The Security Clearance process was one of the most often cited reasons for delays in the staffing process during our user research. Though we anticipated most of these delays happened for Secret clearance given the additional steps involved, the same was reported for Reliability clearance as well.
We tried to better understand the process for Reliability Clearance through reviewing the research done during Blueprint 2020, as well as meetings with various stakeholders. The Security Policy team at the Treasury Board of Canada (TBS) helped us map out the typical clearance process. We also interviewed the chief security officers at a few of our partner departments. This research found that similar to other steps in the staffing process, the security clearance process varied widely across departments. These interviews eventually led us to a meeting with the team at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who was responsible for one of the checks in the Reliability Clearance process.
As a result of these meetings and interviews, we learned that due to the nature of the security clearance process, an outside team like Talent Cloud couldn’t have much influence in reducing timelines.
While Talent Cloud couldn’t influence much when it came to timelines related to security clearance, we could still help clarify information in a user-friendly way. One of the delays identified by experts in the process review involved candidates who have lived outside of Canada for a certain period of time. These candidates were required to request and submit policy checks from those countries, which could take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Given most candidates were not aware of this requirement until they had been selected as the final candidate, Talent Cloud hypothesized that in these cases, there was at least some opportunity to accelerate the process.
So here’s the hypothesis we landed on testing:
If candidates who have lived outside Canada are informed of the requirement to request out-of-country criminal record checks in advance, they will initiate the process earlier and have the documents ready when they are informed of the selection decision.
Information about the security clearance process requirement was provided to all potential applicants through the website’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, and later on a thank you page after an application was submitted. Potential applicants were advised to complete the security forms in advance (but not to submit them until they were asked to do so). They were also encouraged to request out-of-country criminal record check ahead of time if they had lived outside of Canada over a certain period of time.
We then monitored visits to the FAQ page to estimate how often this information was being used.
FAQ: A page was dedicated to provide important information in advance to potential applicants, including information about the security clearance process. Potential applicants were encouraged to review the information by using the title “How You Can Speed Things Up After Applying”.
Thank you page: In an effort to make this information more apparent to actual applicants, suggestions on next steps, which included requesting out-of-country criminal record check in advance, were added to the thank you page that appeared after the applicant submitted their application.
The FAQ page has registered over 20,000 pageviews as of March 2021 since we started tracking the statistics three years ago. Though we could not measure directly how information on the FAQ page might have influenced behaviours, our interviews with people who were hired through Talent Cloud indicated that they found the information helpful. Some of them consulted the page multiple times through the staffing process, even revisited the page after they were hired.
We also heard from one manager that because his candidate took the advice he saw on the thank you page, the candidate immediately requested out-of-country criminal record checks after submitting the application. As a result, the manager estimated that the staffing process was shortened by two weeks to a month.
Despite the minimum influence Talent Cloud had on the security clearance process, sharing information with applicants in advance has allowed them to be prepared and helped to reduce time-to-staff in some cases. Sharing the requirements in simple languages also helped applicants who were new to government to better understand the process. We even received requests from HR advisors at our partner departments to share the information with their candidates.
