AGSVA is the single most consequential queue in Australian defence industry, and it is a queue rather than an assessment for most of its duration.

Published and reported figures: NV1 takes approximately three months, NV2 approximately five. In 2023-24 it processed roughly 32,300 Baseline, 28,688 NV1 and 7,495 NV2 clearances. The myClearance system, procured from Accenture at about $130 million, went live on 28 November 2022 and had processed 107,249 clearances by 9 May 2024. It has been the subject of an ANAO performance audit, and reporting has described substantial implementation problems severe enough that staff were redeployed to process clearances manually.

The structural problem is not the assessment. Vetting someone for access to national security information is exactly the kind of step this database defends: it is a genuine judgement about a specific person, and nobody sensible wants it faster at the cost of being worse.

The problem is that clearance is a precondition for winning work and, for most small firms, work is a precondition for justifying the cost of clearance. A company cannot credibly tender for classified work without cleared people, and cannot fund cleared people without the contract. That circularity is not caused by the vetting standard. It is caused by where the vetting sits in the sequence. See Break the clearance circularity that keeps small firms out of defence.