Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Evaluate 1.1 Million Security Clearance Holders
The security clearance process is broken—a fact widely accepted by stakeholders in the public and private sector, legislative and executive branches of government, Democrats and Republicans. As federal leaders work on the largest process overhaul in half a century, artificial intelligence will play a key role.
In February, officials unveiled plans for Trusted Workforce 2.0, a framework that would shift suitability and security determinations from a one-time investigation followed by reassessments every five to 10 years, to an ongoing process that uses technology and private sector partners and data.
The first step in moving away from the old process is getting rid of all the paper, according to Terry Carpenter, the program executive officer for the National Background Investigation Service, the office overseeing the technical overhaul of the investigations process.
“The days of you filling out some form—online or in paper—submitting this form; having people go through that form; analyze your responses; decide which investigator to send out there to meet with your parents, your friends, your neighbors, who may all be in different states; to write up reports and assemble a package that grows as we do the investigation and come back to somebody to adjudicate the recommendation to say, ‘should this person get a clearance or not based on policy?’ We can’t do that anymore—that’s paper,” Carpenter said Thursday during the Government Analytics Breakfast Forum hosted by Johns Hopkins University and REI Systems.
