The US Government has announced plans to create a national background investigation system. The federal government is required to vet individuals as trustworthy. Once vetted, this need continues to ensure the individuals remain trustworthy for as long as they have an association with the Federal government.

To support this requirement, the Department of Defense (DOD) Chief Information Officer (CIO) tasked the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to design, develop, secure, operate, and sustain a Federal-wide National Background Investigation Service (NBIS).

The NBIS will be a service that supports background investigations by providing the information resources necessary to determine an individual’s trustworthiness to have access to US Government facilities, information, and information systems, the notice read.

The objective of this effort is to acquire a working, end-to-end software prototype of the Federal background investigation workflow. Initially, the prototype needs only to demonstrate 1,000 Tier 3 type investigations. The full operational capability (FOC) solution must be scalable and configurable for all investigation tiers, processing all five (5) levels of investigations and up to 3 million total cases every year.

Additionally, the NBIS must be secure, accept data from numerous external sources, and be tailorable for each agency’s needs.

The service must reach Initial Operational Capability (IOC) no later than September 2018, and achieve FOC by September 2019, the notice read.