How Billing Works
Please note that Institutes, Centers, and Offices (ICOs) are not charged directly for ID badges or background investigations, so individual charges will not be shown in the NIH Business System (NBS) for each person sponsored in NED. Instead, funding to cover these costs is collected through an assessment process and constitutes part of the annual operating budget for the NIH ORS Division of Personnel Security. These costs are allocated among the ICOs as follows:
- Costs related to producing and issuing ID badges are allocated among the ICOs based on factors such as Census (number of people) and Space (square footage).
- Costs related to background investigation charges from DCSA is based on historical data by ICO. The Division of Personnel Security uses a 3-year average of total DCSA charges per ICO to complete the assessment.
These assessment are reviewed annually and updated as needed.
Products and Services Reimbursable Billing Rates for FY 2025 and FY 2026 for DCSA Background Investigations
On August 30, 2024, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) has released the final pricing for product and services for fiscal year (FY) 2025 as well as the updated estimated pricing for FY 2026 per Federal Investigation Notice (FIN) No. 24-01, effective October 1, 2024. Please read below the announcement from DCSA:
This notice announces the updated FY 2025 DCSA products and services with associated pricing effective October 1, 2024 (superseding FIN 23-03} and introduces new products and services with pricing for FY 2026 effective October 1, 2025. Here are the major changes made from FIN 23-03:
- Legacy 5-tier background investigations (BI) throughout FY25
- Trusted Workforce (TW) 1.25 continuous vetting (CV) service for Federal agencies outside DOD, with a planned transition to TW 1.5 Interim CV service in the 4th quarter of FY25
- TW 1.5 Interim CV service for DOD Components
As announced last year, starting in FY 2026 DCSA will begin a multi-year plan to establish full-cost recovery prices for all products and services. After 6 years of maintaining or lowering rates to return cash to customers and reduce cash reserves, DCSA will increase BI rates by 10 percent and CV rates by an inflationary-driven 3 percent over FY 2025 rates. Although DCSA is still assessing future pricing, the planned multi-year full cost recovery price setting will continue during FY 2027, and customers should prepare their budgets assuming there will be a similar price increase as FY 2026. Projected pricing for FY 2026 and FY 2027 does not include any costs associated with NBIS development. The Department of Defense is committed to funding NBIS development and will not pass those costs on to our customers.
For more information, please refer to the DCSA website, as it has been updated accordingly with the new FIN. You may visit their Notices for Policies, Systems & Processes page and Billing Rates page. For billing questions, please feel free to contact the Billing Support Team:
- Phone: 878-274-5081, Option 2
- Email: dcsa.quantico.dcsa-hq.mbx.ocfo-billing-support@mail.mil
Please read the Federal Investigation Notice (FIN) No. 24-01 to find the billing rates for the "Reimbursable Suitability/Security Investigation (RSI)" and the "Special Agreement Check (SAC)" under Section 1C. RSI and SAC requests include a one-time processing fee in addition to the individual items requested.
The chart below shares the DCSA Billing Rates for Trusted Workforce (TW) Continuous Vetting (CV) Products and Services.
