Industry’s asking DCSA for more transparency on continuous vetting, and they’re right to. The shift away from periodic reinvestigations was overdue—automated alerts flag issues faster, and investigators can focus on real problems instead of rubber-stamping five-year reviews. But now that CV is live for nearly a million contractor employees, the friction points are showing up.
The core issue isn’t the model; it’s adjudication speed. When a CV alert fires and an employee needs to move to a new program or contract, everything stops until it’s resolved. Without visibility into timelines or case status, FSOs are flying blind. One contractor rep at the recent NISPPAC meeting put it plainly: if there’s an open case, the person’s no longer considered for the role. That’s a planning problem when you’re trying to staff a cleared program on a tight schedule.
DCSA’s working on better data sharing, which is the right move. The scale is real—DHS alone processed over 500,000 alerts last quarter, with a 13-day average adjudication and 92% classified as low risk. That’s a lot of noise in the system. The ask from industry to loop in FSOs earlier makes sense; they’re already the first call when a clearance issue surfaces, and they can often resolve things faster than waiting for the candidate to respond. This isn’t a crisis, but it’s a gap worth closing before it becomes one.