Security clearance?

bronal said :

Imagine my surprise to find out that quite a few agencies require contractors to have ‘protected’ level clearance. This has cost me at least three contracts. Where and how do they expect contractors to get this level of clearance? You can’t get it until you’re working and you can’t get the job unless you’ve got the clearance. A real Catch-22! Plus, AFAIK, clearances expire after 2 years anyway.

The former ‘Protected’ is the new ‘Baseline’.
It lasts for up to 15 years, iirc.
(Highly protected, Confidential, and Secret are now Neg Vet 1, TSPNV is Neg Vet 2, TSPV is Pos Vet)

Very good info from TammyJ. I’m pleased they’ve made one agency, as the silly nonsense that Defence would pull, not recognising clearances from other departments, was ridiculous.

I got a TS NV as my first clearance but it was in the bad old days when it took forever to get high clearances done, as the protective services mob doing them were snowed under (about 5 years ago). The paperwork TammyJ outlines is spot-on. People who are pack rats will have all the paperwork easily to hand.

having a high clearance certainly makes temporary contracts easier to get, and I had no problem moving mine around the various departments (except Defence), they just had to get your authority to move the file to the new place, and you’d fill in some paperwork filling in the gaps since the last time your records were updated (ie overseas trips, religious cults joined, murders committed etc).

I happily let it expire when its 5 years were up. I could have gone back into a contract and let the agency get me another 5 years on it, but I was over it and the process and vetting to re-new a clearance is a bit brutal, since now you’ve had a clearance, you’ve no doubt been beset with spies trying to turn you to the dark side. So they set out to find out how many spies you’re being paid by or blackmailed by.

Jimbop is spot on here. I took a VR from Health and Ageing last July and, after the mandatory exclusionary period, started to look for work. I worked in the APS for over 30 years and was reasonably confident of finding work in my field. I am in the ‘mature’ age group and am looking for contract work, not a permanent position. At DoHA my security clearance was at the ‘confidential/restricted’ level, which I thought was reasonable, given the work I was doing. People in positions requiring a higher level of security clearance were assessed accordingly.

Imagine my surprise to find out that quite a few agencies require contractors to have ‘protected’ level clearance. This has cost me at least three contracts. Where and how do they expect contractors to get this level of clearance? You can’t get it until you’re working and you can’t get the job unless you’ve got the clearance. A real Catch-22! Plus, AFAIK, clearances expire after 2 years anyway.

About the best you can do is get an AFP police clearance certificate ($43) which will show that you have no current criminal offences on file.

There is supposed to be a shortage of experienced staff in the APS, especially at the APS5/6 levels I’m looking at. Why not take previous APS experience into account?

As the third comment states, all security clearances are now handled by a central agency, and are now transferable between departments with no extra paperwork or fuss. All information given to you about processes, time taken to receive a clearance, amount of information required etc that dates previous to this event are no longer applicable.

I’ve been hiring a number of contractors for a federal department on year long contracts in the last three months and can tell you the following:

If you are the best person for the job, the department will pay for your clearance no matter the length of your contract etc. There are no caveats. If you get the job and you don’t already hold one of the new clearances, they pay for you to be cleared.

Yes, there’s quite bit of paperwork for you to assemble for your first clearance, but there are now not as many forms to complete as previously (all forms and processes have been streamlined).

All of my contractors have started before they have received their clearances – the requirement for you to start is for you to have submitted the forms (ie proven willing to undergo scrutiny), so gathering the data required is the only delay. The only restriction due your not already holding a clearance before you start is that you won’t be allowed to work on anything or have access to anything that is not unclassified until the clearance is received. (By the way, this has always been the case.)

The time taken to receive a clearnace really varies from person to person. A person who has not moved very often, has not lived overseas, or travelled overseas very much, who has no “interesting” factors in their lives and has been very good at recordkeeping for a very long time will probably receive their clearnance in a couple of weeks. Any factor you add to that will increase the time taken to track down and check the veracity of what you’ve provided. You also have to take their workload into account, so you may just have hit a peak period for them, and be unlucky in the length of time it takes to receive your clearance. But this is rarely an issue, and your dept can always just assign you to other work until you receive your clearance. In the 12 years I’ve been in the APS (as both a contractor and a permie), I’ve never heard of this being an issue.

Personal data gathering – this is the part of a clearance that always up the most time. My advice is:
* Keep a document listing the addreses of everywhere you’ve stayed, be it staying with friends, travelling (onshore or overseas), lived for more than a week etc, and the dates between which you were there. Update it every time you move or travel.
* Have a section in that document where you keep the full details of all your immediately family members (full names, dates of birth, full place of birth, married to’s, current addresses and phone numbers, and whether you’re in contact etc)
* For every address you’ve lived at, make sure you keep one official communication from a bank, Medicare or anywhere where you’ve had to prove your identity. This communication must detail your name and address, and can be a receipt, a bank statement, a letter or anything, as long as the criteria above are met.
* Make sure you keep the receipts for everywhere you’ve stayed for more than a week, and make sure they have their address, your name and the dates you were there on them.
* Keep copies of everything you’ve sent for every clearance you apply for.
* Keep all of this together in one place, along with your birth certificate and any other official certificates or evidences, like citizenship, marriage, divorce, name change etc.

I haven’t personally been through the new process as yet, but I can guarnatee that if you already have all this info easily at hand, you can speed up the process of submitting, and then receiving your clearance significantly. It may still take them a while to process you, but there won’t be delays while they’re waiting for extra info from you, 🙂

AussieRodney said :

benno1 said :

Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA -part of Defence)

Nope, separate agency.

From http://www.defence.gov.au/agsva/about.htm

“…the Australian Security Vetting Service (ASVS) has transferred from the Attorney-General’s Department to the Department of Defence under a Machinery of Government Change … The AGSVA is situated within the Defence Security Authority”

benno1 said :

Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA -part of Defence)

Nope, separate agency.

Primal said :

LSWCHP said :

I work in a secure environment in private enterprise, and the only thing that interests us is the candidates ability to obtain a clearance. Whether a person currently has one or not is entirely irrelevant to us in making employment decisions.

But on what basis can you determine their ability to obtain a clearance other than putting them through the process?

Our experience over many years has been that citizens with verifiable backgrounds and clean records will get clearances up to secret without any drama. If someone says they meet those requirements then based on past experience we assume they’ll be ok.

LSWCHP said :

I work in a secure environment in private enterprise, and the only thing that interests us is the candidates ability to obtain a clearance. Whether a person currently has one or not is entirely irrelevant to us in making employment decisions.

But on what basis can you determine their ability to obtain a clearance other than putting them through the process?

It really depends on a) the level of clearance, b) where you are going to be working, and c) if you have been a good lad. Having a clearance is not strictly correct as higher level clearances (secret and above) generally don’t count unless you are working in that position –so when pimps say you must have a current clearance that really means you used to have a clearance and can get your files transferred across to the new agency with only a little bit of paperwork. Maybe you need to get an entry-level clearance first or at least look for positions that don’t require the rigour it seems you are getting blocked at. Also, don’t listen to pimps! They know didley about agencies!

This seems pretty odd to me.

I work in a secure environment in private enterprise, and the only thing that interests us is the candidates ability to obtain a clearance. Whether a person currently has one or not is entirely irrelevant to us in making employment decisions.

Have you explicitly been told “you didn’t get the job because you don’t currently have a clearance”?