False attendance records catch up with ADF Reservist

Relevant impacts: Financial impact and business impact.

Suspicions raised by a co-worker about the accuracy of an APS Executive Level employee’s Australian Defence Force (ADF) Reserve attendance led to their attendance records being reviewed.

The review indicated the employee had recorded their employment and ADF Reserve attendance occurring at the same time.

The investigation reconstructed the employee’s attendance patterns over several years, based on access data (including security and ICT access logs) and found that the ADF Reserve attendance was likely to have occurred as claimed but the attendance as an APS employee during the concurrent period was not possible.

The employee was found to have breached several employment policies as well as the APS Code of Conduct and was terminated from the ADF Reserves.

The Department of Defence is recovering salary payments to which the employee was not entitled.