Clearance Crossover for NGA

Hello all,

I recently accepted an officer to work at the NGA as a contractor and per the offer letter, my clearance has to crossover as a stipulation.
I currently work for DHS and I’m also in the army reserves as an intel analyst. I have SCI for both DHS and DoD. I also obtained my CI Poly within the past year through NGA (my reserve unit was transitioning into the NGA building and they had everyone obtain a CI Poly). My reserve unit is actually going back to the NGA by end of April.

My question is how long will this take?
I obtained my CI Poly in Jan 2022.
My TS went through PR in Dec 2022 and I was enrolled in CE.

Only worry I have is 5 years ago, I accepted an offer for another contractor to work at the NGA. Long story short, I withdrew my application because they requested me to complete a 135 pg SF-86 (just a few months after a successful adjudication through the army reserves).

I wanted to see if anyone can provide guidance on the crossover process.

TIA!

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Crossovers can be anything from “wow that was quick” to “what snail lost my paperwork?” I would think the recent NGA-sanctioned polygraph would be a plus. It may also be a plus that you are enrolled in CE (didn’t know DHS was doing that).

For example, I recently started a new job and my crossover took about three weeks, and it seemed like most of the holdup was waiting for various people to click a box on their computer to nudge it to the next step. But I know another guy from the same place where I worked who left a few weeks before I did, and he is still waiting for his new employer to pick up his clearance.

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Hi Sbusquirrel! First of all, thank you for answering my questions over the years lol.
I appreciate your input a lot!

The CE took place as an army reservist. My unit FSO/SSO submitted my PR and few weeks later I was placed in the CE.

Thank you for your answer. My only concern was the incident 5 years ago where they wanted me to fill out that massive SF86. I just don’t want more than 3 weeks at most to start my job.

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Just a general comment on crossovers, especially since I mentioned my friend who is apparently still waiting…

For contractor positions, there are a number of factors at play here, including the availability of a contract that will support your access… we used to talk about “billets” for access, not sure if that is still the term they use.

Just because a program manager and a hiring manager decide to hire you and make you an offer doesn’t necessarily mean there is an open billet. This becomes more complicated if your employer is a subcontractor to another company-- that prime contractor becomes another chokepoint and they may want to keep billets for their own folks.

That’s great insight of my situation. Since my reserve unit is currently in the process of getting read on to NGA, would that help with the civilian side of the house to speed things along? I will be working for the prime and they have extensive contracts at the NGA.

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As I say, I don’t have any personal experience with NGA, but other DoD agencies with reserve programs (like DIA and NSA) seem to have separate pipelines for civilian employees, contractors, and military (including reservists). Your status as a current/active cleared reservist may help your civilian situation… or it could be irrelevant. Time will tell.

I did DIA → NGA and it took about 30 days.

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The process is pretty funny I have often described it as this;

There is a pile of approvals waiting for the person to approve, they come into the office on Thursdays that have an odd numbered date. Now on the first Friday of the month they put the new requests on top and on the third Tuesday they shuffle all the requests.

So if your request crosses the persons desk it gets approved but getting it on their desk is the trick. As others have said my first crossover was almost 6 months from a SAP program to NRO but it was during COVID then NRO to NGA was about 30 days.