The Defense Innovation Unit is getting after a key barrier that prevents some commercial companies from doing business with the military: accessing secure facilities before the Pentagon is ready to buy their technology.
Historically, some startups have faced a Catch-22 in obtaining security clearances — they need a government contract to begin their facility clearance process, but without a clearance, they cannot compete for some classified work.
“First, we need a contract between the government and a company for an exchange of goods and value. If you don’t have that, there’s nothing to issue a [DD Form 254] and start the [facility security clearance] process with,” Sarah Pearson, chief of strategic initiatives at the Defense Innovation Unit, said during a panel discussion at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference Thursday.
“The chicken and egg element is that some of these nontraditional venture-backed startups that have great tech, but they can’t look at the classified portals with solicitations because they don’t have a contract,” she added.
Now, DIU plans to put out a new solicitation in the coming weeks that would allow selected companies to begin the facility-clearance process before the government actually buys their technology.
“We are going to state a problem area that is critical to DIU, critical to our mission partners … In exchange, if you are a vendor that has technologies in that area, you will be able to apply to share your capabilities in varying formats and artifacts. Maybe it looks something like a product roadmap or something else. And in exchange, we will grant you a facility clearance,” Pearson said.
The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency would then determine whether those companies and their personnel are eligible for clearance. If approved, DIU would maintain the company’s clearance for several years.
The companies would not necessarily be selling their technology to DoD at that stage. Instead, the clearance would grant access to some classified information, allowing them to better understand the military’s technology needs.
“Our hope in that scenario is that the vendors can then gain access to some of the classified conversations that they need to be at the table in,” Pearson said.
“We are going to prototype that and see if that allows us to start granting clearances early, prior to actually buying the technology that the vendor has to sell, so there is no exchange. I’m not buying a sensor in that scenario. I’m buying a product roadmap from the vendor who can now see classified demand signal,” she added.
Pearson said DIU expects to keep the initial effort small, with no more than roughly 30 to 40 companies in the first round. The clearance period would be longer than a year, but DIU has yet to determine the exact duration.
“It would be the same for all of them. I am very much looking to treat this in a pseudo-binary way. If you meet these criteria, then here’s your [facility security clearance],” Pearson told reporters during a media roundtable.
The effort to speed up the facility security clearance process is part of the DIU’s new Bridge program that the organization kept under wraps for over a year before unveiling it publicly last month.
The program, Pearson said, is “rooted in this recognition that no matter how many prototypes we ran, the prototypes were not getting fielded and scaled to the extent that we would hope.” DIU kept running into the same issues: security clearances and access to classified spaces, cybersecurity and technology accreditation and test and evaluation.
The goals for the program are quite ambitious. DIU’s Director Owen West said that within a year, the organization will “open co-use classified facilities nationwide, slash cyber authorization timelines by half, and enable agile, end-to-end testing capabilities for young companies.”
The program is also prototyping a “classified infrastructure-as-a-service” concept that allows small businesses and nontraditional contractors to access classified facilities more easily.
“The demand signal was loud and clear from industry to the Hill. I’ve got to give them all the credit here. They said, ‘Look, a bunch of your nontraditionals can’t get into classified spaces. You need to do something about it,’” Pearson said.
The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act required the Defense Department to establish a pilot program for shared classified commercial infrastructure.
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