Welcome to our fortnightly digest, Privacy News.

Right to Know Day is coming

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is joining forces with the Office of the Ombudsman to mark Right to Know Day in New Zealand on 28 September 2017.

Right to Know Day is dedicated to raising awareness of the legal right New Zealanders have to see the information that organisations hold about them. While the Privacy Act gives people the right to have access to information about themselves, the Official Information Act gives people another kind of right - the right to access government information. Both these laws are important cornerstones of transparency and democracy and both are worth celebrating.

If you’re new to Right to Know Day, it is an event we celebrated last year for the first time in New Zealand. We’ll be marking Right to Know Day with a PrivacyLive Forum and in other ways. Keep reading our newsletters as we reveal more details closer to the time.

2017 iappANZ Summit

The International Association of Privacy Professionals (iappANZ) is inviting the wider privacy community to explore ways to utilise data while protecting individual privacy at the iappANZ 2017 Summit in Sydney on 3 October 2017.

The Summit will provide attendees with practical tools and thought-provoking discussion. There will be presentations from privacy experts, providing a range of viewpoints, practical advice and real-life application. Programme highlights include:

• regulator updates from New Zealand and Australia
• tackling the EU’s GDPR for business; and
• expert panels on making privacy work in organisations.

Registration information is available here.

Artificial intelligence and privacy

Are you interested in artificial intelligence? Two Australian researchers are presenting their views at an Artificial Intelligence and Privacy Forum hosted by the Office of the Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) in Melbourne.

The speakers are Dr Jake Goldenfein of Swinburne University and Dr Toby Walsh of the University of NSW. Dr Goldenfein’s current work examines how automated decision-making affects processes of governance and the law and Dr Walsh is a leading researcher in the field of artificial intelligence at Australia’s Centre of Excellence for ICT Research.

The hour-long forum begins at 3pm NZT on 25 August. New Zealanders will be able to view the Periscope live stream. Our colleagues at CPDP will post the link on the CPDP Twitter feed at the start of the event (you don’t need to have a Twitter account to see the link).

Our latest blog posts

More privacy authorities online than ever   Blair Stewart    17 August 2017 When the Office of the Privacy Commissioner launched its website in 1995, very few government organisations in New Zealand had an online presence. The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Te Ara, tells us that the first New Zealand website was created only in 1992. Read More   Trusted Sharing Consultancy update   Abigail Vink    18 August 2017 In late 2016, the Privacy Commissioner launched the Trusted Sharing Consultancy Service, to offer advice and support to ensure government agencies achieve their aspirations for the coordinated delivery of public services while protecting privacy. Read More   Benchmarking against international privacy peers   Blair Stewart    20 August 2017 It can be useful to compare an organisation’s processes or performance against another one’s competitors in the same industry class. It is especially useful to compare with the ‘best in class’ and set targets to meet or exceed the industry norms. This is sometimes called ‘best practice benchmarking’ and is an important tool to support continuous improvement. Read More

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