DISP Members and Departments now require an Employee Suitability Check before Requesting a National Security Clearance!

The workforce behind the defence force needs to be a trusted workforce. If you are a Security Officer for a Defence Industry Member or a Security Officer in a Department that requires AGSVA security clearances, then you should be aware of the new requirement to ensure that an Employee Suitability Check has been done.

The Employee Suitability Check acknowledgment is done via the Defence Online Services Domain or DOSD or is also known as the Security Officer Dashboard, SODB.

The SO Dashboard has been updated to include a question that asks Security Officers if a employee suitability check (or pre-employment screening checks) has been completed prior to the clearance process they are initiating (Baseline, NV1, NV2 etc).

This action brings the system into line with the PSPF and Australian Standards 4811 2022 Workforce Screening requirements.

Entities must undertake pre-employment screening, including:

verifying a person’s identity using the Document Verification Service
confirming a person’s eligibility to work in Australia
obtaining assurance of a person’s suitability to access Australian Government resources,
including their agreement to comply with the government’s policies, standards, protocols and guidelines that safeguard resources from harm.

DVS? That usually means that the HR department or full service recruiter (or SO) takes (eg) “100 points of ID” from the candidate and checks the ID against the Governments Records for validity and currency. Pretty simple & straightforward. (DVS is now known as https://www.idmatch.gov.au/ … and we can help you in this regard.)

Eligibility? To hold a security clearance, you normally need to be an Australian Citizen. So, having your passport checked, for example, via DVS, meets this requirement.

Suitability? This part gets tricky. (spoiler alert: simply use one of our products) Australian Standards Employment Screening AS4811 (2006) only says you should (not must) do appropriate checks for the position. Appropriate is not defined. A Police check is encouraged. Also worth considering is that the Employer / Sponsor / Security Officer faces a 76% chance of success of getting a person through the process: to being awarded an AGSVA Security Clearance. That’s right: The ANAO Audit of AGSVA stated that 1 in 4 will not be granted the clearance they applied for. Furthermore, IF the case turns complex because vetting officers have discovered a risk that you didn’t know about, the ANAO Audit says that Baselines will take (on average) 114.8 days to resolve, NV1s 640 days to resolve, NV2s 697 days to resolve, PVs 792 days to resolve.

Can you risk waiting that long to get your people working or have them striking out altogether, leaving you high and dry?

If you don’t want to waste your time & effort, then have Cleard Life vet your candidate using official vetting officers. By doing a suitability assessment you will ensure that delays or mishaps or cancelations be reduced.

Simply put:

Increase your ability to get your workforce through an AGSVA clearance and to stop a malicious trusted insider threat
Save time by pre-vetting your people at the Baseline, N1, NV2 level or PV level
Save money by outsourcing specialist niche Security Officer PERSEC Personnel Security functions
Improve the effective management of your AGVA security clearance portfolio
Mitigate the risk of a malicious trusted insider disclosing classified information and putting you out of business
Receive a trusted and vetted workforce
Reduce the burden and frustration of rehiring for security cleared positions
Enhance your security posture, remaining compliant with DISP obligations

So now your Security Officer can easily and confidently sign off and say YES the employee suitability checks (pre-employment screening checks) have been completed prior to initiating the clearance.