DISA’s $49M answer to the background check backlog

The Defense Information Security Agency has tapped Enterprise, LLC of Herndon, Virginia, to develop a prototype of a shared service for federal background checks.

The $49 million Other Transaction Agreement, inked June 22 and announced July 9, will provide a model for the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS). The governmentwide IT service is used to “conduct suitability, security, and credentialing investigations for all federal civilians, military members, and government contractors” according to an agency description.

The National Background Investigations Bureau that currently conducts security clearance background investigations has more than 710,000 applications waiting to be processed.

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The new system promises to “expedite the time to process investigations by automating and optimizing key processes from request initiation through investigation completion,” said Raju Shah, the NBIS program manager.

A July 9 DISA press release also noted that the new system will be “deployed into a scalable, cloud-based architecture.”

The Enterprise prototype will face the challenge of implementing a streamlined system across the federal government while retaining key capabilities such as fingerprint and biometric processing.

“We’re building a first-of-its-kind enterprise system that brings together the complex integration of a number of disparate systems on an unprecedented scale,” Shah said.

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