DCSA Adjudicators Transitioning Operations to NBIS Platform

Photo By Tony Trigg | What is NBIS? The National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) is the federal government’s end-to-end information technology system for personnel vetting. NBIS will be used for initiation, application submission, background investigation, adjudication, and continuous vetting; an all-in-one consolidated system. The DOD Consolidated Adjudications Facility (CAF) is working hand-in-hand with the NBIS team to plan for the phased transition of adjudications from the Defense Information System for Security (DISS) to NBIS.  

UNITED STATES

05.17.2022

Courtesy Story

Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency

By Charis Lyon, DOD Consolidated Adjudications Facility

What is NBIS? The National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) is the federal government’s end-to-end information technology system for personnel vetting.

NBIS will be used for initiation, application submission, background investigation, adjudication, and continuous vetting; an all-in-one consolidated system. Smaller federal, non-Department of Defense agencies are currently onboarding into NBIS.

The DOD Consolidated Adjudications Facility (CAF) is working hand-in-hand with the NBIS team to plan for the phased transition of adjudications from the Defense Information System for Security (DISS) to NBIS.

Several working groups are developing actionable items between CAS and the NBIS team: Training, Workflow Configuration, Due Process Procedures, Organizational Structure, Case Tagging, Metrics/Reporting and Suitability/Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 Process. These items are discussed during bi-weekly NBIS-Adjudications planning sessions.

In February, over 35 personnel from the CAF were onboarded into the NBIS Operational Test environment, also known as the “NBIS Playground.”

In the NBIS Playground, CAF personnel are performing end-to-end testing of the adjudications workflows within the system. Results inform any configuration adjustments or future requirements. End-to-end testing is occurring on a weekly basis and involves CAF, Security, and NBIS team personnel. Moreover, the NBIS team is available to the adjudicators for training, questions, and troubleshooting.

At this point, two adjudicators and eight adjudications support personnel onboarded into the NBIS Production environment, which began operations on April 25. These adjudicators are using NBIS to adjudicate DCSA military, civilian and contractor cases.

In order to adjudicate within NBIS, these cases are being replicated from DISS to NBIS. The DCSA Security Office is already onboard in NBIS and as a result, DCSA adjudicators are able to send subject-based communications to the DCSA Security Office via NBIS.

As more customer agency security offices onboard into NBIS for initiation and subject management, the CAF will increase its presence in the production environment to execute adjudications for those agencies.

During this phased entry into NBIS, the CAF is excited to learn how NBIS works and translate that into expectations for the broader workforce as more personnel are brought into the system.


* To see additional Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency articles in the April edition of the Gatekeeper Magazine, go to: https://bit.ly/36f2vuE

• Date Taken: 05.17.2022
• Date Posted: 05.17.2022 16:36
• Story ID: 420900
• Location: US