Contractor Background Investigative Work is Slowing Down
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency now conducts 95% of the background investigations for the Federal Government using a mix of federal employee investigators and contractor companies who are designated investigative service providers. The ratio of federal investigators to contractor investigators stands is hard to distinguish because DCSA ramped up the number of federal investigators when it took over from the Office of Personnel Management last year in order to tackle the 400,000 investigation backlog. At the same time, according to the chatter on our blog site, the contractor investigator’s work slowed down considerably and rumor has it work will dry up even more.
As far as which companies are still working under DCSA, here are some of the more well-known companies still advertising as hiring to do background investigation work, but take note that investigators are hired on as independent consultants, not as company employees.
- Information Systems and Network Corporation (ISN)
- Securitas Critical Information Structures, Inc (SCIS)
- Perspecta
- Omniplex World Services Corporation
- KENTECH Consulting, Inc
With Continuous Vetting in play for the DoD in lieu of doing full periodic reinvestigations, more investigative analysts are needed to review hits that pop up on credit reports, arrest reports, drug tests, travel records and other sources. Additionally, the rest of the Federal agencies have to implement their own continuous evaluation programs and need personnel security staff, separate from adjudicators, who are trained to review adverse information reports and determine if additional information or courses of action is needed.
With Continuous vetting, cases with no issues will not be assigned to CIs (Contract Investigators).
“more investigative analysts are needed to review hits that pop up on credit reports, arrest reports, drug tests, travel records and other sources”
So reading in between the lines, with Continuous Vetting, only the difficult cases that need full issue resolution to address problems are going to be assigned to CIs. Gone are the days where an “easy” case that takes 4 hours will offset a difficult case that takes 12 hours. All with the same pay. It’s going to be difficult to operate a business as a CI and make any kind of profit spending all your time only doing difficult cases.
I’m not sure this quote from the article is accurate, “investigators are hired on as independent consultants, not as company employees.” I know that myself and hundreds of my Perspecta coworkers are indeed Perspecta employees with full health benefits, matching 401k, and occasional stock awards. Perspecta also has independent consultants but a majority of us are employees.
The article is saying that current hiring by the companies is for independents, not employees.
That statement is untrue. There are multiple job listing on the Perpecta website right now advertising DCSA employee investigator jobs. They are hiring employees in dense population areas right now.
Let’s just agree that you are both right, there are companies hiring directly as well as independent contractors.
My concern was the article made all the listed contractor companies sound like they were only looking to hire expendable cheap “self employed independent contractors” because these companies didn’t want to reduce their profits by hiring expensive direct employees with benefits and employment protections. I have not found that to be the case.
I was referring to the article’s second paragraph - not trying to make a statement.
In California, Independent Contractors are a thing of the past due to AB5 which was passed into law in January. Other states are considering similar laws.
Really? What states are considering eliminating IC’s?
Like CA, MA and NJ use a strict ABC classification test. Both MA and NJ, as well as WA, OR, MI, KY have legislation introduced in 2020 to adopt stricter ABC determinations. If you want to learn more, just Google ABC laws regarding Independent contractors. CA is the only state that has enforced the law, as far as I know. As you may or may not know, certain industries have gotten exemptions from AB5. Sadly, not Background Investigators. We need a lobbyist!