Case History: Government agencies turn to AKS and Acappella® to help relieve security clearance backlog

The Problem

Al is a 35-year FBI veteran.  His specialty is conducting background investigations for security clearances.  Like many of his co-workers, he's eligible for retirement.  On any given day, he could just walk away from it all.

As far as the Bureau is concerned, this is a serious crisis.  Nearly half of their workforce is eligible for retirement.  The average age of their special investigators is 62.  And their caseload keeps growing.

Worse yet, experienced veterans like Al don't have time to train the junior investigators.  This adds to the backlog.  Cases the junior investigators are working on usually take longer, nd they are often sent back for correction.

Another problem is keeping up with changing threats.  Interview questions, policies, and procedures are continually under review.  Any changes in procedures need to be quickly incorporated in field offices across the country.

A system was needed that would:

1.      Streamline the security clearance process, and relieve the backlog, while maintaining the highest level of privacy, quality and assurance

2.      Have the ability to quickly accommodate changes, and ensure that those changes are uniformly applied throughout the organization.

The Solution

AKS was awarded a sole source contract to assist all federal agencies, including the FBI, with this problem.  AKS's knowledge engineers worked closely with Al and his associates.

We picked their brains, and mapped out their thought processes.  We discovered what questions they ask.  Why they ask them.  How they ask them.  In what order.  We also discovered that much of the time performing an investigation was spent by the agents putting their findings into a written report.

Using the Acappella® Platform, we implemented a pilot system that has captured the investigative process.   We incorporated over 2,400 questions, and over 400 decision points. The system produces an automated report, in English narrative, in less than three minutes.

The Results

The system is currently in a pilot evaluation phase.  Preliminary results indicate that report-writing time will be reduced by roughly 50%.  And the results of each investigation will be more comprehensive, consistent, and streamlined.  Changes to the questions can be incorporated in a matter of days, even hours, as opposed to weeks and months, which is currently the case.  And because the knowledge has been encoded in XML, the entire clearance process can easily be migrated and shared with other government agencies.