The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has joined 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.
Signing the principles, the Australian Information Commissioner, Angelene Falk in her capacity as ACT Information Privacy Commissioner, said the high-level principles provided a framework for the handling of personal information during the pandemic by Government and businesses.
“Policymakers 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.
Ms Falk said this should include the consideration of alternative solutions that 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,” she 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.”
The Commissioner said reasonable steps must be taken to protect people’s personal information from misuse, interference and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.
Ms Falk said personal information should be destroyed once it was 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 National COVID-19 Privacy Principles can be accessed at this PS News link.
