Ask anyone in Defence industry about the biggest issue when it comes to workforce and security clearance is inevitably in the top three challenges.
All security clearances from the Australian government were centralised in 2010 in order to streamline the process and save some dollars under a single body: the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA) in the Department of Defence.
A 2015 ANAO report into the move did not paint a great picture when it came to fulfilling the brief.
The ANAO found the establishment of centralised vetting through AGSVA in 2010 had delivered “mixed” results in terms of performance and efficiency, with expected annual savings of $5.3 million failing to materialise.
“AGSVA collects and analyses information regarding personnel security risks, but does not communicate risk information to entities outside the Department of Defence or use clearance maintenance requirements to minimise risk,” according to the new report.
“Since the previous ANAO audit, AGSVA’s average timeframe for completing Positive Vetting (PV) clearances has increased significantly.”
A follow up ANAO report released in May this year also questions how effective the current framework is in dealing with insider threats and there are significant issues with how AGSVA does its job.
In an effort to address the issues, AGSVA released a discussion paper via AusTender in April this year to engage with industry about what can be done. Simpler procurement arrangements are the name of the game and suppliers among the 23 who currently have contracts with AGSVA have proposed better ways to structure contracts, improvements to the way the agency allocates and pays for jobs, as well as alternatives for training and certification of outsourced vetting services.
Those 23 companies have seen a significant increase in those seeking new clearances and keeping current clearances up to date (see table 1).
Table 1
Year Baseline NV1 NV2 PV Total
2014/2015 13996 14869 6078 702 35615
2015/2016 18217 17487 6246 922 42872
2016/2017 20505 19200 5265 1501 46471
The increase in demand for clearances has seen work going out to the AGSVA’s network of 23 industry partners increase year on year: $19.5 million, $25.3 million and $26.9 million for the years above, representing an average of about 15 per cent growth per year. An estimated $31.6 million is forecast for 2017/2018, a 17 per cent increase from the previous year.
The call for responses saw 29 respondents look at the art of the possible in reducing times and costs. The aim is to reduce clearance times to levels not seen for quite some time. In the future, the agency wants to set ambitious benchmarks, like 10 business days for the return of baseline clearance reports, 40 for Negative Vetting 1, 50 working days for NV2 and 80 for Positive Vetting.
A wider set of reforms to the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) that were slated to come into effect on July 1 have been delayed until October 1, and the transition period for certain elements of that — such as new document classification rules — has been extended to October 2020.
ADM will keep an eye on the AGSVA process moving forward and how the PSPF will affect the Defence community.