All these happy memories of inane re-opens keep coming to me as I type away . . . .
My report said “subject was employed at Burger King while he was concurrently a high school student. Subject worked part-time during the evenings and he did not experience any negative issues as a result of the concurrent activities”. Reviewer RZ’s and asks if Subject attended high school during the day. If not, explain how he could both work and attend high school at night.
At the time I was not aware that Snowden worked at Burger King at night while he was also taking high school classes at night. My bad.
“Please explain how Subject was able to attend classes online, while also attending classes in person. Did Subject experience any difficulties while attending classes online and also in person?”
“Clarify when Subject first met his mother who was born in Cuba (HRC)”
Have you read the instructions of the SF86 2016 version. Only one phone number is required.
(Copy from the form):
Provide three contact numbers. At least one telephone number is required. Additional numbers provided may assist in the completion of your background investigation.
So if the Subject only list their cell/mobile number, no further explanation should be needed.
I am a reviewer and everything that Notagoodreviewer stated above is 100% true. Our training sucks. We are given two weeks of training to learn the thousands of pages of guidance that is scattered everywhere. Part of that two week training they have you sit in front of your laptop all day, read training guides and take tests on them. The second week we were put in a classroom with some trainers that treated us like we should already know the entire handbook like the palm of our hands. Anytime I asked for the vague guidance to be explained to me better, or to be given an example of what it meant, the answer I got was, ‘well, whats the guidance say’? So for all the more training and time we receive to learn the job, it’s pretty much sink or swim from there. DCSA will nit pick and reopen for some of the dumbest things, that is why it sometimes might seem like review is RZ’ing investigators for minor stuff. Keep in mind, review is trying to meet metric/quality standards just like you investigators are. We are piled with work daily and literally maybe only get a half hour per case to spend time reviewing it in order to meet our metrics.
SOOOOOO glad I left this horrible industry. The vendors need to stand up to the DCSA Bullies And fight for the ridiculous nitpicky reopens. But all of them are just DCSA puppets and bow down to their every need🙄
You are lucky you had the opportunity to leave. I’ve been job searching for months now to get out of this industry and am slowly losing hope in doing so. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years and review is the most soul sucking, depressing job I have ever had. They won’t ever stand up to DCSA. I was told by my section lead once that DCSA has every right to reopen for whatever they want to. Anymore, I am starting to wonder if DCSA is doing so many reopens intentionally in hopes that we will either feel like a failure so much we quit or the company fires us. Either way its a win for them to help with the current downsizing due to lower workload.
It won’t be long before the minimum wage pays more than what Contractors get after all of our expenses and taxes. Full timers will be passed up soon. I am AMAZED that the Federal Government does not pay more for this work. Maybe they do and the private companies pocket the extra. When was the last time the standard fee for a ESI was increased? From what I have been told, the fee has been the same for at least the past 10 years.
There is some work I do not accept simply because I would lose money and it is cheaper to stay home and not do anything than spend more than I would earn. So sad.
With a pandemic descending on us it’s comforting to see that reviewers are still refiling cases wanting to know why Subject, who stated he only has a cell number, also listed that number as his home number. “Clarify.”
Ah the wonders of multiple reviewers reviewing the same case and getting multiple RZ’s on the same item for different reasons. I have an idea…why not just pass every report around to ten or eleven reviewers. It shows efficiency. Hmm I wonder why we are at the bottom…?
That is one of my biggest gripes. I had a case reopened in January by one reviewer, then again in February by a different review, and then yet again just last week by a third reviewer. It makes no sense to me. All three times it was for minor stuff that really had no impact on adjudicative criteria. Either way it makes you feel like you just can’t win, especially when it comes to the “quality” metric they grade you on
If they weren’t finding your “mistakes” they wouldn’t have jobs. That is why the federal workers reports make it through, all have GS jobs that they can’t be fired from.
Yeah it’s pretty asinine. The case I’m talking about was pretty straight forward and simple and had 100% of the required coverage (sources/records, etc) so I don’t understand why it kept cycling through review. I was the only one working the case since the subject grew up in my area and everything in scope was covered within the first week.
You’ve really got an anti team lead agenda. I don’t get it. If the structure of your industry bothers you so much, LEAVE. That’s what I did. Best decision of my career.
I have a question for you too. If you “left the industry” which you stated in several posts why are you still on this blog? I don’t have a degree in psychology but the fact you’re still on here blogging long after you made “the best decision to leave” the BI world speaks volumes about possible unfinished business upstairs.
