YourSay Privacy Statement
This site is owned and operated by the ACT Government using software licensed from Harvest Digital Planning (Harvest). For details on how the ACT Government collects and protects your personal information, refer to their Privacy Policy below. For details of how Harvest may access personal information, please refer to Harvest’s Privacy Policy.
The online ‘YourSay’ service is provided using a digital platform operated by the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate (CMTEDD).
The ACT Government respects the rights and privacy of all individuals and is committed to complying with the Information Privacy Act 2014 and the Territory Privacy Principles and protecting the personal information we hold.
This Privacy Policy describes how the ACT Government collects and uses your personal information collected through the ‘YourSay’ website. Defined terms appear in bold and definitions appear at the end of the Statement.
Why does the ACT Government collect personal information, and how is it used?
CMTEDD (via Harvest which is contracted service provider of CMTEDD) collects your personal information as part of providing the Territory’s online community engagement services, informing you about these services, complying with contractual and other legal obligations, responding to your enquiries and administering its community engagement technology.
CMTEDD may use your personal information for these purposes, any other purpose listed on a collection statement at the point of collection, or in any other way made clear at the time of collecting the personal information. In cases where feedback is received about an engagement opportunity that is subject to another Territory agency's Terms and Conditions, or arrangements for handling personal information, your feedback may be provided to the agency concerned.
In your feedback to the ACT Government, you should not provide personal information, including personal health information (for example, any information (medical or otherwise) about a person’s health, mental status, treatments received etc) about any other person (a third person).
What information do we collect about you?
User feedback
We collect the comments, votes, posts and selections you contribute when interacting with the feedback mechanisms provided through 'YourSay', which include:
- forums
- interactive maps
- surveys
- quick polls
This information is analysed and interpreted by CMTEDD staff, staff of other ACT Government agencies and in some circumstances, third party contractors who have been engaged to assist in the analysis of the data collected, to inform the creation of better projects, plans and policies.
Can you remain anonymous or withhold personal information?
Yes. You can access and participate in select ‘YourSay’ engagements anonymously, without disclosing any personal information. Some identified studies may require you to register and establish an account in order to participate. Users may choose to adopt a pseudonym for these studies.
Registered Users
When you register for a ‘YourSay’ account or sign-in to your existing account, the information we collect includes:
- username (this may be published on the site alongside any public comments you make)
- email address (this will not be made public)
- age group
- gender
- the region in which you live
- sign-up date
- last login date
- last contribution
- number of contributions
For engagements where you do not register for a ‘YourSay’ account, we may seek to collect from you:
- username (this is published on the site alongside any public comments you make)
- email address (this will not be made public)
- age group
- gender
- postcode
Demographic details are requested in order to help us determine the degree to which views of participants are representative of a diverse cross-section of the community.
By providing an email address you help us protect the integrity of the discussion from individuals and groups who may attempt to unduly influence the outcomes of the consultation process anonymously. For example, we check the database to ensure each user has a single email account on the site. We also frequently review the site for trolls and spammers.
If you are registered and signed-in to your user account, the contributions and feedback you provide may be linked with your username and any demographic details you have recorded in your account.
Email notifications
If you subscribe to receive notifications about upcoming consultations and other engagement activities , the email address you provide will be used by CMTEDD to send you information and updates about new opportunities to have your say. You can unsubscribe from these updates notifications at any time.
If you subscribe to receive updates about a specific engagement project, for example by using the ‘Follow’ function, the email address you provide will be used to send you information and updates about that engagement. You can unsubscribe from these notifications at any time.
Cookies
Cookies are used on our site, but they do not collect any personal information. For the most part they are sessional and just contain system-generated values to identify the user's session for statistical and system administration purposes only.
For more information on Cookies and Google Analytics, please refer to the CMTEDD Privacy Policy.
Site visit data
The site’s web-server automatically collects the following de-identified data for statistical and system administration purposes only:
- your server (or IP) address
- the day and time you visited the site
- the pages you visited on our site
- the address of the last page you visited
- the operating system you are using
- rough geographic location (down to the city)
- language (e.g. American English)
- internet service provider (e.g. Telstra)
- the type of browser and version you are using.
To the extent that this data could make you identifiable, CMTEDD and Harvest will not attempt to identify individuals from the records the server automatically generates unless necessary to investigate a breach of law or regulation.
Who has access to information that is collected from you?
When you sign up for and use the ‘YourSay’ service you provide two types of information:
- information that is publicly available; and
- information that is available to CMTEDD and Harvest in its capacity as CMTEDD’s contracted service provider (and its agents and sub-contractors who may be based overseas, namely, in the Philippines) and which may be made available by CMTEDD to other entities as set out in this privacy notice.
Publicly available information
Publicly available information is limited to your username and any comments you leave under that username in the forums or other feedback tools published to ‘YourSay’.
You can use your first name or an anonymous username if you do not want your full name attached to forum and guestbook comments, stories or questions.
Feedback (including overall results of polls and surveys, and in some instances, quotes from forums and surveys) may be published in publicly available reports at the end of the consultation period.
Please note that the ACT Government is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2016. The Freedom of Information Act 2016 provides a general right of access to government information. This includes documents created by the government, documents held by contracted service providers relating to the performance of government contracts and documents supplied to government by external organisations or individuals.
Information available to CMTEDD and Harvest (and which CMTEDD may disclose to other entities as set out in this privacy notice) includes:
- all information from the sign-up form
- comments, questions, stories, guestbook posts
- survey responses, quick poll responses, map pins
- general site activity such as document downloads, videos viewed, images viewed
- information on the technology used to access the site.
