Roland Stewart
fore granting work clearance. This process should be closely scrutinized during the administrative inspection. The owner/user should also ensure before a person is hired for a position that the person is fully trained for that prospective job (where applicable) before granting any security clearances for that person. If a business uses a background investigation or security clearance process, scrutinize the process carefully to ensure it doesn’t contain any gray, unknown, or unwritten policy areas. If a business doesn’t use this process, I encourage the owner/user to consider it immediately. If the background investigations process is weak, incomplete, or unclear, it leaves room for misuse, abuse, misinterpretation, and possible compromise of the process, or worse yet, the business as a whole. The background investigation process should have zero tolerance when it comes to uncertainties and mistakes. Zero tolerance is necessary to ensure personnel working within a business or an organization is trustworthy, capable, and operationally safe. The Department of Homeland Security has put in place processes that allow enrolled employers to confirm the legal status of all new hires. This system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in partnership with the Social Security Administration is considered an electronic employment eligibility verification system. Even though a system such as this exists, the owner/user is highly encouraged to conduct additional, thorough in-house, hands-on background investigations, visa checks, and prior training verification for all personnel. Pay special attention to personnel in flight and preflight schools and public and private ground, water, and air transportation systems, including but not limited to owners and users, renters, drivers, assistants, attendants, security personnel, and messengers. Positions designated as high risk and positions posing even a minimal possible threat to our national security should go through a thorough and meticulous vetting and verification process. I’m not saying make it impossible for people to
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