About us

This section explains how we collect, use and share personal information when we are engaging with the public and with agencies, including managing our enquiries function, delivering e-learning services, receiving submissions or other public consultations, and otherwise engaging with the community through our website or communications activities (such as events, surveys, newsletters and focus groups).

The personal information we collect about you

Effectively engaging with the public requires us to collect and use some personal information. However, we only collect the personal information you choose to give us (for example, you decide how much detail to provide us as background to an enquiry), and you can opt out of our communications activities, such as receiving our newsletter, at any time.

The information we may collect when you engage with us includes:

your name (if you choose to provide it)
your contact details, including your address, email address or phone number
the content of your privacy enquiry (our enquiries line may record calls for training purposes)
any questions or comments you submit via our blog or live chat function
details of any events you have registered for, including dietary or other specific requirements
- your responses to surveys or focus group discussions (usually these will be captured in a de-identified form)
- your e-learning results
- your submissions on code changes or other public consultations
- information about your use of our website (explained further below).

We collect the following information about your use of our website (though please note we make no efforts to associate this with your identity):

Your IP address
The search terms you used
The pages you accessed on our website and the links you clicked on
The date and time you visited the site
The referring site (if any) through which you clicked to our website
Tour operating system (such as Windows 10)
The type of web browser you use (such as Mozilla Firefox)

See our cookies page for more information about the cookies we use on our website (for example to make our website or e-learning modules function, or to track and analyse website usage):

Our cookie policy

Third party providers

We use some third party providers to manage some of our engagement processes and services, such as newsletters, events registration, live chat and e-learning. Where we do this, any personal information you provide (such as your email address) may also be collected and stored by this provider and you should also check their privacy statements when using those services. We take steps to ensure that any providers we use can protect the personal information they process for us, including by conducting privacy impact assessments.

We use the following third party providers:

MailChimp

We use MailChimp to deliver our privacy newsletters.

Read MailChimp's privacy policy (external link)

Lil Reggie

We use Lil Reggie to collect registrations for our privacy events.

Read Lil Reggie's privacy policy (external link)

Moodle

We host our e-learning modules on Moodle.

Read our Moodle privacy statement

Links to social networking services

We use social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram to communicate with the public about our work. When you communicate with us using these services, the social networking service may collect your personal information for its own purposes.

These services may track your use of our website on those pages where their links are displayed. If you are logged in to those services (including any Google service) while using our site, their tracking will be associated with your profile with them. See our cookies page for more information:

Our cookie policy

These services have their own privacy statements which are independent of ours. They do not have any access to the personal information we hold on our systems.

What we do with your personal information

How we use it

We will only use the personal information you provide to us for the purposes of delivering the services you have requested (such as registering you for an event, responding to a privacy enquiry or processing your submission) or carrying out our lawful functions.

We may use your personal information to:

contact you about your request, query or registration
consider and respond to your enquiry
moderate the content on our live chats and blogs (including contacting you about this)
improve our website and the delivery of our online services
conduct internal statistical analysis and meet our reporting requirements.

When we share it

We do not generally share your personal information with third parties (other than third parties which are providing services to us). However, we may share your personal information in the following circumstances:

If necessary to appropriately respond to your enquiry
If you make a submission to us as part of a public consultation process, such as commenting on a change to a code of practice, we are likely to publish your submission as a standard part of the consultation process
We may make submissions available in response to requests under the Official Information Act, subject to the secrecy provisions in section 206 of the Privacy Act
We may share personal information with the Police or another government agency, if required by law (for example to assist with the investigation of a criminal offence), to report significant misconduct or breach of duty, or where there is a serious threat to health or safety. If our staff are threatened or abused, we may refer this to the Police