Naomi Cooper
Executive Mosaic is honored to feature William Lietzau, director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, on this year’s Wash100 list for his leadership in advancing efforts to reform the nation’s vetting process and maintain a trusted workforce of federal employees and contractors.
Lietzau became the latest government official to be inducted into the premier group of significant contributors to the government contracting sector. This year marks the 10th iteration of the Wash100 and the first time Lietzau has been selected to receive the award.
The retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel oversees a Department of Defense organization conducting background investigation work for over 100 agencies and leads work on information technology infrastructure for the government security enterprise.
Under his leadership, DCSA has worked to establish a continuous vetting model and an end-to-end IT system as part of the governmentwide “Trusted Workforce 2.0” initiative.
“Well before DCSA’s stand up in 2019, U.S. policymakers worked to design a reformed personnel vetting policy based on a single secure vetting system for the country,” Lietzau said during a May 2022 press briefing at the Pentagon.
“The central component to that system is the continuous vetting of individuals in positions of trust who require a security clearance.”
DCSA briefed industry security professionals in October regarding a new one-stop-shop platform for the vetting process, from application to background investigations and adjudications.
At the 2022 NBIS Industry Conference, Lietzau shared that the agency uses an agile approach to establishing the consolidated National Background Investigation Services system.
“The way we’re building it is different from other DOD acquisitions. You’ve heard of Agile software – this is more than Agile software development. This is Agile programmatics, development and onboarding,” said the first-time Wash100 honoree.
NBIS introduced a new security clearance application form collection platform in September to replace the legacy Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing system. In a training video, DCSA said the eApp software is designed to help accelerate U.S. background investigations.
In June, DCSA rebranded the DOD Consolidated Adjudications Facility as DCSA Consolidated Adjudication, without changing the organizational structure and process, to reflect the facility’s role in personnel vetting efforts.
DCSA also works with technology companies to carry out its mission. In March 2022, software company C3 AI received a contract to implement an artificial intelligence platform in the agency’s clearance adjudication application process.
The agency awarded CACI International and Peraton five-year contracts worth potentially $2.25 billion each in December to perform background investigation fieldwork across the U.S. over the next five years.
Before Lietzau assumed his current role in March 2020, he was director of DOD’s Personnel Vetting Transformation Office and helped transition the National Background Investigations Bureau from the Office of Personnel Management to the department. His industry career included time as a vice president at PAE and founding principal at Lex Rex Consulting.
Executive Mosaic congratulates William Lietzau and the entire DCSA team on their selection to receive the Wash100 award. Show support for the GovCon industry and your favorite executives through our voting platform at Wash100.com! Cast your votes by April 28.
