Version 2.1, July 2018
The Privacy Act 1988 requires entities bound by the Australian Privacy Principles to have a privacy policy. This privacy policy outlines the personal information handling practices of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). OAIC employees and prospective employees should also refer to our Human resources privacy policy. The OAIC also has a summary privacy policy.
This policy is written in simple language. The specific legal obligations of the OAIC when collecting and handling your personal information are outlined in the Privacy Act 1988 and in particular in the Australian Privacy Principles found in that Act. We will update this privacy policy when our information handling practices change. Updates will be publicised on our website and through our email lists.
We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information to carry out functions or activities under the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 (AIC Act), the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) and the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) and other legislation that confer powers or functions on theOAIC including the My Health Records Act 2012 (My Health Records Act).
These functions and activities include:
Handling privacy and freedom of information (FOI) complaints and FOI reviews
Taking other regulatory action under the Privacy and FOI Act
Providing advice on privacy, FOI, and information policy issues
Consulting with stakeholders, for example, on privacy or FOI guidance
Maintaining registers, such as organisations that have opted-in to Privacy Act coverage
Responding to access to information requests
Communicating with the public, stakeholders and the media including through websites and social media
Assessing suitable candidates for career opportunities within the OAIC.
At all times we try to only collect the information we need for the particular function or activity we are carrying out.
The main way we collect personal information about you is when you give it to us. For example, we collect personal information such as contact details and complaint, review, request, data breach notification or report details when you:
Contact us to ask for information (but only if we need it)
Make a complaint about a privacy breach to us
Make a complaint about the way an agency has handled an FOI request or seek a review of an FOI decision
Ask for access to information the OAIC holds about you or other information about the OAIC’s operation
Notify the OAIC about a data breach
Report a matter for investigation
Apply for a job vacancy at the OAIC.
We may also collect information from you when we investigate or review a privacy or FOI matter. If we open a file about your matter, it will often include our opinion on your matter.
We may also collect contact details and some other personal information if you are on our committees or participating in a meeting or consultation with us.
Sometimes we may need to collect sensitive information about you, for example, to handle a complaint. This might include information about your health, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, association memberships, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, criminal history, genetic or biometric information.
In the course of handling and resolving a complaint, data breach notification, review or an investigation, we may collect personal information (including sensitive information) about you indirectly from publicly available sources or from third parties such as:
Your authorised representative, if you have one
Applicants, complainants, respondents to a complaint, investigation, application or data breach notification or the third parties’ employees and witnesses.
We also collect personal information from publicly available sources to enable us to contact stakeholders who may be interested in our work or in participating in our consultations.
Where possible, we will allow you to interact with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. For example, if you contact our Enquiries line with a general question we will not ask for your name unless we need it to adequately handle your question.
However, for most of our functions and activities we usually need your name and contact information and enough information about the particular matter to enable us to fairly and efficiently handle your inquiry, request, complaint or application, or to act on your report.
Energy Smart Media collects your details via all related websites and third party networks. At each occasion you have opted in to receive more information about the work of Energy Smart Media
We use Google Analytics and Piwik to collect data about your interaction with our website. We host Piwik ourselves, while Google Analytics is hosted by a third party. The sole purpose of collecting your data in this way is to improve your experience when using our site. The types of data we collect with these tools include:
Your device’s IP address (collected and stored in an anonymized format)
Device screen size
Device type, operating system and browser information
Geographic location (country only)
Referring domain and out link if applicable
Search terms and pages visited
Date and time when website pages were accessed
Cookies are small data files transferred onto computers or devices by websites for record-keeping purposes and to enhance functionality on the website.
Our website generally sets the following cookies:
_ga: Google Analytics cookie
_pk_id.3.7ced and _pk_ses.3.7ced: Piwik cookies
bb2_screener_: security cookie (anti-spam)
Most browsers allow you to choose whether to accept cookies or not. If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, please set your browser preferences to reject all cookies before accessing our website.
We will collect information that you provide to us when signing up to mailing lists and registering for our events, or when submitting feedback on your experience with our website.
We use Vision6 to manage our mailing lists and event registration. When subscribing to one of our mailing lists, you will be asked to give your express consent that Vision6 may use your data for analytics purposes. Analytics are performed when you click on links in the email, or when you download the images in the email. They include which emails you open, which links you click, your mail client (eg ‘Outlook 2016’ or ‘iPhone’), if your action occurred on ‘mobile’ or ‘desktop’, and the country geolocation of your IP address (the IP address itself is not stored).
We also use TryBooking to manage event registrations. When registering for an event, you may be required to give TryBooking personal information including your name, address, telephone number and email address. You may also be required to provide financial information, including credit card number and expiration date, if you make a payment for an event. TryBooking may share with us some of your personal information, including information about whether a particular registered individual has made payment, but we do not receive your financial information.
We also utilise the services of Hotjar to collect voluntary feedback on your experience with our website.
We use social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to communicate with the public about our work. When you communicate with us using these services we may collect your personal information, but we only use it to help us to communicate with you and the public. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies. You can access the privacy policies for Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (a Google company) on their websites.
Energy Smart Media uses Facebook Lead Forms to enable you to, for example, lodge an sales enquiry, application, data breach notification, enquiry or apply for a job.
