As the value of U.S. Federal Government and Corporate Intellectual Property (IP), reputation, brand, and national interests increases, organizations will have to leverage new, cutting edge security technologies and integrations to increase protection from inside and outside threats.

Fresh Haystack innovative AI (Artificial Intelligence) RIDE (Risk Integration & Decision Engine) allows out customers to profit from true integrated risk management and data driven decision making. Though it is a work in progress, the following features are already currently available:

• Hyperautomation
• Enables any internal/external system integration
• Event Broker
• Predictive Decision Modeling
• Harmonization of Risk Silos
• Organizational Resilience

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for many large organizations to reinvent themselves with a focus on innovation in an attempt to enable technology and streamline their hiring practices, breaking down business silos (HR, PMO and Security) the marketplace is seeing a shift in this area. Our Fresh Haystack software has been integrated with multiple Human Resources Systems (HRIS) Systems, Applicant Tracking Systems, Contracts Systems, and Enterprise Reporting Systems. As an example, our multiple integrations with Workday HR, and Workday Recruiter produce the following three high-value integrations that should be considered:

HR Employee Demographic Import and Nightly Batch – An initial import of demographic data from Workday HR. Then, on a nightly basis, the integration picks up any new entries and/or changes to existing personnel. If there are any duplicate entries, they are flagged for correction in our system via our personnel merge function.

Forms Automation – An initial setup for set of the forms needs to be collected from the applicant per contract and/or agency. Then, using Applicant Portal, the secure data collection from applicant, data validation, electronic signature using DocuSign integration and forms generation needed for government submission.

Training Automation – An initial setup for set of the applicant/employee training requirements based on the contract and/or agency. Then, using Applicant Portal, the secure data collection from applicant, training requirements validation, electronic signature using DocuSign and training expiration notifications.

Our clients find that these integrations pay for their entire industrial security tool by simply cutting a few days in the onboarding process for cleared candidates.

Fresh Haystack helps security departments craft narrowly tailored “clearability” questionnaires for use in conducting security prescreening of candidates for positions involving Collateral/SCI clearances and positions of Suitability and Public Trust.  Our  questionnaire includes issues such as criminal conviction resulting in incarceration for one year or more; unwillingness to surrender a foreign passport; mental incompetence, as determined by a DOD-approved psychiatrist; discharge from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; or current unlawful use of or addiction to a controlled substance can trigger an automatic denial. This may also include specific guidance provided by government clients involving their suitability standards such as US citizenship required, which can trigger automatic denials. Lastly, this process allows an applicant to remove themselves from the process by “opt out” from moving forward which saves time and resources.

RIDE provides valuable predictive analytics driving contract specific performance metrics allowing to accurately estimate EOD (Entry on Duty) date. This capability is unique in the market.

HR/Recruiting/Hiring and PMs using our system can eliminate bench time and issue an offer letter to the candidate based on the Personnel Security Questionnaire (PSQ) they completed via the Applicant Portal and the adjudicative guidelines evaluated by the Security team. This feature allows users to predict contract start dates which allows for better customer service, planning, and increased contract revenue; furthering the value and billable revenue that the HR and Security team deliver to the organization.

Our candidate portal helps applicants fill out, digitally sign (using our strategic partner DocuSign) and submit these forms for PM/Hiring approval. It also assists the PM/Hiring in assembling the packets necessary to submit to the government POCs for EOD (Entry on Duty), saving countless hours of managing paper forms, emails, fax machines and mailing costs. Each of these forms are retained for audit purposes and the data can be used to resubmit updated forms when renewals are necessary, thus eliminating the redundant yearly fire drill and hours spent on manual data entry. This process also provides impactful transparency and accountability in workforce onboarding enabling continuous improvement for all parts of the organization based on metrics, Service Level Agreements (SLA), and response times.

We built Fresh Haystack as a digital platform for the business and multiple teams, both within and outside of Security, to take advantage of real-time, event-driven orchestration of business services and automation. Our risk-focused services are built on top of the case management framework, providing integration and automation for any business user of our ecosystem. Design of the system services is achieved through a combination of:

• Services orchestration
• Automation 
• RBAC (Role-based Access Controls) resource provisioning and integration with SSO solutions
• Event-driven application workflows including SLAs (Service Level Agreement) and checklists
• System administration console
• AI RIDE to manage data pipelines and scoring ruleset evaluation 
• Notifications and escalations for task statuses and alerting users when new events are triggered
• Reporting and Metrics

All of these features allow us to expand the role of traditional workload automation and deliver cost-savings, digital transformation, operational efficiency and process standardization.

Our Agile processes, tooling, repeatable infrastructure and DevSecOps delivery pipeline provide an excellent baseline to ensure nimble ability to quickly pivot to the new requirements, timelines and react to market and policy decisions that may impact systems operations, processes, or business rules implementation.

