What is the Rap Back Program?

The Rap Back program is an FBI service that allows authorized agencies to receive on-going status notifications of any criminal history record reported after an employee's initial background investigation. The service will be used as a continuous vetting process to gather any and all real-time information regarding an employee's criminal record through the use of fingerprint identification. (Executive Order 13467).

What does this mean for contractor employees?

Compliance with this directive means that all GSA contractor employees whose position is in the Non-Sensitive Low Risk (Tier 1), Moderate Risk (Tier 2) and High Risk (Tier 4) Public Trust population will be enrolled in the Rap Back program. Please review the FBI Privacy Act Notice on the collection of fingerprints which serves as the basis of enrollment in the Rap Back program.

Contractors must adhere to GSA’s HSPD-12 Policy.

How is this different from the current vetting process?

Until now, contractor employees have been subject to periodic reinvestigations as part of their contractual agreement. TW 2.0 is a whole-of-government background investigation reform effort overhauling the personnel vetting process by creating one government-wide system that allows cooperation across organizations. This relationship begins from the date the contractor employee receives a favorable background investigation to work on a GSA contract and continues throughout the contractor working on a GSA contract on a real-time basis called "continuous vetting."

What happens next?

The Office of Mission Assurance (OMA) will provide updates as we move through the enrollment process. OMA’s HSPD-12 Branch will contact contractor employees if they are required to be fingerprinted. 

Additional information on HSPD-12 can be found on the OMA's site.

Should you have any questions, please contact the HSPD-12 Branch at hspd12.security@gsa.gov or review our FAQs.