This information applies to you if:
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission operates the National Police Checking Service.
This service is made available to the public through ACIC’s partnership with accredited bodies – organisations that are authorised to provide the Service to members of the public and other organisations.
Kinatico Ltd (formerly CVCheck Ltd) is registered as an accredited body with the ACIC. Kinatico is the owner of the CVCheck online screening service you use to order background checks.
This information describes recent changes to the National Police Checking Service (NPCS), how CVCheck engages with the NPCS to provide results to individual members of the public, and the options available to individuals for downloading and sharing their digital results.
The following changes take effect from 1st Jan 2025.
From 1st January 2025, the check previously referred to broadly as a National Police Check will be named Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check or NCCHC.
Volunteer National Police Checks are correctly known as a Volunteer Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check or VNCCHC.
This is a correction in name only. As before, these checks will return disclosable outcomes for an individual from all police jurisdictions in Australia.
The results of Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Checks (NCCHC) and Volunteer Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Checks (VNCCHC) will be available to be viewed or for downloaded from the CVCheck platform for three months from the date of issue.
This is a change from the previous availability of 12 months from the date of issue.
Why has result availability changed?
The ACIC have made this change to more clearly reflect the fact that NCCHC and VNCCHC results are accurate only as at the date of issue. By reducing the time that results are available to be viewed or downloaded, there is less likelihood that an outdated result document might be viewed and relied on as part of a hiring decision.
Both Individuals and the organisation to which their results have been shared may download a copy of a PDF result certificate. If your organisation will download and retain a copy of a result certificate in either digital or printed form, you should understand your obligations to protect the personal information of the individual under the Privacy Act.
When are results deleted by CVCheck?
CVCheck is obliged by ACIC to retain NCCHC and VNCCHC results for 12 months from the issue date. The purpose of the internal retention period is to ensure that results are available for CVCheck or ACIC audit purposes.
CVCheck will be unable to extract or re-share results with Individuals or organisations after the three-month availability timeframe, whether they have been deleted or not.
The ACIC has enhanced the requirements for collecting consent from an Applicant before processing a Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check.
CVCheck ensures that consent is obtained directly from the Applicant prior to the commencement of an NCCHC, including collection of the Applicant’s signature.
As an Accredited Body, CVCheck is authorised to deal directly with members of the public who wish to request their own nationally coordinated criminal history check.
Kinatico provides this service via the CVCheck online screening and verification platform.
Individuals may order an NCCHC check, or any other verification check they require, by:
CVCheck will process the request and deliver results to the individual account as a digital PDF certificate.
Individuals may download check results by logging into their account and downloading the PDF certificate. Since this is a standard PDF document, the result may be shared in a similar fashion to any other PDF document. For example, by distributing on a digital storage device such as USB drive, via a cloud-based file sharing platform, or via email.
As a security feature, any recipient of any copy of a result certificate (digital or in hard copy) can verify the accuracy of the result by using the unique secure link in their web browser. This link will take the recipient to an online copy of the original result certificate within the CVCheck platform
CVCheck is certified to ISO 27001 and provides individual account holders with secure storage of their result certificates, including nationally coordinated criminal history checks (NCCHC).
For individual account holders, there are significant privacy and security benefits to storing and retaining their result certificates within the secure CVCheck environment rather than downloading and storing such sensitive documents on personal devices which can be lost, stolen, disrupted, damaged, or hacked.
Additionally, traditional means of sharing PDF files such as attaching to an email involve routing these sensitive documents across unsecured networks, servers, and routers which present a risk of interception by malicious third parties.
To protect our individual customers, CVCheck provides a means of sharing access to secure results via a temporary public link or via a securely shared record to a user within the CVCheck platform.
Individuals generally request a nationally coordinated criminal history check so that they can provide the result to an entity for employment, licensing, or registration purposes.
CVCheck facilitates this common use case in two ways:
Importantly, such a referral does not create or initiate a request for an NCCHC or any other check.
How does the referral work?
To refer an individual to CVCheck, an organisation must have a CVCheck account in which to receive securely shared documents. Then, simply provide the contact details of the individual to CVCheck.
We will contact the individual and invite them to independently create a private account and submit their request for any checks required. In the case of a nationally coordinated criminal history check, CVCheck will submit a request to the ACIC on the individual’s behalf.
Results of any requested checks will be returned to the individual as the owner of the result and are not shared with anyone.
Secure Sharing
Once a result is returned to the Applicant, CVCheck makes it simple for the individual to share their result with one or more third parties. As with any personally owned document, sharing of check results (including NCCHC result certificates) is under the control of, and at the discretion of, the individual who owns the results.
An individual may share a result by any of the following methods: