Currently cleared, being sponsored for a higher clearance

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

Hi all,

I haven’t been on the forum for a while so forgive me ahead of time if this has been asked.

I’m currently a contractor cleared with a DOJ Public Trust. My new employer, another federal contractor, will be sponsoring me for a Secret per my boss. He mentioned that he’ll likely be submitting me tomorrow when we return to work from the holiday.

My questions are two-fold:

  1. As someone already cleared, will sponsorship of a higher clearance within the same agency in any way expedite the process or do I have to start from the beginning of the process; and either way
  2. How long does it usually take for a Secret clearance to be adjudicated, in either scenario assuming there’s no issues?

I ask the second question as it seemingly took forever to get my Public Trust a few years ago which, to my knowledge, is a relatively low clearance.

Further, I met with an investigator in person to go over what was ( if memory serves) my SF86 line by line as she asked me the questions I already filled out. At the time I had hoped I was getting a higher clearance than a Public Trust as my understanding was, at least at the time, all of that was generally required for a higher level clearance and not for a lower level one.

There was nothing wrong, no issues, etc. however, I think due to some OPM backlog or something of that ilk, it took over a year to get a very low clearance 4 years ago so I was hoping to avoid that this time around.

Thanks all for your time.

2

You will start from the beginning of the process.Timelines are hard to give. Will depend on your location, complexity of your case, etc.

That being said, backlog is mostly gone and workload in almost all areas is current. Process should be much faster than your last go around.

1 Like
3

Also, understand that a public trust is not a clearance.

4

Thanks all for the responses. I spoke with my boss and he submitted me Wednesday (this week) so my assumption is that, and I’m probably wrong, but hopefully within the new few weeks I hear something in terms of filling out the paperwork again.

I had heard from some other folks that the process can take as little as 1-3 months and in some cases 4-6 months. I’m hoping it’s the former as the idea was to submit me for contracts requiring a Secret in the next 2-3 months.

5

As fed-investigator mentioned the backlog being reduced should help speed things along. Unfortunately in this business there’s just no good logic or predictions of timelines but that is one hugely important factor. I’m in a similar situation and hopefully what took a year last time won’t be nearly as long this go around.