The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has renamed its adjudications office again — this time to Trust Determinations, part of a broader push across the agency toward names that more directly reflect the work being done.
If you’ve been following security clearance news for a while, you’ve likely tracked this office under at least two other names. It was previously known as the DOD Consolidated Adjudications Facility (DOD CAF), then renamed Adjudicative Vetting Services (AVS). Now, DCSA is calling it Trust Determinations.
The change was announced earlier this year and picked up by DCSA’s Voice of Industry (VOI) newsletter, a useful resource for tracking these kinds of policy and organizational updates. DCSA has also updated its website to reflect the new framing, explaining what the Trust Determinations office does.
What Actually Changed
To be clear: the mission hasn’t changed. DCSA is not overhauling how clearance decisions are made — it’s changing the name to better describe the function. “Trust Determinations” is intended to be more intuitive than “adjudications,” a term that has long confused applicants and even some industry professionals.
That confusion is real. Many people entering the security clearance process for the first time don’t know what “adjudicate” means, let alone what an adjudications facility does. By calling the office Trust Determinations, DCSA is aiming for a name that says what it is: an office that makes determinations about an individual’s status within the trusted workforce.
How It Fits Into Trusted Workforce 2.0
The renaming also aligns with Trusted Workforce 2.0, the government-wide initiative to modernize and streamline the security clearance and vetting process. As DCSA continues to roll out process improvements under that initiative, using “trust” language across its naming conventions creates a more consistent, recognizable framework for describing the vetting and continuous evaluation process.
More Changes May Be Coming
DCSA has indicated that additional name changes could follow as the agency continues to refine its organizational structure and terminology. For cleared professionals and applicants, that means it may take some time before “Trust Determinations” fully replaces “DOD CAF” or “AVS” in common usage — old acronyms tend to stick around long after the official name has changed.
Whatever it’s called, the function remains one of the most important in the personnel security process: determining who can be trusted with access to the nation’s most sensitive information and systems. Whether you know it as CAF, AVS, or Trust Determinations, that work — and the people doing it — deserves recognition for its role in supporting national security.
