National Police Checking Service Updates

Background

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 the public, and the options available to individuals for downloading and sharing their digital results. 

CVCheck does not directly support requests by your organisation to conduct NCCHC checks on an individual. The CVCheck platform was designed to safeguard individual privacy by giving the individual control over these requests. 

As an organisation, you may only refer your Applicants to CVCheck so that they may initiate a nationally coordinated criminal history check in their own CVCheck account. Only the individual can:

• Create their private account on the CVCheck platform,
• Order an NCCHC (alone or with other checks) within that account,
• Give their consent for the checks to be conducted by CVCheck, and
• Satisfy CVCheck’s identity verification requirements

In this respect, an order placed by an individual in response to your referral is no different to an order they would place to order their own nationally coordinated criminal history check.

You can send a referral to your Applicants by completing what is known as a ‘Managed Order’ in the CVCheck platform where you can provide the contact details of the individual and the check or checks that you are asking them to complete. 

CVCheck will then deal directly with the individual to assist them in ordering those checks. 

Completion of a Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check is a prerequisite for employment in many roles due to regulatory requirements or employment policies.

To satisfy this requirement, job applicants must obtain an NCCHC result certificate and provide this to their employer. In situations where there are significant screening or re-screening volumes, this process can become onerous for HR teams to administer.

Requesting Checks For Employees

The ACIC recognises this common use case and provides a means for organisations to submit requests for an NCCHC on behalf of their employees and receive the result directly from an Accredited Body.

The ACIC must give their approval before an organisation is eligible to submit such requests. Applications for ACIC approval may be made via Kinatico (CVCheck) if your organisation meets the following criteria:

• Checks are only requested for individuals who are current employees or are being considered for employment in your organisation.
• You have a current Australian Business Number (ABN).
• Result certificates will only be used internally and not forwarded to 3rd party organisations, even with the individual’s consent.
• Result certificates will be held onshore and your organisation has a privacy policy that complies with the Privacy Act.

While the ACIC supports and allows requests for nationally coordinated criminal history checks by ACIC Approved Customers on behalf of their Applicants, the CVCheck platform does not support this functionality. 

As detailed above, the CVCheck platform only supports requests from the individual for whom the NCCHC check will be submitted. 

As an ACIC Approved Customer you are permitted to automatically receive the result certificate of an Applicant’s NCCHC request provided the individual has an opportunity to review and dispute any disclosable outcomes before the result is shared. 

CVCheck provides a range of features for individual account holders that support or facilitate secure manual sharing of digital PDF certificates. See this page for further details.

Where a referral for an individual order has been made by an organisation that is an Approved Customer, CVCheck automates this result sharing process as follows:

1. Where a result does not include disclosable outcomes, CVCheck will automatically share the result certificate with the Approved Customer. 
2. Where a result includes disclosable outcomes, CVCheck gives the individual sufficient opportunity to review and dispute the results. If the individual does not dispute the result, it will be shared with the Approved Customer.

If your organisation is not eligible for Approved Customer status or you don’t wish to apply for ACIC approval, NCCHC orders must be placed by the individual whose criminal history is to be checked. You may refer an individual to CVCheck to sign up and place their order. 

When an individual receives their results, the platform provides a variety of methods for them to access and share those results:

1. From their CVCheck dashboard, the individual may provide a secure document link to an organisation that referred them to CVCheck. This link may only be accessed within the CVCheck application – avoiding insecure email transmissions or other intermediaries with unknown infrastructure security or data sovereignty.
2. The individual may create an encrypted link that can be shared directly or embedded in a document such as a resume or job application. 
3. The individual may download a copy of the result certificate and share that certificate as they would share any other pdf document.

Whether they download their PDF certificate to provide to your organisation, or share it securely within the CVCheck platform, the individual must manually access and share their result documents with you. CVCheck may not share results on their behalf with organisations that are not an ACIC Approved Customer. 

Regardless of how your organisation receives a CVCheck result certificate, we always recommend using the secure verification link at the top of the result certificate to view the control certificate online at cvcheck.com. This is your added security against tampering of results.

In summary:

• Only individuals may request an NCCHC via CVCheck. Each individual submits this request in their private account.
• Organisations may refer an individual to CVCheck but not submit a request on their behalf.
• For ACIC Approved Customers, CVCheck will automatically share results from referred individuals pending review of any disclosable outcomes.
• Individuals have a range of options for sharing results. Organisations that are not ACIC Approved may only receive a result that is directly shared by the individual.