After we download a submitted form, it is deleted from our server. Saved forms that have not been submitted within the timeframe specified on the form will also be deleted from the server. We will not access or download your saved forms before you submit them unless you consent or unless there is a technical issue that requires investigation.
Third Parties cannot view your information except in very limited circumstances when there is a technical issue that requires investigation. In these circumstances Third Parties must seek our permission to do so.
Common situations in which we disclose information are detailed below.
If you make a privacy or FOI complaint, or apply for an FOI review, we will usually give a copy of the complaint or application to the respondent and, where relevant, affected third parties.
If a complainant or applicant requests that only limited information is disclosed to the respondent, we may not have enough information to be able to fairly proceed with the matter. The respondent must have sufficient information to respond to the matter in a meaningful way.
If you notify Energy Smart Media about a data breach we will not disclose personal information about you unless you agree, or would reasonably expect us to. If the breach relates to the My Health Records Act, we may disclose your personal information to the My Health Records System Operator under s 73A of that Act.
We may disclose personal information to another review body if a complainant, applicant or respondent seeks an external review of Energy Smart Media decision or makes a complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
Disclosure to service providers
Energy Smart Media uses a number of service providers to whom we disclose personal information. These include providers that host our website servers, manage our IT and manage our human resource information.
To protect the personal information we disclose we:
Enter into a contract or MOU which requires the service provider to only use or disclose the information for the purposes of the contract or MOU
Include special privacy requirements in the contract or MOU, where necessary.
We only disclose your sensitive information for the purposes for which you gave it to us or for directly related purposes you would reasonably expect or if you agree, for example, to handle a complaint.
We may disclose information that relates to complaints or investigations to other Australian or international regulators, or to external dispute resolution (EDR) schemes. We will generally only disclose your personal information to other regulators or EDR schemes if you agree and where the information will assist the OAIC or the other regulator or EDR scheme investigate a matter.
Generally, we only disclose personal information overseas so that we can properly handle the complaint or application. For example, if:
The complainant or respondent to a complaint is based overseas
An Australian-based respondent is a related body corporate to an overseas company
You have complained to an overseas entity and the OAIC about the same or a related matter.
Web traffic information is disclosed to Google Analytics when you visit our websites. Google stores information across multiple countries.
When you communicate with us through a social network service such as Facebook or Twitter, the social network provider and its partners may collect and hold your personal information overseas.
To ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate, up-to-date and complete we:
Record information in a consistent format
Where necessary, confirm the accuracy of information we collect from a third party or a public source
Promptly add updated or new personal information to existing records
Regularly audit our contact lists to check their accuracy.
We also review the quality of personal information before we use or disclose it.
We take steps to protect the security of the personal information we hold from both internal and external threats by:
Regularly assessing the risk of misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure of that information
Taking measures to address those risks, for example, we keep a record (audit trail) of when someone has added, changed or deleted personal information held in our electronic databases and regularly check that staff only access those records when they need to
Conducting regular internal and external audits to assess whether we have adequately complied with or implemented these measures.
For further information on the way we manage security risks in relation to personal information we hold see our supplementary material on information technology security practices, below.
We destroy personal information in a secure manner when we no longer need it. For example, we generally destroy complaint records after two years, in accordance with the Energy Smart Media destroyal policy.
Under the Privacy Act (Australian Privacy Principles 12 and 13) you have the right to ask for access to personal information that we hold about you, and ask that we correct that personal information. You can ask for access or correction by contacting us and we must respond within 30 days. If you ask, we must give you access to your personal information, and take reasonable steps to correct it if we consider it is incorrect, unless there is a law that allows or requires us not to.
We will ask you to verify your identity before we give you access to your information or correct it, and we will try to make the process as simple as possible. If we refuse to give you access to, or correct, your personal information, we must notify you in writing setting out the reasons.
If we make a correction and we have disclosed the incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction. We must do so unless there is a valid reason not to.
If we refuse to correct your personal information, you can ask us to associate with it (for example, attach or link) a statement that you believe the information is incorrect and why.
You also have the right under the FOI Act to request access to documents that we hold and ask for information that we hold about you to be changed or annotated if it is incomplete, incorrect, out-of- date or misleading.
If you wish to complain to us about how we have handled your personal information you should complain in writing. If you need help lodging a complaint, you can contact us.
If we receive a complaint from you about how we have handled your personal information we will determine what (if any) action we should take to resolve the complaint.
If we decide that a complaint should be investigated further, the complaint will usually be handled by a more senior officer than the officer whose actions you are complaining about.
We will tell you promptly that we have received your complaint and then respond to the complaint within 30 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response you may ask for a review by a more senior officer within the OAIC (if that has not already happened) or you can complain to the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
Version 2.1, July 2018
The Privacy Act 1988 requires entities bound by the Australian Privacy Principles to have a privacy policy. This privacy policy outlines the personal information handling practices of the Energy Smart Media. Energy Smart Media and its employees and prospective employees should also refer to our Human resources privacy policy.
This policy is written in simple language. The specific legal obligations of the Energy Smart Media when collecting and handling your personal information are outlined in the Privacy Act 1988 and in particular in the Australian Privacy Principles found in that Act. We will update this privacy policy when our information handling practices change. Updates will be published on our website and through our email lists.