The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at [email protected].
Terry Gerton Our federal law enforcement agencies right now are in the midst of what we might call a hiring frenzy, trying to add tens of thousands of positions. You specialize in law enforcement background checks. So what is most challenging about our current background investigation system when agencies are facing these massive hiring efforts?
Justin Biedinger Well, as these efforts are actually across the whole nation, as far as local, federal, and state, the biggest crisis that we face is just doing things the same way that we’ve done them. We haven’t updated this space, we haven’t made it more efficient, so it’s very outdated and they’re using a lot of paperwork, binders, to house these background investigations as far as all the information, because we collect a lot information during a law enforcement background. We’re collecting references, neighbors a ton of information. One binder could hold 300 to 350 pages of information. So we just haven’t made it more efficient and we haven’t brought it into the digital world yet, federal, state and local.
Terry Gerton What would an updated system even look like?
Justin Biedinger An updated system would just be way more efficient as far as we, right now, a lot of agencies are sending out mailers as far licking stamps and envelopes and sending out to reference. Well, in a digital system, that system automatically sends stuff out. The applicant fills out their personal history questionnaire and a lot our information is derived from that. So the applicant is telling us where to send this stuff. But right now we’re doing it with mail, phone calls. Where AI digital systems just improve the efficiency and it takes the bias out of a background investigation.
Terry Gerton Talk to me more about how that anti-bias provisions would work.
Justin Biedinger As far as just people, you know, maybe profiling an applicant or he won’t be good, this is fine, this happened but this is okay, well the AI and the digital world, we don’t care how somebody answers or don’t answer, it’s the same and that’s what, here at Guardian Alliance Technologies, that’s why I was always trying to do was provide efficiency but also make everything kind of the same as far as a background investigation because right now it’s so different across everywhere.
Terry Gerton When you think about law enforcement investigations, I would imagine, like in some other special fields, the people who are doing the screening feel like they bring a lot of expertise to this process. How do you balance that, I want to be involved, I need to see them face-to-face approach with the efficiencies that you’d argue for in a more digital format?
Justin Biedinger The digital world is not going to replace the background investigator because you’re absolutely right. The face-to-face is so important to get to know that person. The inefficiency is just a lot of paperwork, a lot the emailing, a a lot talk, the interviews as far as we do interviews with these applicants where AI can help digest those interviews and bring out stuff. We also have red flags in our system where if an applicant answers a question that he did drugs six months ago, it’ll red flag it, automatically dequeue them or disqualify an applicant. It’s just basically, you’re bringing an applicant to an investigator that’s ready to go and has been kind of vetted by our system or by a digital system and it just improves the time and efficiency for a background investigator. But you’re right, we’ll never take away the background investigator
Terry Gerton You just mentioned red flags. When you’re in a predominantly paper-based process, what kinds of past misconduct or employment history issues do people commonly miss?
Justin Biedinger Well, we’ve seen a lot of things missed and we’ve helped agencies all over this, we’re in 49 states with our software, so we’ve help agencies all over the nation improve this process. But we’ve had an officer drive on a suspended license. We’ve missed a social media screen now that we do social media because of the new tech out there. So we do a social news screen where agencies weren’t doing that before. So we’ve missed out on social media that that could be you know, very damaging to an agency of balance.
Terry Gerton What kind of risks does an agency face or might an agency face, if they do miss some of these red flags? Does it turn into litigation or decertification or something?
Justin Biedinger Absolutely. It could turn into litigation. We’ve seen that in the past. And for a very low cost of using a digital [system] and keeping everything organized, it’s very cost effective to do it digitally and to help the investigator because lawsuits, decertification, firings, lack of trust in the community now, which is, I think, one of the biggest things. I think we improve the trust in the community when we’re using the digital, we’re doing everything we can to make sure we have the best officers on the street. And that’s really my goal, to put the best officer on the
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Justin Biedinger. He’s the founder of Guardian Alliance Technologies. So Justin, what is keeping law enforcement agencies from adopting a more modern approach to these kinds of background checks?
Justin Biedinger Well, to be truthful, Terry, just like everything, it’s just the answers we get sometimes is just, that’s the way we’ve always done it. So it’s a lack of knowledge, a lack which we’re out there trying to improve. But some people in the government world, they get comfortable and change is sometimes a bad thing in that world. So we’re out there doing campaigns and seeing if we can make sure we can get everybody to adopted it that we can.
Terry Gerton One of the issues that you’ve raised is the loss of information when law enforcement officers transfer maybe between other branches or other agencies or other localities. Talk to me about what that risk entails and how a more digital approach might help solve that.
Justin Biedinger Yeah, absolutely. We call that the wandering officer, like they could get fired, they could get they quit in lieu of and go somewhere else. And our digital system tracks those officers, they track an applicant so if an applicant answers a question somewhere, it’s disqualified and goes somewhere else, we’re able to track that. Right now we’re in a paper world, we can’t track that maybe an email, maybe, maybe though. So the tracking is way better. We’re a part of the NDI, which is the National Decertification Index, which hopefully all states will get on board and that is basically an index, a database that you can check to see if an officer has been decertified, so you can those. Because as we’ve seen in the past, we’ve seen officers go somewhere else, get in trouble and should have never been hired in the first place. We’re trying to do a better job of tracking and following that officer and make sure that he’s good.
Terry Gerton Any concerns inside that digital tracking process about individual privacy and privacy violations?
Justin Biedinger No, because they do a file review and they’ll do all that anyway so a lot of these law enforcement officers, as far as what we do, they have a waiver that everybody signs so that people can look at their employment, their past, because being a law enforcement officer is a little different than getting a job at Home Depot or somewhere else. So you do sign away a lot of privacy rights with waivers and stuff for these applicants.
Terry Gerton As we’re thinking about background checks, I want to ask how background checks relate to security clearances. The federal government has been trying to reform the security clearance process for decades. Is there a path where these two slightly different approaches kind of come together and reinforce each other instead of being separate silos.
Justin Biedinger Yeah, I think there could be, but we’re kind of looking into that too, because we haven’t really broken to that federal level yet, as far as they use a system called Equip, and they’re married to that system, as you probably know, right? That Equip system. We’ve been trying to break into that a little bit, because I think we could do a better job there too, security clearances and the background investigation process. And that takes a long time too, I mean, federal government background investigation for security clearance, that’s a long process too, so I think we can help there, yeah.
Terry Gerton Sometimes when agencies are so focused on hiring, it becomes an HR issue, and it’s about meeting numerical objectives and less about thinking about the risks of doing some things wrong, or as you’ve talked about, missing some key information. How do you want the leaders of these organizations to connect those dots?
Justin Biedinger Yeah, I think that’s the fear. That’s what keeps me up at night as far as lowering standards to meet ever-pressuring type situation. And we’ve seen that we’ve see it across country. We’ve lowered. I mean, California is, you know, marijuana is okay. They’ve lowered that standard and cops can smoke the day before they come into a test now if they want to be a cop. And I just think, I don’t know, I believe that’s a dangerous situation right there because I think police officers should be held to a way higher standard than. I mean, you’re taking people’s freedom and you’re way higher standard than the normal citizen.
Terry Gerton And for these federal agencies that are under such pressure right now to hire fast, what caution or what piece of advice would you want to make sure they take on board?
Justin Biedinger Just that, as far as the lowering the standards, just make sure we can hire fast, but we still need to do a good job with vetting. And I think they try to do the best they can, but I just think with the digital world and the AI now, we can do a lot better job without, like you said, taking that human element out of it, the background investigator. Like, my software was never meant to replace the background investigator. It was just another tool in the arsenal to try to make sure we get great cops on the street.
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