The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has worked with State and Territory Privacy Commissioners and Ombudsmen to produce the National COVID-19 Privacy Principles as a guide to best practice during the coronavirus crisis.
Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner, Angelene Falk said the high-level principles provided a framework for approaching the handling of personal information during the pandemic by Government and business.
“Policy-makers enacting laws or rules or developing technological solutions that involve the handling of personal information should have regard to these principles to ensure that a privacy-by-design approach is built into the COVID-19 response to help maintain public trust,” Ms Falk said.
“The collection of personal information, including sensitive information such as health information, should always be limited to the minimum reasonably necessary to achieve a legitimate purpose.”
She said this should include considering alternative solutions which achieved the same purpose and did not require personal information to be collected into a record.
“Information that is required to be collected for a specific purpose related to mitigating the risks of COVID-19 should generally not be used for other purposes,” Ms Falk said.
“This is particularly important to ensure that Australians can have trust and confidence that their personal information is protected so they can continue to support the public health response to COVID-19.”
She said reasonable steps must be taken to protect Australians’ personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
Personal information should be destroyed once it is no longer needed for the purpose for which it was collected.
The national COVID-19 privacy principles were signed jointly by Ms Falk as well as Samantha Gavel (Privacy Commissioner, NSW); Sven Bluemmel (Information Commissioner, Victoria); Rachael Rangihaeata (Information Commissioner, Queensland); Philip Green (Privacy Commissioner, Queensland); Simon Froude (Director, State Records, Privacy Committee of South Australia); Richard Connock (Ombudsman, Tasmania), and Peter Shoyer (Information Commissioner, Northern Territory).
The COVID-19 Privacy Principles can be accessed at this PS News link.
