Organisations wishing to conduct business with the Federal government had previously been required to apply through the Department of Finance and Administration for accreditation under the Endorsed Supplier Agreement. That has since been abolished in an attempt to ease and open procurement channels and opportunities for businesses of all sizes wishing to bid for lucrative government contracts. 

Having twice taken the local subsidiaries of US companies through the process I was one of the first to say "thank god" but unfortunately it has not levelled the playing field. In fact, it has opened the door for a disturbing bias in procurement.

While organisations may no longer need to be pre-accredited, they must still have the right level of insurances (no problems there), experience (no problems there), approach, methods, reference accounts and so on and so on. No problems there. The problem that many organisations who have not yet delivered services to the federal level of government will face is a pre-requisite for staff to be appropriately cleared to a criteria-specific security level (secure, secret and so on) prior to contract signature.

The difficulty with this approach is that in order to have staff accredited to the appropriate clearances, your organisation and the nominated resources must first be nominated by a federal department to a specific project. Yet departments will not nominate parties as part of the pre-tender process. And that leaves a large bias in the process.

What follows is the exchange of correspondence with DOFA when I recently pointed this anomaly out to them in relation to an impending tender.

Question: Given as you point out (in Addendum No. 3) that it takes 3-6 months to obtain the appropriate clearances, the project timeframes appear to show an unfair bias towards organisations previously cleared to Secret level. What is the Department?s advice to organisations that currently don?t have those levels of clearance in regards to this tender? 
. 
Response: As detailed in Addendum No. 3 to this Request for Tender (RFT), the Department of Finance and Administration (Finance) requires contractors to be cleared to the Secret level due to the nature of the information that the contractor will have access in the course of performing the work associated with this tender. Addendum No 3 provides an indication of the timeframes that may be applicable for such a security clearance, and the factors that may impact on the timeframe. The evaluation criteria for this RFT (Attachment D refers) details how Finance will assess each compliant tender.  Specifically:  Criteria C - ?The extent to which the Tenderer is able to demonstrate relevant skills, qualifications and experience of personnel, including the holding of appropriate security clearances at the time the contract is signed?.  Criteria E - ?The extent to which the Tenderer is able to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of the RFT, including the draft Contract?. Finance cannot advise a tenderer on a commercial decision to bid or not bid for a RFT.

Unfortunately everyone loses under this approach. At the high-end of town, federal security clearances will become a much higher valued  trading card for an already tight labour market. At the small to medium end, companies will be disinclined to bid for work they have delivered exceptional results for at other levels of government and private enterprise. Government continues to perpetuate negative efficacy amongst Australian businesses regarding procurement, growth and accessibility. Come on Canberra.