Good luck retaining quality people. Because no one likes to stay around long enough. DOD or not, it’s a problem.
"As the backlog has grown, NBIB has taken steps to increase its capacity
to conduct background investigations by increasing its own investigator
staff as well as awarding new contracts, effective in December 2016, to
four contractors for investigation fieldwork services. NBIB officials said
that NBIB has a goal to increase its total number of investigators—federal
employees and contractors—to about 7,200 by the end of fiscal year
2017. Specifically, to help address the backlog, NBIB officials reported
that NBIB increased its authorized federal investigator workforce by
adding 400 federal investigator positions in fiscal year 2016 and 200
positions in fiscal year 2017—an increase from 1,375 to 1,975 authorized
positions.123 As of July 2017, NBIB had filled 1,620 of the 1,975 positions,
and 1,513 of its federal investigators were fully trained. NBIB officials
explained that they do not plan to increase the federal investigator
capacity beyond the currently approved 1,975 because they do not have
the ability to absorb more staff. According to the officials, new
investigators must be trained by experienced investigators which reduces
the amount of time the experienced investigators have to conduct
investigative work. When estimating federal investigator capacity, NBIB
assumes it will have 277 full-time equivalent vacancies at any given time
due to high attrition rates. Further, NBIB officials could not project the
federal investigator workforce past April 2018 due to high attrition rates.
Given challenges with increasing its federal investigative staff, NBIB
continues to rely on contractors to conduct the majority of investigations.
NBIB officials noted that contractors perform about 60 percent of NBIB’s
total investigative cases. OPM awarded four new investigative fieldwork
services contracts that became effective in December 2016—two to
incumbent contractors and two to new vendors. In July 2017, OPM
officials told us that the contractor and federal staff capacity they currently
possess enables them to complete a sufficient number of investigations to
prevent the number of pending investigations from increasing further.
However, they acknowledged that the four contracts and federal
investigator staff do not currently provide OPM enough capacity to reduce
the pending number of investigations to the “healthy” inventory level of
180,000 cases.
NBIB officials have conducted analyses to determine how changes in the
total number of investigators could affect the backlog over time,
accounting for current and projected investigator capacity, prior time
studies, historical data, geographic location, and other factors.
Specifically, NBIB officials assessed four scenarios, from the status quo—
assuming no additional contractor or federal investigator hires—to an
aggressive contractor staffing plan beyond January 2018, but in July 2017
they determined that the aggressive plan was not feasible. The two
scenarios that NBIB identified as most feasible would not result in a
“healthy” inventory level until fiscal year 2022 at the earliest. For example,
under one scenario, each contractor would increase investigator capacity
under current staffing projections through early 2018. Assuming that the
contractors adhere to these projections, NBIB would have the capacity to
address incoming cases and begin to reduce the backlog, but the backlog
would not reach a “healthy” inventory level until sometime after fiscal year
2022. However, NBIB leadership has not determined whether the costs
and benefits of any one scenario are preferable to the costs and benefits
of the others.
I’d like to see contractor numbers and strategies.