Hi Quix,
I run a company providing consulting services to Australian federal government, so this is related background rather than specific detailed answers.
To work directly for Australian government agencies you generally have to be an Australian citizen, however when government agencies 'outsource' work to another company, that company may have non-citizens (e.g. permanent residents) performing some of the work -- depending on the requirements of the service contract.
The Australian government uses contractors for resource agility (i.e. when you need a lot of personnel quickly for a limited time), or specialist skills unlikely to be found among permanent officers. The contracts stipulate what work is to be done, when and at what price. Contractors are typically paid for each hour worked. Contracts are typically limited by duration -- e.g. six weeks at thirty-five or forty hours per week.
Contractors cost more per hour worked than permanent staff, but you don't accrue certain liabilities like sick-leave, recreation leave, long-service leave, parental leave, training and career development and superannuation. Contractors working in specialised areas can cost a great deal more than permanent officers.
Contractors must normally go through the same security screening as permanent personnel. They have an identical code of conduct and often have similar responsibilities and authorities to permanent officers. It's sometimes possible (though not desireable) to have contractors managing permanent officers.
Most government buildings have ID cards of one sort or another -- these days often a 'smart card' containing information about its bearer and how it has been used. Such cards typically contain markings to distinguish contractors from permanent officers. In Australian government the markings vary from agency to agency -- the card is often worn on a lanyard as a badge and sometimes it's lanyard-colour or card-colour.
Contractors typically provide their services to government by tender. The government publishes its tenders for contractors through gazettes and Web-sites. However many government agencies prefer to work through recruitment firms (aka 'head hunters'). These are private-sector firms that recruit personnel and have some accountability for the personnel recruited. They charge a premium on the contractor's hourly rate -- that premium might be a few percent up to around thirty percent. Many government agencies have 'panel' arrangements in which they pre-select recruiting firms to supply staff. Any tenders for staff then go to the panel rather than to the open market. A panel arrangement typically lasts for three to five years, and then the government approaches the market again for a new arrangement. Governments use panels to try and simplify contracting and control quality and price.
When governments outsource contracts (e.g. build some submarines or develop a computer-system or clean a building) the contract goes to a service company who may then use their own staff to supply the service. The service company may hire their own contractors, or sub-contract part of the work to other companies. In big contracts (e.g. submarine-building) there is the
prime contractor who is legally responsible for the service and various
subcontractors who actually do the work. A prime contractor generally subcontracts for the same reason that government agencies do: resource agility and specialist skills.
The government gets twitchy about subcontracting -- both in terms of security (do you know who's doing the work?) and risk (do you know what work they're doing?). But it's still commonplace.
Among the work contractors can do are planning and management, analysis and design, execution and quality assurance of government projects and activities. This work can entail just about anything, including gathering and processing information, offering advice, to hands on 'doing'. There are some exceptions: law enforcement doesn't use contractors in 'sworn officer' roles -- i.e. if you're going to shoot a weapon or make an arrest then you can't be a contractor -- but contractors often work on law enforcement computer systems and the like. Likewise, the Australian Defence Force uses lots of contractors in support roles but all personnel in theatre are sworn military personnel. Australia's intelligence agencies use contractors too, but they have expensive and prolonged vetting procedures that mean they can't change contractors often.
Short, semi-specific speculative answers follow:
1) Is this blue/green badge sysem common in gov't agencies, or just a CIA thing?
Federal government agencies find it hard to agree about security arrangements -- too many fiefdoms.
2) Are contractors really being employed to do field-work, developing agencies and planning/executing operations?
Contractors are used wherever there are skill or personnel shortages. All government agencies (not just intel agencies) need information, and they often use contractors to collect it. Australia doesn't use contractors for line-of-fire work in its defence and security forces, but the US does.
3) Could an individual with the right skills/experiance/contacts get such a position? For example, if I'm an ex-agent of somebody and left to form my own PI/Security Consultant buisness (small shop), might I be hired on a green badge, or are only big companies considered?
Small service companies can be hired directly via tender, or are sometimes subcontracted by big service companies or recruitment agencies. If you want to describe this experience in fiction, don't do it the way Chandler does... where the client is fascinated by the PI. Rather, imagine a beef-sale in which live cattle are assessed by price per kilo and herded into trucks.
Contracting is a huge commodity market.
4) Are contractors hired on a task by task basis at all, or only long term?
Both. My company gets long-term engagements (12-24 months), short-term engagements (a few days or weeks), engagements limited by time, or by budget, by product or outcome, engagements where they'll tell us how to do the work and others where they'll tell us just what they want to happen. We get engagements where we can only use specific people, and others where we can use whoever's available. We get part-time and full-time engagements. It's not unusual for some staff to work on two or three jobs at once. I think my record has been five.
In Australian government, the contractor market is 'controlled' by the panels and contacts. On a typical day my phone will ring and it will be either a government agency that knows me, or a recruitment agency that has me on file, asking can we do such-and-such. When that doesn't happen and we have staff looking for work, we scan through lists of tenders (published by government) and job-lists (published by recruitment agencies).
I'm trying to frame a contractor character.
Good contractors know their stuff; they're flexible, agile and resilient. They expect to get treated as second-class citizens and it doesn't faze 'em. They also hit the ground running. Because they get no sick-leave or recreation-leave they tend to work hard for a couple of years then take three or six weeks off. (I have one guy who's worked with me for four years who's touring Europe for a few months.) They'll often work on projects and only take leave when the project's done.
Contractors tend to have extensive social networks with other contractors and permanent staff with whom they've formed close bonds. They often follow each other around from job to job, agency to agency because of the bonds of trust. They often get cynical because they see a lot of bodies getting buried but they're not allowed to talk about it.
Unlike permanent government staff, contractors can be fired at a moment's notice and they know it. (I heard of one government agency that got all its contractors in a room and literally decimated them -- fired every tenth one on the spot). This tends to make them fatalistic but can also give them a reckless courage too. Contractors will sometimes say and do things that permanent officers dare not.
Because contractors don't get much career-development they often get stuck doing one thing until they utterly hate it. A contractor is only as good as his last job, and resumes can get cluttered with a particular skill or role until like actors they get 'type-cast'.
Because contractors have varying income from month to month they either live like rock-stars (blowing whatever they make) or accountants (with meticulous financial planning involving shares and multiple properties and an early retirement). A lot of contractors 'go permanent' once they start a family -- they don't like the exposure to an uncertain income.
Hope that helps.
