Guidance for company security officers related to personnel security screening justifications
Communiqué: December 6, 2021
On October 4, 2021, Public Services and Procurement Canada’s (PSPC) Contract Security Program implemented changes to the eligibility criteria for personnel security screenings. These changes were communicated to all company security officers (CSO) and alternate company security officers (ACSO) in our September 1, 2021 communiqué.
As part of these changes, CSOs and ACSOs are now required to justify the security requirement in their personnel screening requests using a list of 12 acceptable scenarios and corresponding justifications.
To further support CSOs and ACSOs in meeting this new requirement, PSPCs Contract Security Program has developed additional guidance on how to properly complete section A of the Personnel screening, consent and authorization form (TBS/SCT 330-23E).
Included in this guidance are instructions on how to prevent the most common errors and an updated scenario list with examples of acceptable justifications for each of the 12 scenarios.
Please take the time to review the scenarios accepted as justification to process personnel security screening requests before submitting your next personnel security screening request. Following this guidance will help ensure your requests are processed in a timely and efficient fashion, and prevent eligible requests from being closed-out because they are incomplete.
Ineligible requests
If section A of the TBS/SCT 330-23E form is missing mandatory information, or if the security requirement cannot be validated, PSPCs Contract Security Program will close-out the personnel security screening request for non-compliance. When closing the request, the program will notify the CSO or ACSO by email of the reason for the close-out.
More information
PSPCs Contract Security Program has updated the phase 1 of changes to the security screening process to reflect this additional guidance.
To obtain additional guidance or for more information on the closure of a particular request, please contact the Contract Security Program's client service centre.