The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) isn’t trusting President Elect Donald Trump to make America great again all on his own. They’ve created a roadmap for IT efficiency to help the new administration prioritize.

The memo released last week acts as a bit of a brag sheet of OPM’s accomplishments over the past eight years under the Obama Administration (never mind that pesky 22 million person data-breach). And it offers suggestions for how the new Administration can continue making progress.

The efforts of the newly stood up National Background Investigation Bureau (NBIB) fall under OPM’s aim to build a trusted workforce. The memo states:

“A trusted and well-qualified workforce is essential for agencies to fulfill their missions and serve the American people. Events of recent years have underscored the imperative of guarding against threats posed by insiders who seek to harm the government’s personnel, property, and information systems. OPM plays a central role in this effort by conducting 95% of Federal background investigations that gather information used by agencies to make employment and security clearance decisions. During this Administration, OPM has worked hard to strengthen and modernize the background investigations process, and has developed a roadmap for how to continue down this path.”

It goes on to cite the key aspects of NBIB, including the decision to enhance the security of OPM’s legacy networks and have IT systems designed and operated by the Department of Defense. They’re also looking to new tools for automation and information sharing, and exploring new information sources, including social media, as a part of the background investigation process. Finally, OPM touts the prospects of NBIB to improve customer service with security clearance stakeholders.

The Next Phase of NBIB

In addition to highlighting where NBIB is today, the memo weighs heavily on making suggestions for the new Administration, who will have the job of actually implementing the ideas presented to improve the background investigations process. Those include:

  • Standing up NBIB without delay
  • Improving the timeliness of background investigations
  • Modernizing background investigations through new, secure IT

Thus far NBIB is already looking to ways it can improve the timeliness of investigations – today. They recently announced they are pushing back TS reinvestigations to every six years, from every five years. The hope is that moving back reinvestigations will allow them to more quickly move through the backlog of interim and initial security clearances.

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Lindy Kyzer is the director of content at ClearanceJobs.com. Have a conference, tip, or story idea to share? Email lindy.kyzer@clearancejobs.com. Interested in writing for ClearanceJobs.com? Learn more here.. @LindyKyzer