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What about the security clearance process is arbitrary? As far as the proposal writing goes, if a group can't draft a decent proposal, how are they going to pr

What about the security clearance process is arbitrary? As far as the proposal writing goes, if a group can't draft a decent proposal, how are they going to produce good documentation? I'm not seeing how grantsmanship presents an unfair bar here.

mcguire 11y ago
I don't know about arbitrary, but it is detailed, expensive (Yes, they really do send someone to talk to everyone you list on the forms in person.), and takes a very long time. (I've had several relatives with both engineering and military backgrounds doing inventory-related reports for several months while waiting for their DoE clearances to be processed.) This seems odd given that I've also heard, less reliably, that they grant something like 96% of the clearances. In practice, having a security clearance becomes a job requirement of the same level as experience and ability to perform the job. Since cleared jobs don't pay several times more than jobs without the requirement and there's no way for an individual to get a clearance without the sponsorship of an employer, job-related skill tends to suffer. Government contracts are a very specialized skillset[1] that is completely unrelated to any kind of development effort. People with that skillset bring in revenue and are thus assets; people doing development are expenses. [1] http://www.dau.mil/default.aspx http://www.dau.mil/default.aspx
- hga 11y ago
  In practice, having a security clearance becomes a job requirement of the same level as experience and ability to perform the job. Since cleared jobs don't pay several times more than jobs without the requirement and there's no way for an individual to get a clearance without the sponsorship of an employer, job-related skill tends to suffer. No, but they do offer career security, i.e. not having to become a consultant or whatever if you're not a superstar when you turn ~40. I've also have a couple of acquaintances with high level security clearances, and they can talk about the tools they use, and at least in their cases they're not radically different than what's normally used outside that world. E.g. Sun gear back in the '90s when it was the best, C#, Java, various generally obscure document imaging tools that are standard in the field, etc. And plenty of FOSS, the government loves it, or at least the intelligence agencies do. If the people doing development are working on a cost plus basis, they're anything but an "expense", they're youe lifeblood. While working in a mostly commercial arm of a mostly government contracting smallish business (http://radianinc.com/ http://radianinc.com/) in the mid-90s, the money people were not happy in the first few months of each year when there are so many Federal holidays, the lack of the "plus" while paying everyone's salaries pinched cash flow. I also did a lot of non-classified Federal government fulfillment work in the '90s and early '00s and it wasn't radically different than the commercial world. More legal work was required, different sorts of sales processes in some cases, but e.g. at my first such job, when our "closer" salesman took me to e.g. NASA or a commercial firm to explain how we were going to fulfill our proposed commitment, there was essentially no difference. (State government contracting, and I'm sure the stupider Federal levels are a different matter, and to be avoided at all costs.)
  - mcguire 11y ago
    Career security is exactly it, especially if by "not a superstar" you mean "not particularly competent". And yes, the folks I've run across at Redstone have indeed been using typical commercial tools like SAP (favorite quote: "Why is this database column named 'herst'?"), DOORS, and some really horrible contract management stuff, and the usual assorted (SAP and otherwise) portals. And indeed, Java; I think I heard that the Army guys upgraded past 1.4 a couple of years ago. I don't want to get started about cost-plus contracting, but here's a tip, if you're ever in that business again: hire friendly, personable, but not overly skilled people. The government side is divided into two groups: program management, which are really only concerned with the money going out and are the other half of the contracting follies (see my DAU link previous), and project management; people who are on one hand interested in getting their work done and in the other on increasing the size and importance of their empires. Neither would know technical work from a hole in the ground, or if they did it was so long ago as to be irrelevant. The project folks are on your side since the more there are of you, the more important they look. If your employees are good at being friendly with them, you're golden. All you have to do is convince the program management people that you're working really, really hard and that the problems are very, very difficult (hence the "not overly skilled" part), and the project managers will do most of that for you. Just don't ever, ever, convert a cost-plus contract (where you as the prime contractor have cost-plus subcontracts) to fixed-price while not changing the subcontracts to fixed price. (And I'm looking at you, SAIC.) There is one difference, in my experience between contracting commercially and for the government. The overhead for me when I was doing work for IBM (in the 90's and '00s) was 13-15%; the overhead for me doing work for NASA was somewhere close to 100%, judging by the GSA schedules for related contracts---I never could find the schedule for UNITeS or EAST.

