For the third year in a row the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has reduced the cost to conduct security clearance background investigations. DCSA conducts background investigations and provides personnel security support to not just the DoD, but 105 federal agencies as reimbursable services through a working capital fund.
For FY 2023, background investigation prices are reduced by 5%. Prices for Trusted Workforce 1.5 Continuous Vetting (CV) services have also been reduced by a whopping 23%.
FY 2023 Security Clearance Investigation Costs
“DCSA is helping our customers by standardizing pricing to support predictability in annual and long-range customer agency budgeting, and simplify the DCSA billing process,” said DCSA Director William K. Lietzau in a release. “Our efforts to reform our pricing processes while implementing major change to enterprise-wide personnel vetting is paying off not only in higher quality vetting, but in cost savings for customers across government.”
For Fiscal Year 2024, the background investigation model evolves into a three-tier investigation model, with low tier, moderate tier, and high tier investigation models and pricing. For both the current tiers and future tiers model there is a standard and priority pricing model (although there is no priority option for tier one investigations).
FY 2024 (Projected) Security Clearance Investigation Costs
Transforming Security, Saving Taxpayer Dollars
Reducing costs and improving investigation quality has been a key goal since DCSA took over the background investigations process. Business process transformation analyzed various steps of the background investigation process to see where effort could be improved without hindering investigation quality. Many of those same business process efforts helped the agency to continue to move investigations forward during the COVID-19 pandemic, as investigators moved toward more telephone verification and other options for completing background investigations moving through the process without increasing risk.
The ability to reduce investigations costs helps eliminate concern from agencies about having the funds to keep personnel moving through the process. That is a common rumor that befalls the clearance process – that there is a lack of funds to conduct background investigations (that’s usually more rumor than reality). But every reduction in cost helps ensure the 105 agencies who rely on DCSA for products and services are able to do so with confidence in their price point. As CV replaces periodic reinvestigations, agencies will see even further reduction in costs, as CV products under the Trusted Workforce 2.0 model will be able to replace episodic investigations with those only triggered based on verified alerts/real risk indicators.
