Be specific when following up

My mother is a Japanese citizen so this has caused problems when transferring my security clearance from one agency to another.

Because she is my immediate family, I need a "waiver" per the adjudicative guidelines.

I recently accepted a role at a new project and my clearance transfer was taking a while because of my mom's citizenship status.

Naturally, the PM said they have no visibility into the agency's adjudication process or timeline, so I asked if she could ask the COR to ask if there any documentation I could provide to help move this a long. My mother recently applied for her citizenship and was approved so I figured that would help.

She did and the security team asked for the paperwork. I submitted it and a few days later it was approved.

It's important to follow up with key contacts to move things along, but it's equally important to be specific about your asks.

"Can we talk to X person about providing Y paperwork this week to help get the sub-contract approved" is much more actionable than "How long do you think this is going to take and is there anything I can do?"

Because you're more entrepreneurial and solution oriented than the average government contractor or bureaucrat, you can speed things up by coming up with the ideas yourself and then suggesting them.

Follow up and be specific.

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