mcguire 11y ago

I don't know about arbitrary, but it is detailed, expensive (Yes, they really do send someone to talk to everyone you list on the forms in person.), and takes a very long time. (I've had several relatives with both engineering and military backgrounds doing inventory-related reports for several months while waiting for their DoE clearances to be processed.) This seems odd given that I've also heard, less reliably, that they grant something like 96% of the clearances. In practice, having a security clearance becomes a job requirement of the same level as experience and ability to perform the job. Since cleared jobs don't pay several times more than jobs without the requirement and there's no way for an individual to get a clearance without the sponsorship of an employer, job-related skill tends to suffer. Government contracts are a very specialized skillset[1] that is completely unrelated to any kind of development effort. People with that skillset bring in revenue and are thus assets; people doing development are expenses. [1] http://www.dau.mil/default.aspx http://www.dau.mil/default.aspx

hga 11y ago
In practice, having a security clearance becomes a job requirement of the same level as experience and ability to perform the job. Since cleared jobs don't pay several times more than jobs without the requirement and there's no way for an individual to get a clearance without the sponsorship of an employer, job-related skill tends to suffer. No, but they do offer career security, i.e. not having to become a consultant or whatever if you're not a superstar when you turn ~40. I've also have a couple of acquaintances with high level security clearances, and they can talk about the tools they use, and at least in their cases they're not radically different than what's normally used outside that world. E.g. Sun gear back in the '90s when it was the best, C#, Java, various generally obscure document imaging tools that are standard in the field, etc. And plenty of FOSS, the government loves it, or at least the intelligence agencies do. If the people doing development are working on a cost plus basis, they're anything but an "expense", they're youe lifeblood. While working in a mostly commercial arm of a mostly government contracting smallish business (http://radianinc.com/ http://radianinc.com/) in the mid-90s, the money people were not happy in the first few months of each year when there are so many Federal holidays, the lack of the "plus" while paying everyone's salaries pinched cash flow. I also did a lot of non-classified Federal government fulfillment work in the '90s and early '00s and it wasn't radically different than the commercial world. More legal work was required, different sorts of sales processes in some cases, but e.g. at my first such job, when our "closer" salesman took me to e.g. NASA or a commercial firm to explain how we were going to fulfill our proposed commitment, there was essentially no difference. (State government contracting, and I'm sure the stupider Federal levels are a different matter, and to be avoided at all costs.)
- mcguire 11y ago
  Career security is exactly it, especially if by "not a superstar" you mean "not particularly competent". And yes, the folks I've run across at Redstone have indeed been using typical commercial tools like SAP (favorite quote: "Why is this database column named 'herst'?"), DOORS, and some really horrible contract management stuff, and the usual assorted (SAP and otherwise) portals. And indeed, Java; I think I heard that the Army guys upgraded past 1.4 a couple of years ago. I don't want to get started about cost-plus contracting, but here's a tip, if you're ever in that business again: hire friendly, personable, but not overly skilled people. The government side is divided into two groups: program management, which are really only concerned with the money going out and are the other half of the contracting follies (see my DAU link previous), and project management; people who are on one hand interested in getting their work done and in the other on increasing the size and importance of their empires. Neither would know technical work from a hole in the ground, or if they did it was so long ago as to be irrelevant. The project folks are on your side since the more there are of you, the more important they look. If your employees are good at being friendly with them, you're golden. All you have to do is convince the program management people that you're working really, really hard and that the problems are very, very difficult (hence the "not overly skilled" part), and the project managers will do most of that for you. Just don't ever, ever, convert a cost-plus contract (where you as the prime contractor have cost-plus subcontracts) to fixed-price while not changing the subcontracts to fixed price. (And I'm looking at you, SAIC.) There is one difference, in my experience between contracting commercially and for the government. The overhead for me when I was doing work for IBM (in the 90's and '00s) was 13-15%; the overhead for me doing work for NASA was somewhere close to 100%, judging by the GSA schedules for related contracts---I never could find the schedule for UNITeS or EAST.