The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is committed to maintaining the privacy and security of all information that it holds. The AIHW is subject to the Privacy Act 1988 (the Privacy Act), including the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Act. The Privacy Act regulates how public sector agencies and certain private sector organisations can collect, hold, use and disclose personal information, and how you can access and correct information about you held by those agencies and organisations.

The AIHW collects and reports information on many topics and issues, including health and welfare expenditure, hospitals, disease and injury, mental health, ageing, homelessness, disability and child protection.

As a professional data management organisation of long-standing, our approach to the management of privacy is mature and deeply engrained in our work policies, procedures and organisational culture. We have an Ethics Committee that provides thorough and independent oversight of how we approach and ensure compliance with our privacy obligations.

Through our annual Privacy Management Plan and other governance processes, we are continually reviewing and improving our privacy practices and maturity.

Privacy policy

Our Privacy policy sets out how the AIHW complies with the APPs under the Privacy Act. It contains information about the types of personal information we collect, how we handle personal information and how we comply with our privacy obligations. Our privacy policy also contains information about how you can seek access or make a correction to your personal information.

Privacy impact assessments

The Privacy (Australian Government Agencies – Governance) APP Code 2017 (Privacy Code) requires us to undertake privacy impact assessments (PIAs) in certain instances and to maintain a register of those PIAs. The AIHW prepares a PIA to assess the potential impact of an AIHW research project or data collection on the privacy of individuals, and to document and assess the processes in place to manage, minimise, or eliminate that impact.

The AIHW Ethics Committee considers the PIAs prepared by the AIHW when it considers the ethical acceptability of our work. The AIHW only proceeds with research projects and data collections if the Ethics Committee approves them, following their consideration of the PIA and other relevant information about the proposed work. Listings of Ethics Committee approved data linkage projects and data collections are provided on our website.

The Ethics Committee also considers PIAs for all ‘high privacy risk’ activities that involve new or changed ways of handling personal information, as part of their consideration of approving them. See Privacy Impact Assessments for a listing of these assessments.

How to contact us about privacy

Email

[email protected]

Post

Privacy Officer
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
GPO Box 570
Canberra ACT 2601