Information available to third party contractors may include but is not limited to:
- comments, questions, stories, guestbook posts
- survey responses, quick poll responses, map pins
- de-identified data for reporting purposes.
Disclosure of personal information
CMTEDD will take all reasonable measures to prevent unauthorised access to, or disclosure of, your personal information.
Organisations to which personal information is disclosed include other ACT Government directorates, the ACT Government’s contracted Service Providers, such as Harvest and their subcontractors or agents who may be based in Australia or overseas (namely in the Philippines), who perform various services for and on behalf of the ACT Government. These contractors have agreed to be bound by the provisions of the Information Privacy Act 2014.
We will also take all necessary measures to ensure that your personal information is not disclosed to other individuals, institutions and authorities except in accordance with the Information Privacy Act 2014, such as if required or authorised by law or explicitly permitted by you. Some examples of when information may be provided to another person without your consent include in the event of an investigation into suspected unlawful or improper activity or when a law enforcement agency or government agency may exercise its legal authority to inspect the web server's records (e.g. in relation to hacking or abusive messages).
Access and correction
You may seek corrections to your personal information that CMTEDD has collected if you believe it is inaccurate, out-of–date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading. CMTEDD is required to take reasonable steps to correct personal information to ensure that, having regard to the purpose for which it is held, the information is not inaccurate, out-of–date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
You may also seek access to your personal information that CMTEDD holds.
More information about seeking access to, and correction of, your personal information held by CMTEDD can be found in the CMTEDD Information Privacy Policy.
Links
The ‘YourSay’ Privacy Statement does not apply to third party websites or digital services which may be linked to from content published to 'YourSay'. We recommend you read the privacy statement of the relevant service when you access these sites.
Third Party Providers
We sometimes use third party providers for some web-based services, with information stored in the United States and Europe. These include Campaign Monitor and Mail Chimp for email subscriptions, Survey Monkey and Typeform for online surveys, Social Pinpoint for interactive maps, Viostream for live streaming question and answers, MindHive for running a collaborative forum and EventBrite for registration at events. Please follow the hyperlinks for details on their privacy policies.
Campaign Monitor Privacy
CMTEDD uses Campaign Monitor to provide electronic newsletters to subscribers.
In distributing newsletters, CMTEDD, via Campaign Monitor, will collect personal information from you, including email addresses you have provided to CMTEDD for the purpose of receiving electronic newsletters, all information relating to those email addresses, and in some cases your name. Campaign Monitor also uses cookies, web beacons and Flash player codes to collect information for use by CMTEDD about:
- when you access CMTEDD or other ACT Government electronic newsletters
- your browser type and version
- your operating system and other similar information
- your IP address and its geolocation
- clicks on email links and whether the email is forwarded.
CMTEDD holds the Campaign Monitor account and personal information collected through that account can be accessed by other agencies of the ACT Government for the purposes of sending electronic newsletters.
For additional detail about the information Campaign Monitor will collect, please refer to Campaign Monitor’s Privacy Policy and Campaign Monitor’s Terms of Use.
Campaign Monitor will use the information collected from you for the purpose of providing the online service which enables CMTEDD and other agencies of the ACT Government to create, send and manage electronic newsletters. Campaign Monitor will also use this information to measure the performance of CMTEDD and other ACT Government email campaigns.
Campaign Monitor may transfer this information to its contractors or other third parties who process the information on Campaign Monitor’s behalf, or where otherwise required to do so by law.
Campaign Monitor is based in the United States of America (USA) and is subject to the laws of the USA. Your information (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Campaign Monitor on servers located outside Australia.
You can unsubscribe from the 'YourSay' electronic newsletter at any time by selecting the 'unsubscribe’ option in every email sent to you by Campaign Monitor.
More information about how CMTEDD manages the personal information it collects can be found at http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/legal/privacy.
If you have any questions relating to the use of your personal data please contact askus@yoursay.act.gov.au.
Whole of Government Engagement Customer Relationship Management System
If you provide your personal information during an engagement, it may be included in a Whole of Government Customer Relationship Management System (CRM), together with the feedback or views you provide, and handled in accordance with Schedule 1 of the Information Privacy Act 2014, and the Territory Privacy Principles (TPPs).
The CRM system has been designed to provide directorates’ employees or authorised contractors with a place to store information about engagements with stakeholders and access information about engagements with stakeholders undertaken by other employees or authorised contractors. Information in the CRM may be used to inform subsequent engagements with the same or similar stakeholders. The use of the database is intended to strengthen coordination between ACT Public Sector agencies and reduce duplication of effort and stakeholder fatigue, by sharing information about engagement activities across government.
More detailed information about how your personal information is handled is available in the CRM Privacy Notice available at https://www.act.gov.au/crm-privacy. Further information about directorates’ privacy policies and where to locate them can be found in the CRM Privacy Notice.
Who should I contact if I have any concerns about how my personal information is being managed?
If you have any comment in relation to any aspect of the collection, use, security of, or access to your personal information please contact us via:
Mail:
Privacy Contact Officer
Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate
GPO Box 158
CANBERRA ACT 2601
Email: CMTEDDCorporate@act.gov.au
Or you can contact the Privacy Contact Officer by phone: +61 2 6207 5883 or +61 2 6207 8175
Definitions
Personal information
Information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable:
- whether the information or opinion is true or not; and
- whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not;
but does not include personal health information about the individual.
Personal health information
Personal health information means any personal information, whether or not recorded in a health record:
(a) relating to the health, an illness or a disability of the consumer; or
(b) collected by a health service provider in relation to the health, an illness or a disability of the consumer.
For information about the broader collection and use of personal information by the ACT Government, or who to contact for more information, please refer to the CMTEDD Privacy Policy.