Our proven FARM methodology is the result of refining, over many years, best-practice Agile delivery with client feedback. Our clients tell us that the collaboration and communication level within FARM is valuable for delivering the right mix of stakeholder involvement throughout the project lifecycle. 

As in any innovative and enterprise solution, Fresh Haystack implementation will initially require a significant Change Management (CM) activity. In our experience, success of the implementation and delivery of timely milestones will depend on the following factors:

• Laying the groundwork for building the CM plan and ensuring all participants and partners understand the process, timelines, expected outcomes, and responsibilities.
• Building a shared understanding of change objectives and establishing a user working group to support creation of the CM plan. This allows collaboration and assessment of the impact on changes  for the different user segment, for example Security, Applicant, Investigator, Quality Assurance, PM, Adjudicator, and so forth.
• Identifying and addressing barriers likely to prevent users from successfully adopting changes.
• Documenting a CM plan tailored to unique change requirements of different staffing segments and defining metrics to track change progress and achievements/milestones.
• Reviewing the effectiveness of the CM plan in supporting change outcomes.

CANDA Solutions’ approach is to supply all the building blocks of successful onboarding process and risk management automation through the Fresh Haystack platform. We picked as our strategic partner – Employment Screening Resources® (ESR) – for delivering built-in comprehensive Background Checks. ESR is a global background check firm and a strategic choice for employers who need accuracy and compliance in their background screening programs. ESR is serving more than 244 countries and territories worldwide, more than 50 industries, all 100% of operations are US based and its Certification & Accreditation program puts it in the top 1% of screening firms.

All data available via ESR is integrated into Fresh Haystack which removes the need for manual data entry and enables automation and analytics in the background check execution and results evaluation. It is the one and only company providing real-time compliance with -zero- FCRA suits or actions and fast turnaround times; 90% of searches returned in less than 32 hours.

The Fresh Haystack platform combined with the comprehensive ESR background screening services and solutions empower our clients to make FCRA compliant, informed hiring decisions. In 2020, ESR was named both the #1 Background Screening Firm for Enterprise Organizations and #1 in Quality of Service by HRO Today magazine in its annual awards. In 2018, ESR won the Tektonic award in the background screening technology category, which recognized ESR Assured Compliance® as innovative and disruptive.

We assembled the Fresh Haystack platform from the ground up to deliver business benefits and enhance user experience for any business role or user of our product. As a core competency we built in automation, integrations and features within the Fresh Haystack design and development.  Furthermore, we continue to enhance our capabilities using the latest technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Process Automation).

We understand that customer experience, ease of use and operations are crucial to digital evolution and are committed to leveraging new UX technologies, while continuing to adopt, explore, and prioritize the innovations by demonstrating their value to the business, internally and to our partners.

The Deltek Government Contracting Industry Study (11th Annual Comprehensive Report) conducted in 2020 found that “finding, recruiting and retaining qualified talent continues to challenge the government contracting sector. Talent shortages and commercial competition for candidates have complicated matters for human capital management leaders.” It also discovered that “high turnover rates are affecting all companies, but 47% of large businesses are experiencing 16% or higher turnover”.

Findings in this report are significant and bring onboarding issues and automation to the forefront of the onboarding process. Another major challenge is the pandemic and the new “normal” with many large organizations planning to allow WFH (work from home) for an unknown period of time, if not permanently. This shift creates multiple challenges with applicant/candidate enrollment, onboarding procedures, collecting forms and fingerprints, and delivering badges and/or assets to the applicant/candidate.

Fresh Haystack developed a set of services (A to G on the diagram) which connect multiple business users and processes to remove bottlenecks in the cycle, enable seamless and automated integrations between Human Resources (Hiring and Recruiting), Project Management, Security and applicants/candidates. We crafted this solution to shorten the onboarding cycle, streamline the overall experience, deliver time savings, and provide hyperautomation customizable to any level of the organizations’ deployment strategy.

Fresh Haystack provides tools for the Program/Hiring/Recruiting Managers to assist with contract  or agency specific onboarding which delivers a self-service for contract document completion, submission, and approval.  Typical documents required for Entry on Duty (EOD) may include government wide forms like the OF306, agency specific forms such as DHS 11000-25, contract /badge specific and required training as well.

Fresh Haystack developed a set of risk-focused services connecting multiple business users and processes, typically operating in the silos, to:

• Remove bottlenecks in the Risk Management processes
• Enable seamless and automated integrations between Human Resources (Hiring and Recruiting), Project Management, Security and applicants/candidates
• Shorten the onboarding cycle
• Streamline the overall experience
• Deliver time savings, and 
• Provide hyperautomation customizable to any level of the organizations’ deployment strategy.

Our solution brings transparency and accuracy, cost reduction, and faster process speeds to all business units involved as well as continuous improvement and automation metrics. The flexibility of this platform enables any, small or large, organization to realize time to value with low-cost and low-risk investment.