Last Monday I attend a Privacy Network meeting. This was the first meeting called for this group.Those attending represented the majority of areas throughout the University.
The meeting was chaired by Jeff Feild, Registrar his idea being to establish a netwrok of staff across the University that could help with certain aspects of his role. These aspect pertain to four Acts of Parliament –
the Official Information Act (OIA)
the Privacy Act
the Public Records Act and
the Copyright Act.

It was agreed that meetings would be called on a regular basis and at each meeting of the network training would be given to help members of the Network understand how the above acts impact on the University. Each year aspects of the 5 acts would be discussed in detail in order for Network members to deal with issues as they arise in there workspaces. Jeff Feild and Tom Norcliffe were able to provide background knowledge as to how the University responds to requests for information under the Official Information Act, from Ombudsmen etc., from both current or past staff and students of the University.

Don McBeath from MDS spoke to the Network on Privacy issues. From the notes that he distributed at the meeting – under both the Privacy and the Official Information Acts, the guiding principles are that information must be made avaialable unless a good reason exists under the Acts for withholding it. We were told that these Acts create a balance betwee increasing the availability of official information and enhancing respect and transparency, while at the same time protecting sensitive information where necessary for the public interest and/or to preserve personal privacy.

Information that can be asked for includes –
*access to any official information
*reasons for decisions made about you
*internal policies, principles, rules or guidelines
*meeting agendas and minutes of public bodies, including those not open to the public except where they are confidential “closed” meetings

People can ask for personal information about themselves.
The Privacy Act controls how people and organisations collect, use, dispose, store and give access to personal information.
Private information might be requested by a third party under the Official Information Act (e.g. the private information is not about the requestor themselves).

We were all reminded that we should take care with our emails, they are part of our work and we are creating records through the email system that are pulic records. Under the OIA and the Privacy Act these records can be requested. It was noted that we need to be mindful and consider the content and personal commentary that is often sent via email. The person you are talking about in your email may end up having acess to these records.

I could go on, it was a very interesting session. If you would like further information please get in touch with me. As the Library representative on this group, if there are any issues that arise in the workplace that you think I or another member of this Network can help you with, please contact me.

Heather Jenks
Associate University Librarian