Business Continuity Officer and Preparedness Officer

Business Continuity Officer

Business Continuity Officer leads the Service’s business continuity function and coordinates and leads the day-to-day work of junior team members. The role involves setting priorities, providing quality assurance over briefings and response arrangements. In addition, they represent the function to Senior Executives and external partners, exercise significant delegation and independent judgment in order to drive strategic direction.

Preparedness Officer

Preparedness Officer develop, maintain and drive multiyear business continuity and resilience strategy, framework and improvement roadmap whilst embedding business continuity and resilience into enterprise, corporate, workforce, and investment planning, and develop supporting policy, standards, and governance. The role involves leading horizon scanning and threat analysis to anticipate emerging continuity risks and shape forward planning.

Under broad direction, Business Continuity and Preparedness Officers will be responsible for the following key duties:

Business Continuity Officer

Business Continuity Planning

• Develop and maintain comprehensive business continuity plans that align with the Services strategic objectives and risk management framework.
• Identify critical business functions and processes, and determine the resources required to support them during a disruption.
• Conduct Business Impact Analyses (BIAs) to assess the potential effects of an interruption to critical business operations.
• Monitor and review business continuity plans regularly to ensure they remain effective and up-to-date.

Training and Awareness

• Provide training and awareness programs to educate employees about business continuity principles and their roles in the recovery process.
• Conduct exercises and simulations to test the effectiveness of business continuity plans and identify areas for improvement.
• Ensure that all relevant stakeholders are aware of their responsibilities in the event of a disruption.

Incident Response and Recovery

• Support the incident response team during disruptions, ensuring that business continuity plans are activated and followed.
• Coordinate the recovery of critical business functions and processes, and monitor progress until normal operations are restored.
• Document and analyse incidents to identify lessons learned and improve future response and recovery efforts.

Preparedness Officer

Strategic Planning and Development

• Develop, maintain, and drive the multi-year business continuity and resilience strategy, framework, and improvement roadmap.
• Lead horizon scanning, scenario, and threat analysis to anticipate emerging continuity risks and shape forward planning.

Capability and Maturity Uplift

• Design and steward the capability and maturity uplift program across the agency over multiple planning cycles.
• Embed business continuity and resilience into enterprise, corporate, workforce, and investment planning, and develop supporting policy, standards, and governance.

Stakeholder Engagement and Advice

• Prepare business cases and proposals for continuity capability, and advise senior executives and governance committees on maturity, assurance, and long-term readiness.
• Partner with the EL1 Business Continuity Officer to translate strategy into day-to-day readiness and to feed lessons learned back into the roadmap.

Core skills

We encourage applicants with the following skills and attributes to apply:

• Demonstrated ability to build and maintain strong and productive working relationships with key stakeholders.
• Ability to exercise independent judgement, critical thinking and innovative problem-solving in a complex and changing environment.
• Ability to deliver training, guidance and support to areas across the Service.
• Ability to deliver frank and fearless advice and guidance.
• Demonstrated ability in applying legislation, policy and procedural framework to support sound decision making.
• Strong ability to communicate clearly and effectively, both in writing and verbally, specifically when developing policy, submissions and briefings.
• Ability to manage sensitive matters with discretion and confidentiality.

Education and qualification requirements

The following education, qualifications and/or experience are not essential, but will be highly regarded:

• Experience in business continuity planning, crises/disruption response, and/or policy.
• Experience in strategic thinking and development, including a background in threat analysis, or related areas.
• Experience in developing, implementing, and assuring programs of work over multi-year time horizon.

To be eligible for a role you must:

• Be an Australian citizen
• Be assessed as suitable to hold and maintain a TOP SECRET-Privileged Access security clearance

For more information on eligibility please see the Protective Security Policy Framework which is publicly accessible at https://protectivesecurity.gov.au, section 12 provides information on Eligibility and suitability.

The position is Canberra based, with conditions similar to those in the Australian Public service including superannuation.

ASIS values workplace diversity and is committed to providing a supportive, inclusive and respective work environment. We encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Women, people with disabilities, people that identify as LGBTIQ+ and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

All requests for reasonable adjustments will be considered and managed in consultation with you. We will continue to ask you if you require reasonable adjustments at each stage of the process. If you are successful in gaining employment, reasonable adjustments can also be made available to you in performing your role.

Please note: ASIS does not provide feedback to unsuccessful applicants

ASIS is Australia’s overseas secret intelligence collection agency. Its mission is to protect and promote Australia’s vital interests through the provision of intelligence services as directed by the Government. Its work can involve collecting intelligence relating to national security, international relations and economic issues. It also contributes to Australia’s coordinated national efforts against terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and trans-national issues such as people smuggling.