The Department of Education, Skills and Employment's privacy policy embodies our commitment to protecting the personal information we hold.
On this page:
The Department of Education, Skills and Employment, its employees, contractors and agents (collectively, the department) is subject to the Privacy Act 1988 (the Privacy Act) and to the requirements of the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act.
We also adhere to applicable guidelines issued to agencies by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Our privacy policy has been developed in accordance with APP 1 and embodies our commitment to protecting the personal information we hold. The complete privacy policy can be found here:
Department of Education, Skills and Employment Complete Privacy Policy
The privacy policy provides more detailed information about:
- the types of personal information that we collect, hold, use and disclose;
- our personal information handling practices;
- our authority to collect your personal information, why it may be held by us, how it is used and how it is protected;
- whether we are likely to disclose personal information to overseas recipients and if possible, to whom;
- how you can access your personal information, correct it if necessary and complain if you believe it has been wrongly collected or inappropriately handled.
You should read our privacy policy if you are:
- a student;
- an apprentice;
- an employer;
- a parent or guardian;
- a child care service provider;
- a registered training organisation;
- a principal or teacher;
- an academic or researcher;
- a job seeker;
- an employment services provider;
- a participant in a program or service delivered by us;
- a contractor, grant recipient, consultant, or supplier of goods or services to us;
- an applicant for a grant or a tenderer for a contract provided by us;
- a policy stakeholder who works with us;
- a person whose information may be given to us by a third party, including other Australian Government agencies;
- an entrant in a competition conducted by us;
- a person seeking employment with us;
- a current or past employee of the department; or
- any other individual whose personal information we may collect, hold, use and disclose.
Information we collect and why we hold, use and disclose it
We are responsible for national policies and programs, which ensure that Australians can experience the wellbeing and economic benefits that quality education, skills and employment provide. The department’s strategic priorities include:
- ensuring quality, affordable and accessible early education and care for families;
- improving schooling outcomes for children;
- preparing our future workforce through globally competitive tertiary education, training and research sectors;
- helping people find and keep a job, create their own job, change jobs, reskill and enjoy fulfilling careers; and
- developing a strong evidence base for effective policy that reflects and understands the varied needs of the Australian population, business and industry.
We collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for a variety of purposes, including:
- performing our management, employment and personnel functions in relation to our staff and contractors;
- performing our legislative and administrative functions;
- policy development, research and evaluation;
- data sharing or data integration with other Australian Government agencies, including but not limited to, data sharing or data integration with the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the Multi-Agency Data
- Integration Project and the Data Integration Partnership for Australia;
- complaints handling;
- administering requests received by us under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth) and the Privacy Act;
- preventing, detecting, investigating or dealing with fraud or corruption against the Commonwealth;
- program management;
- maintaining effective working relationships with state and territory governments, non-government education authorities and providers, universities and other relevant stakeholders;
- policy advice and other support to our Ministers;
- contract management; and
- management of correspondence with the public.
We only collect, hold, use and disclose personal information for a lawful purpose that is reasonably necessary or directly related to one or more of our functions or activities or where otherwise required or authorised by law.
We will only use your personal information for secondary purposes where we are able to do so in accordance with the Privacy Act.
Job Seekers
For information regarding the types of information collected and how this information may be used or shared in the jobactive program, please see the Privacy statement for jobactive participants.
Tax File Numbers
The following information is provided to comply with the department's obligation under subrule 14(1) of the Privacy (Tax File Number) Rule 2015 (TFN Rule).
Purpose of collection
A tax file number (TFN) is a unique identifier issued by the Commissioner of Taxation. The department may collect TFNs for the following purposes:
- to administer programs we manage, including but not limited to the Higher Education Loan Programs, the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, Trade Support Loans and VET Student Loans;
- to make payments of salaries and wages to eligible employees and contractors; and
- to administer child care financial assistance payments.
The department’s collection of TFNs is authorised under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 and the Taxation Administration Act 1953. You are not legally obliged to quote your TFN but there may be financial consequences where you chose not to quote it.
Prohibitions and penalties
Certain Commonwealth legislation prohibits the collection, recording, use and disclosure of TFN information. Further information is available at part 2.3.2 of the department’s Complete Privacy Policy.
Privacy Notices
In addition to our privacy policy, we may need to explain specific privacy practices in more detail at other times. In such circumstances we develop and provide separate privacy notices to describe how we will handle the personal information that we collect. This separate privacy notice where issued, will detail our personal information handling practices in relation to that particular program.
Electronic Communication
There are inherent risks associated with the transmission of information over the internet, including via email. You should be aware of this when sending personal information to us via email or via our website or social media platforms. If this is of concern to you then you may use other methods of communication with us, such as post, fax or telephone (although these also have risks associated with them).
