You should retire. They are not paying you enough for that amount of work. They hire you telling you it’s about national security. It is not. It is about churning out cases to meet production and revenue goals.
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You don’t have to insult anyone to prove yourself. It’s called good case briefing, preparing your subject, and good management of your subject. If you are allowing your subjects to prattle on about an issue and are not helping them get to the point, then that’s on you. And that does not mean I’m directing the subject either. I’m not the highest producer on my team and have always been right in the middle. But, I do have good quality and resent the fact that you think that you are the only one that can do an adequate investigation, and that it is only an adequate investigation because you spent five or more hours with a subject.
And, don’t blame the vendors for the production environment. OPM/NBIB/DCSA created it because of congressional demand.
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4-5 hours is insane on a TESI/ESI.
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Some ESI’s or TESI’s require that depending upon the issues involved. Are you telling me you can discuss 25 derog financial accounts, two employment terminations, drug usage, and two alcohol offenses in less than three hours?
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Are you doing background investigations for people in prison? Jokes aside…the case you just described might happen a handful times in a career.
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It happens two to three times per month.
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I need to transfer to whatever area y’all are in that has pretty little cases all the time! The ones I get always have SO MANY ISSUES! It takes quite a bit of time confronting all and going through all issue resolution without skipping over anything. My quality is awesome, but it takes time!
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If this is a DCSA TESI and the Subject filled out the case papers correctly, I would anticipate a little over two hours for the interview. Usually when the Subject has double digit accounts on the CBR, there are related accounts that can all be resolved at once. For example, 5-6 student loans or four Capital One accounts with two listings for Subject and spouse’s joint accounts and two listings for the collection agency.
Typical DCSA TESI with one or two issues and a couple corrections to the background section is usually about 45 minutes. And no I am not skipping the adjudicative criteria questions. I once had a Federal investigator tell me he takes 45 minutes to explain the privacy act.
We aren’t investigating a crime. Everyone needs to always remember that before they get into the nitty gritty. If someone’s ESI takes 5 hours, chances are they will probably not receive a clearance and probably don’t deserve one. Subject’s should be working very hard to help YOU get the answers to questions and if they don’t remember stuff at the time of the ESI…that’s the end of this voluntary process. There is no need to get into the intricate details that some investigators report. Good quality from “review” sometimes means investigators are going down the rabbit hole a bit too deep. The term “leads” is used a little too loosely by some investigator and really become meaningless and needless as far as adjudicative value. Ie. Your college professor who taught you one term in a class of 700 students three years ago and in which you had no personal interaction is NOT an education lead.
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And my personal favorites are T2’s with no record of employment/education and no other issues or corrections— I can usually get through that in about 20-25 minutes.
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Can also depend on what vendor you work for. Unfortunate to work for all of them. Smaller of the three mains did things pretty well. It was an adjustment when they began subbing under one of the main two, but they were similar in their “opinion” of how they interpreted DCSA’s vision of how to work ESI’s and TESI’s. Most recently worked for the other main and they were stuck a couple of steps back in time regarding what should be done in TESI/ESI’s. Mandatory forms require every question to be asked and accounted for in ESI’s with multiple follow up questions that were no longer required. There were some of the lengthier section questions that were combined to make it a bit easier. Their TESI requirements were no good, you had to go over all questions 19 on, on every single case, no matter the flag! That was like the second version of how TESIs were supposed to be done when they first began! Supplemental TESI, still had to go over those questions. Nearly impossible to get out of a cleaner TESI in a short amount of time.
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Would be interesting to hear from someone with adjudicative experience. I would imagine on DCSAs end reviewing these cases is similar to reviewing files at a military promotion board. Members of the board may get a minute or so to review each file, not unlimited time. If you are submitting a 90-page report, can the adjudicator really dive that deep into it? Probably not, with the number of cases to be processed. Less is more, as long as it is clear and concise and 5Ws are covered.
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Are other Vendors just now letting investigators do phone interviews??!!
Paragon has been doing them for MONTHS!!
I think Source interviews by phone came back sometime in the fall, October, maybe?
And Subject Interviews by Video have been allowed since then, too- and Paragon is pushing Investigators to do phone/VTC even when they are local!!
Paragon on DHS: No phone SI allowed. VTC or in person interviews for subject interviews. Source phone has been around for a while at request of source. Can’t comment on DCSA as this is different contract and has different rules.
The million dollar question is what is the policy for telephonic interviews going forward? It seems like DCSA hasn’t come out with any official policy on telephonic interviews. I am only hearing bits and pieces from the vendor I do business with. Only hearing a few things here or there but no official policy, memo, or work instruction. Until I see an official policy or memo, I continue to conduct the work in person unless the source or subject or record provider is adamant that they won’t do the interview unless by phone.
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Paragon has been doing them for months based on (spectacularly failing) company vibes and not any official DCSA guidance.
Dueroooversight is right, I am waiting to see the official guidance on Source phone interviews. We are getting bits and pieces and partial information, but not much concrete information. I have been around long enough to remember when investigator percentage of source phone interviews was tracked. Just because a vendor is encouraging source phone interviews, does not mean it is official policy. And nothing I have seen tells us that we can suggest a phone interview. Maybe phone percentage will be tracked and maybe it won’t be, just beware and follow policy.
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I work for PERATON and they said the phone guidance is from DCSA. Apparently they are encouraging telephone/vtc due to the backlog.
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Correct for both contracts- no phone SI, but everything else is ok, and VTC for SI’s on both contracts.
- and it’s ‘encouraged’ to do phone/fax/VTC for items EVEN IF they are local!!
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Was new guidance released?