IPC Privacy Statement & Privacy Policy

IPC Privacy Statement

Government agencies are required to comply with the Information Protection Principles (IPPs) in the Privacy and Personal Information Act 1998 (PPIP Act). These regulate the collection, storage, use and disclosure of personal information held by government agencies.

Your personal information

Any personal information you provide to us will be used and disclosed for the Information and Privacy Commission's (IPC) purposes, or a directly related purpose, unless you consent to another use or disclosure, in emergencies or as otherwise required or authorised by law. This website does not use cookies to collect personal information.

At this stage, the provision of information to the IPC is voluntary; no law requires you to provide any personal information to the IPC.

Under the PPIP Act, you have the right to access your personal information held by the IPC, without excessive delay or expense. You also have the right to have your personal information corrected in certain circumstances (e.g. if it is inaccurate). Should you wish to access or correct your personal information, please make a written request to the IPC by:

• Post: GPO Box 7011, Sydney NSW 2001
• Email: ipcinfo@ipc.nsw.gov.au

For more information, please read the IPC Privacy Management Plan.

If you have any queries about this privacy statement, please contact the IPC.

IPC Privacy Policy

How the IPC collects personal and health information

We may collect your personal and health information in order to perform our services and functions. This includes if you:

• make an enquiry to the IPC
• make an application to the IPC for an external review
• make an application to an agency for an internal review and the agency notifies us
• make a complaint to the IPC about the conduct of an agency
• provide feedback to the IPC on the laws it administers
• apply to work with the IPC
• ask to be included on our subscriber, mailing or contact lists.

For further information on how we collect your personal and health information, see the IPC's Privacy Management Plan. The IPC’s Privacy Management Plan sets out how the IPC complies with the principles of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act) and the Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (HRIP Act). 

How information is managed by the IPC

We may use, store and disclose your personal and health information to perform our services and functions.

We may use the information that we have collected to:

• conduct or oversee reviews or complaints
• refer a complaint to a relevant authority
• advise the Commissioners, our staff and our stakeholders on recurring trends and issues
• educate our stakeholders about particular issues through published reports.

The IPC securely stores all personal information electronically. 

How to access and revise your information

Under the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (NSW) (PPIP Act) you have the right to access your personal information held by the IPC, without excessive delay or expense.

You also have the right to have your personal information held by us corrected in certain circumstances, for example if it is inaccurate.

To access or amend your personal and/or health information that we hold, simply contact the IPC with your request.

IPC Surveys

Sometimes, the IPC seeks voluntary completion of surveys to help us identify current issues or seek feedback. These surveys may collect different kinds of demographic data. The IPC ensures any proposed survey or other kind of collection complies with the PPIP Act and HRIP Act.

The feedback surveys on our publications facilitated through the IPC website are anonymous and assist the IPC in reviewing and improving its resources.

Cookies

'Cookies' are small pieces of text data that a web server can store on, and later retrieve from, a user's computer. They do not personally identify you, but do identify your browser. Cookies can be either 'persistent' or 'session' based. Persistent cookies are stored on your computer, contain an expiration date, and may be used to track your browsing behaviour upon return to the issuing website. Session cookies are short-lived, are used only during a browsing session, and expire when you shut down your browser.

The IPC website uses persistent cookies.

They record your preferences in relation to your use of the site and provide us with other information about your visit that allows us to recognise your browser if you return to this website in the future. This helps the IPC to understand what parts of the site users find the most useful, what they are accessing the most and helps to improve the effectiveness of the website.

The cookies on this site do not read the information on your hard drive. They do not make your computer perform any actions or make your computer send information to any other computer via the internet. IPC makes no attempt to associate cookies with users' names or identities. Our server cannot find out your name or email address, or anything about your computer, by using cookies.

What information do we collect using cookies?

The IPC uses Google Analytics to provide insights into the behaviour and specifications of users using our website. Google Analytics collects:

• the IP (Internet Protocol) address of the machine which has accessed it
• browser type
• date and time of visit
• movement around the website
• the pages you visit
• downloads from the website
• how you arrived to the website.

How do we use this information?

Google Analytics helps us to identify what parts of the site users find the most useful, what they are accessing the most and helps to improve the effectiveness of the website. Select information, such as total site views for the financial year, are included in our Annual Report to provide insights into public engagement with the website.

We do not and cannot use this information to track individuals. We cannot match individuals to the information provided to Google Analytics.

Is this information stored securely?

Yes. The information is stored securely via Google. You can find their Terms of Service here.

For more information, please contact the IPC.

 

Updated August 2023.