For years, security clearance reform has been defined by ambitious modernization efforts and promises of digital transformation. What’s often been missing is accountability tied to measurable outcomes and hard deadlines. Emphasis on personnel vetting seems to ebb and flow, and while a few key agencies and individuals hold the stone like Sisyphus, broader reform always seems elusive. And the Government Accountability Office has continually signaled actionable benchmarks around critical efforts like NBIS as key to moving the security clearance process off of the high risk list.
Over the past year, under the acting leadership of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security (DUSD(I&S)) Justin Overbaugh, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency was focused on delivering NBIS, making DCSA more customer-focused, and driving organizational accountability and efficiency. With the selection of Director Joseph Tonin as the agency’s new head, that move from strategy to execution appears to be moving forward, as emphasized by a newly released DCSA Strategic Execution Plan.
The document is strikingly different from many government strategic plans. It’s short, direct, and unapologetically focused on execution. Rather than outlining broad aspirations, DCSA leaders have assigned individual owners to six major priorities and attached specific performance metrics, timelines, and adoption goals to each one. The message throughout the plan is simple: modernization efforts will be judged by outcomes, not intentions.
NBIS Becomes the Center of Gravity
The top priority is delivering the National Background Investigation Services (NBIS) platform—the long-awaited technology backbone intended to modernize federal personnel vetting. For the security clearance community, this is perhaps the most consequential element of the plan.
DCSA commits to retiring the legacy Personnel Investigations Processing System (PIPS) no later than the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027 and achieving more than 90% user adoption within 90 days of each legacy system sunset. The agency has also established operational goals that private-sector technology companies would recognize, including zero unplanned outages exceeding four hours and recovery from critical incidents within two hours.
Just as important, DCSA is measuring success through user experience. Investigators, adjudicators, and agency customers will be surveyed quarterly, with a target satisfaction score of 4.0 out of 5.0.
For clearance holders and federal personnel security professionals, the significance is clear. After years of transition, DCSA is publicly committing to a timeline for making NBIS the primary platform supporting the trusted workforce mission.
Industrial Security Gets a Major Overhaul
While NBIS receives significant attention, DCSA’s second priority may have the biggest impact on defense contractors. The agency plans to deploy National Industrial Security System 2 (NI2) as the single system of record for facility clearances (FCLs), Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence (FOCI) reviews, and National Industrial Security Program (NISP) oversight.
The goal is to transform industrial security from a collection of disconnected legacy processes into an integrated platform powered by automation, artificial intelligence, data feeds, and performance dashboards. For companies navigating facility clearance requirements, the most notable metrics involve speed. DCSA intends to complete 90% of FCL and FOCI reviews within 14 calendar days and the remaining cases within 30 days.
In an era where defense innovation increasingly comes from nontraditional contractors, startups, and technology companies entering the national security space, reducing administrative friction may become a competitive advantage for the Defense Industrial Base. The plan also highlights DCSA’s intent to better manage emerging issues such as Classified Infrastructure as a Service (CIaaS), an area likely to become increasingly important as classified workloads move into commercial cloud environments.
Preserving Vetting Gains While Maintaining Quality
Recent years have seen significant reductions in background investigation backlogs and improvements in processing times. DCSA’s third priority focuses on ensuring those gains are sustainable. The agency plans to modernize the entire personnel vetting lifecycle, from application submission through adjudication and continuous vetting, while emphasizing that technology will support, not replace, human judgment.
One line in particular stands out: “Technology and data will sharpen and accelerate the work; people will own every trust decision.”
That language reflects a growing reality across government. Artificial intelligence and automation can help identify risk, prioritize workloads, and surface information more efficiently. But when it comes to determining who should receive access to classified information, DCSA is making clear that humans remain responsible for final decisions.
The agency also intends to expand virtual interview techniques and move toward a single Federal Personnel Vetting Record maintained throughout an individual’s clearance lifecycle. For clearance applicants, that could eventually mean fewer redundant processes and greater continuity as they move between agencies and employers.
Fixing Internal Culture and Workforce Frustration
The agency acknowledges that modernization efforts cannot succeed if employees are burdened by bureaucracy and ineffective processes. To address that challenge, DCSA plans to publish a quarterly “Stop Doing” list identifying processes, governance boards, and requirements that will be eliminated entirely.
That’s a notable commitment in a federal environment where outdated requirements often survive long after their usefulness has expired. The agency also pledges direct engagement between senior leaders and employees, with leadership expected to conduct in-person visits covering 80% of the workforce annually.
For an organization responsible for supporting national security at scale, retaining and empowering experienced personnel remains as important as deploying new technology.
Thinking More Like a Service Provider
Another theme running throughout the plan is customer service. DCSA explicitly states that it wants to operate “like a services business, not a monopoly utility.” That’s a significant cultural statement for an agency whose customers have limited opportunities. The agency truly holds a near monopoly on the personnel vetting mission, but according to its strategic plan, it doesn’t want to act like it.
The agency plans to establish customer success models, executive escalation pathways, customer relationship management capabilities, and publicly visible customer satisfaction dashboards. For federal agencies relying on personnel vetting services—and for contractors dependent on clearance decisions—greater transparency could help build trust in the process while creating stronger accountability for performance.
AI Moves from Pilot Projects to Production
The final strategic priority focuses on enterprise-wide data integration and artificial intelligence. Government agencies frequently announce AI pilots. DCSA’s plan is notable because it establishes a measurable objective: at least ten AI pilots scaled into production by the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2027 and delivering demonstrable cost or cycle-time reductions.
The agency also intends to use AI-driven analytics for compliance monitoring, audit readiness, workflow analysis, and automated identification of process gaps.
For security professionals, the emphasis on audit trails and compliance monitoring is significant. The challenge for government AI adoption has never been simply deploying algorithms, it’s ensuring those systems operate within legal, policy, and oversight requirements. DCSA appears focused on building AI capabilities that enhance accountability rather than reduce it.
A Strategic Plan Built Around Accountability
The most important aspect of the Strategic Execution Plan may not be any individual initiative.
It’s the structure.
Each priority has a named owner. Each outcome has a metric. Each commitment has a deadline. The final section of the document emphasizes that progress will be tracked through a single enterprise operating cadence that integrates funding, staffing, technology, and mission risk into one management framework.
Achieving every target may be a moonshot goal. Large-scale modernization efforts rarely proceed without obstacles. But after years of discussing transformation, the agency is making a public commitment to something much harder: measurable delivery.
As DCSA itself puts it, the standard is simple: “outcomes on a clock.”
For the federal workforce, security clearance holders, and defense contractors who depend on DCSA’s services, that may be the most important modernization effort of all.
