Ms Sarah Nicolson Australian Border ForceCo-Chair of the WCO-UPU Contact Committee

Mrs Nicolson is the Commander of the Australian Border Operations Centre (ABOC) in the Australian Border Force (ABF) and was appointed to that position in November 2020.

As the national watchfloor for the ABF, the ABOC is a centralised and unified operations centre, operating 24/7 and responsible for providing a single source of truth on ABF operations. The ABOC ensures national consistency of the ABF’s activities, maintains situational awareness of events and activities involving the ABF, as well as reporting on operational activity. The ABOC also provides advice to industry about whether passengers travelling to Australia via air or sea, meet Australia’s border entry requirements.

In this role, Mrs Nicolson designed and implemented the ABF’s crisis response framework to ensure that the ABF can respond to unplanned events and crisis, as well as undertake planned operational activity.

In April 2019 Mrs Nicolson was appointed as the Commander of the newly created Strategic Coordination Branch, established the operational priorities for the ABF and implemented the operational risk management framework. She also oversaw the ABF’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

From 2018-2019 Mrs Nicolson was the Deputy Commander Joint Agency Task Force Operation Sovereign Borders with responsibility for implementing the Australian Government’s response to maritime people smuggling.

In 2022, Mrs Nicolson was appointed as the Co-Chair of the World Customs Organization – Universal Postal Union Contact Committee.

Mrs Nicolson joined the Australian Customs Service in September 2005 and has over 17 years’ experience in implementing passenger processing and targeting systems, responding to international events/crisis and establishing prioritisation and reporting systems.