What do you all think about CE? Some BIs think it will be gone or reduced to a scoping aid within a year, some think it will actually increase the amount of cases, and some think it will take our jobs.
Personally, I think a lot of people misunderstand CE. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ll still have to conduct reinvestigations for flagged cases. And DCSA hasn’t released the triggering criteria; although I’d bet out of the financial, foreign, and employment flags alone we’d still be conducting over half of the reinvestigations out there. Not to mention DCSA may expand upon the current criteria and remove the temporary investigative standards introduced in 2018 once the backlog is cleaned up. Second, we’re still conducting initial investigations. And last, how would AI pick up on unlisted information, subtle discrepancies, foreign contacts, etc. I cant tell you how many times questioning a Subject in person has disclosed adverse info they were obviously hiding. As you all know, the human element is big here - and even ICE/CBP and the Intel contracts said no to CE for the same reason.
Continuous Evaluation is derived from what is being called Trusted Workforce 2.0 which is revamping the entire personnel security vetting enterprise. If an individual is enrolled in CE, they will have to submit a new SF-86 every five years to determine if there is any adjudicative relative information to follow up on. If there is, or during that time there is a flag on the individual, agencies have the option of trying to resolve the issue themselves or requesting an RSI. A full blown PR is not required at this time. Flags are alerts that meet or exceed the EFI model thresholds currently in place and expected to remain once TW 2.0 becomes official.
Well nothing has been officially confirmed for CE anywhere other than the fact that it is just a pilot program in beta. As of now, no other agency has expressed interest in it, and from what I heard DHS and Intel agencies stated that they value the in person, face to face component of these investigations.
In theory CE seems good. But a powerful dynamic exists when people are required to talk with, and answer questions from, another human being. Especially in person. Eliminating this will greatly reduce not only the efficacy but the seriousness of the BI process. Ironically, interviewing people is probably the only worthwhile thing left in the BI process. Bigger playbooks, more complex case coverage requirements, greater scrutiny of technicalities in the review process, etc., have added zero worth to the BI. Yet they’ve added time, frivolous work, and high investigator attrition rates.
No doubt a lot of fat can be trimmed from the process, particularly much of the increasing bureaucratization of coverage minutiae and reporting requirements and formats. On the last point I can recall a refile requiring a specific sub-header for two paragraphs of essentially stock phrases and disclaimers. IMO, BI ROIs should read like police reports (i.e., only facts and only specific disclaimers if referring to those specific facts).
There is nothing that says you can’t have both CE and the traditional Periodic Reinvestigation process. The CE should tip them off to unusual activity in between the five year update (or the six to nine year update, depending on your luck) but maybe they still want to do at least the subject interview.