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If you’re an FOI officer, you’re probably generally aware that you have a duty under section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) (FOI Act) to help applicants make a valid request. And that includes consulting with them…

Have you ever found yourself hesitating just before sending a work email about an individual to another organisation, concerned that you might be breaching that individual’s privacy? Are you confused about if, and when, you need to seek an individual’s…

Embedding a culture of respect for privacy and personal information across an organisation starts with good privacy governance, which is the basis for ensuring organisations have robust and effective privacy management practices. This is essential for building the public’s trust…

“We forgot to BCC the email addresses” “We sent an email to the wrong recipient and the email had attachments with the personal information of another individual”. “An employee’s bag was stolen and there were client files in the bag”….

Privacy Awareness Week, or ‘PAW’ as we here at the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC) fondly call it, is an initiative started by the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities in 2006 to promote and raise awareness of privacy within…

This blog post is written by Sven Bluemmel, Information Commissioner Privacy Awareness Week Privacy Awareness Week, or PAW, began as an initiative of the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities back in 2006.  PAW aims to promote the importance of privacy and…

On 10 April 2019, OVIC held the second meeting of the Victorian Privacy Network. Once again, we were joined by a number of guest speakers who gave interesting and insightful presentations on a wide range of topics. Information Commissioner Sven…

Privacy impact assessments (PIAs) are an important tool for all Victorian public sector organisations – they help to assess the privacy impacts of new projects, processes, systems and programs, identify potential privacy risks, and develop mitigation strategies to address those…

The technology of the modern world is developing exponentially every year, and with it comes the ability to conduct health research of unprecedented scale and scope. The kind of data we collect, how we collect it, how we store it…

A global commitment to access to public information – the ICIC You may have heard about the International Conference of Information Commissioners (ICIC) last month as it adopted the Johannesburg Charter (Charter) at its recent conference in (you guessed it)…