Privacy Commissioner, Phil Green says there is no better time than the current Privacy Awareness Week to share advice on keeping Agencies’ personal information safe.
“There is always a need to build customer confidence and public trust,” Mr Green said.
“Make privacy a priority within your Agency by building it in from the start. Adopting a ‘privacy by design’ approach means designing your projects, products and services to minimise, manage or eliminate privacy risks.”
Mr Green urged Agencies to embed good privacy practices into internal systems, decision-making and processes.
He also called on all Agencies to embed a privacy champion at a senior level.
“A strong leadership commitment to embed a privacy-aware work culture is paramount to making privacy a priority,” Mr Green said.
“Having a privacy champion at the senior executive level helps bring privacy to the fore and incorporates privacy by design into executive decision-making processes.”
Another priority was staff training — “Agencies need to train all staff about the right to information, information privacy and information security in their mandatory induction process”.
“Training should be comprehensive, contemporary, tailored to the Agency’s context, and even to particular issues faced by workgroups,” he said.
Mr Green said there was also a need to reduce the risk of data breaches caused by human error.
“Human error is the cause of more than one-in-three data breaches,” he said.
“Reduce the risk of human error data breaches by educating staff and putting controls in place.”
For more information about privacy rights and responsibilities, Privacy Awareness Week 2021 and resources, visit the Office of the Information Commissioner’s website at this PS News link.
