Under the spotlight – it’s Privacy Awareness Week

The theme for privacy awareness week is “Don’t be in the dark on privacy”.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is actively encouraging people to know and exercise their right to privacy; to take care when they provide their personal information; and to ask questions about how organisations are looking after that information. We all know that the protection of privacy is becoming a critical operational risk for players in the data business, like Facebook and Google.

This growing awareness also means that individuals want to know that they can trust organisations collecting their data to do the right thing.

Good privacy management is not just about policies and procedures - it happens best when the individuals within organisations acknowledge that they are data custodians and have a responsibility to adopt good privacy practices as a part of effective information management.

The University takes privacy and data security very seriously, recognising that good information management enables successful learning, teaching, research and innovation. It expects all personnel dealing with data to be aware of the privacy principles that apply to the data we collect and to respect the privacy rights of individuals by ensuring that personal and sensitive information is held securely within an authorised system.

How safe are your systems and practices?

Personal information is collected, used and stored for a range of purposes across the University. In each case, it’s important to be clear about how and why we collect personal information, and how we keep that information safe from unauthorised access.

The University has a Privacy Impact Checklist to help you assess the integrity of data collection activities and management. It also provides a helpful assessment framework for the planning stages of new projects which involve the collection of personal information.

Further information

For more information about how privacy and data security is managed within the University, refer to:

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