Classification and Clearance

Classification labels a record by how sensitive it is. Clearance is what a user must hold to open a record at that level. Together they turn "please be careful with this one" into something the system enforces.

Where to find it

These features have no dedicated Architect Panel section of their own. They are configured through their datastores, opened from All Datastores, and most of what a caseworker sees appears on the record itself rather than on an admin screen.

Setting up levels

Keep the ladder short. Two or three levels that people understand beat six nobody can distinguish — and a classification scheme that requires a decision nobody is confident making produces records classified by guess.

Match the levels to language your organisation already uses. If your information governance policy names its tiers, use those names rather than inventing parallel ones.

Applying a classification

Classify at creation where the referral route tells you it is warranted, and allow it to be raised later. Raising a classification should be easy and lowering it should not — reducing sensitivity is a decision with consequences and deserves a deliberate step.

Clearance

Clearance is held against the user. A user without the matching clearance does not see the record in a list, not merely in a form — a case that appears in search results with its content hidden still leaks that the case exists, which for safeguarding is itself disclosure.

A caution

Classification is only as good as the discipline applying it. Audit a sample periodically: unclassified records that should have been classified are the common failure, and they are invisible unless somebody looks.