DOD/IC DSCA Investigation and Adjudication Timeline

I was wondering if anyone is going through the same issue I am.

My clearance for my PR TIER 5 was submitted October 2019. The field investigation closed on November 2020, which means my investigation was out in the field for 13 months. However, my investigator told me my investigation part was done around March 2020, but it took 7 months for my final report to be submitted for adjudication ??? Since November 2020, my investigation has been in pre-adjudication, meaning it has not been assigned a case adjudicator yet. As of last week, they said the adjudication office cannot tell me when my investigation will be assigned a case person to review my information.

What is going on? The latest security clearance report came out (Nov 2020 I believe) that TS reinvestigations timelines are going faster, taking almost 100 days for them to complete. Adjudication is taking about a few weeks to complete. However my case happens to be the outlier here.

Is anyone going through the same issue? I guess COVID took a really big hit on manpower and resources to continue the security investigation and adjudication parts.

First of all, the investigator who interviewed you has very little if any knowledge of the entire investigation which can involve several investigators in different locations as well as various agency checks and inquiries. So when they told you your investigation was done in March 2020, they were almost certainly referring to their piece of the investigation.

I am very surprised you are getting so much info about the adjudicative process since it is usually the least open part. We can see when our investigation is complete if we can get someone to look into DISS (JPAS) and we know if an adjudicator asks for more info but we rarely get as much info as you describe.

With regard to adjudication timelines, it is my opinion that the cases which complete within the published timelines are the outliers, at least as far as anecdotal evidence would support. Your case has been in adjudication (sic) for what about five months? Including the Christmas/New Year’s holidays. This is really not unusual. Not great, but not that unusual.

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Also, with a T5R - you have a clearance during the investigation. Why lose sleep over the length of the investigation/adjudication?

If there was a concern, you would have known about it earlier in the process.

Just to make you feel better it will be exactly a year next week since my BI was completed and I’m still waiting for a polygraph to be scheduled. Mind you, my adjudication cannot start before a polygraph is completed, so that part is still ahead for me. Misery loves company - I hope you feel better now.

I’ll tell you why I was losing sleep (sic) its because nobody would hire me or even go very far in the interview process while I was awaiting adjudication. Yeah as far as that one customer was concerned, as long as I stayed at that company, it was not a problem. But some people couldn’t even move to a new contract or even attend meetings in that situation.

Hell I couldn’t even get a CAC card until our corporate security weighed in.

Now this was a few years ago and a lot has been done to make sure folks arent over-achieving in this area… but a person can have good reason to be anxious about a long adjudication period.

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i was talking about the reinvestigation period and I didn’t mean to downplay the reinvestigation. The intent was to inform that you don’t lose your clearance just because your reinvestigation is taking time during the reinvestigation.

I have never worried about my approximately 8 or 9 reinvestigations. (yes, I am that old and i am far from being an angel.)

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