastest 90% of initial T3 and T5 cases are adjudicated within a 20-day goal. A major milestone in achieving our healthy inventory was a record-setting performance in December 2019, when in less than two weeks the DoD CAF closed approximately 74,000 periodic reinvestigations. This unprecedented achievement was the ‘spark’ that ignited the adjudicative engine, propelling us to where we are today.”

Some of the measures and process changes that enabled the DoD CAF to achieve these milestones included:

–        Adjudicative staff who previously performed non-adjudicative duties started adjudicating cases full time.

–       Short-term contractors were hired to reinforce their efforts, expanding over time.

–        To reduce inventory age, the DoD CAF targeted case reductions through continued, detailed inventory management.

–       Adopted a mindset of handling “in-progress work” first, while enhancing e-Adjudication.

According to DCSA, going forward the DoD CAF is exploring and introducing technological innovations in coordination with the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) Program Executive Office (PEO) and the Defense Information System for Security to assist in managing workloads and automating processes.