The life of an application
Each candidate has a file and follows a clear path: received, investigations under way, under the hoodwink, ballot, then admitted, rejected or withdrawn. The officers follow each file; the investigation reports, for their part, stay compartmentalised.
Compartmentalised investigations
The Worshipful Master appoints the investigating brethren, usually three. Each receives a mission letter and a guide, and finds “My investigations to submit” on his home page. The e-mail that notifies him does not name the candidate.
The report is written freely or under headings, ends with an opinion — favourable, reserved or unfavourable — and is frozen once submitted. Compartmentalisation is enforced by the server: each investigator sees only his own report; only the Worshipful Master and the administrators see them all, and other officers follow only the progress of the investigations.
Consent and screening
The candidate's consent to the processing of his data is collected and recorded in his file. With that consent, and only with it, a check can be run against official sanctions and politically exposed persons lists by a specialist service; the results are shown to the officers as they are.
Sodalis computes no score, does not trawl social networks or the candidate's online life, and consults no criminal record: the decision belongs to the brethren.
The sealed file
At the final decision — admission, rejection or withdrawal — each investigation is sealed, irreversibly: the investigator is detached from it and no new investigation can be assigned. If the B11 form has been signed, the reports are kept without their author's name; otherwise they are erased, and only the opinion and the dates remain.
The lodge's investigation template — mission letter, guide, report outline — can be edited for future candidates.