Passive collection
Your information - including personal information - is collected by a variety of software applications, services and platforms used by your device and by the department to support it to deliver services.
This type of information collection is ‘passive’ as the department is not collecting this information directly and it does not directly relate to the department’s provision of services. Your consent for your information to be collected and shared in this way is typically obtained at the time you first use an application or service on your device.
You can opt out of some of these passive data collections, including by:
- Disabling / refusing cookies;
- Disabling JavaScript;
- Opting-out of Google Analytics; and
- Disabling location services on your device.
Additional advice regarding how to protect yourself online can be found at Stay Smart Online.
Active collection
The department directly collects some of your information—including personal information—via its website. Generally, this information is collected to enable the department to properly and efficiently carry out its functions and deliver services to you.
No attempt is made to identify you through your browsing other than in exceptional circumstances, such as an investigation into the improper use of the website.
| Information may be collected by: | Type of information: | Information collected to: |
|---|---|---|
| Internet browser
Cookies Google Analytics Social media platforms Qualtrics |
Your browser type Your browser language Your server address Your location (where location services are enabled on your device) Your top level domain name (e.g. ‘.com’, ‘.gov’, ‘.au’, ‘.uk’) Date and time you accessed a page on our site Pages accessed and documents viewed on our site How our website was accessed (e.g. from a search engine, link or advertisement) |
Measure the effectiveness of our content Better tailor our content to our audience |
| The department |
Name Email address Phone number Education history Employment history |
Deliver services to you Contact you Identify you Subscribe you to a service or update you have requested Evaluate our programs Inform policy development |
Links to External Websites and Social Networking Services
Our website includes links to other websites. We are not responsible for the content and privacy practices of other websites. We recommend that you examine each website's Privacy Policy separately.
We also use social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Instagram and Yammer to talk with the public and our staff. When you talk with us using these services we may collect your personal information to communicate with you and the public. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies. You can access the privacy policies for these services on their websites.
Disclosure of personal information overseas
We will on occasion disclose personal information to overseas recipients, but only where certain conditions are met, for example, you give your consent or the disclosure is otherwise authorised by law. The situations in which we may disclose personal information overseas include:
- the publication on the internet of material which may contain personal information, such as departmental reports and other documents; photographs, video recordings and audio recordings; and posts and comments on our social media platforms;
- the provision of personal information to overseas researchers or consultants;
- the provision of personal information to recipients using a web-based service where data is stored on an overseas server, for example, the department may use Mailchimp for email subscriptions and SurveyMonkey for online surveys;
- the provision of personal information to foreign governments and law enforcement agencies;
- where recipients of departmental communications use an email account that stores data on an overseas server; and
- where people post and comment on our social media platforms.
Further information about the disclosure of personal information overseas is available at part 2.16 of the department’s Complete Privacy Policy.
Information collected by our contractors
Under the Privacy Act we are required to take contractual measures to ensure that contracted service providers (including subcontractors) comply with the same privacy requirements applicable to us.
Storage and Data Security
Storage of personal information (and the disposal of information when no longer required) is managed in accordance with the Australian Government's records management regime.
We take all reasonable steps to protect the personal information held in our possession against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure or misuse.
Data Quality
We take all reasonable steps to make sure that the personal information we collect and store is accurate, up-to-date, complete, relevant and not misleading.
Access to and alteration of records containing personal information
You have a right under the Privacy Act to access personal information we hold about you.
You also have a right under the Privacy Act to request corrections to any personal information that we hold about you if you think the information is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
It is also possible to access and correct documents held by us under the Freedom of Information Act 1982. For information on this, please contact our FOI Coordinator (contact details are available on the Freedom of Information page of our website).
For further detail, including a comparison of both access mechanisms and how you can make a request, please see our Guide to Accessing and Correcting Personal Information.
Privacy Impact Assessments
A privacy impact assessment (PIA) is a systematic assessment of a project that identifies the impact that the project might have on the privacy of individuals, and sets out recommendations for managing, minimising or eliminating that impact.
The Privacy (Australian Government Agencies - Governance) APP Code 2017 (Privacy Code) requires us to undertake a PIA in certain instances and to maintain a register of those PIAs from 1 July 2018. In accordance with the Privacy Code, we publish our Privacy Impact Assessment Register is detailed below.
Privacy Impact Assessment Register
The department’s Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) register has been prepared in accordance with section 15(1) of the Privacy (Australian Government Agencies – Governance) APP Code 2017.
PIAs completed by the Department of Education, Skills and Employment since its establishment on 1 February 2020*
| Title | Date |
|---|---|
| English Language Learning for Indigenous Children (ELLIC)- beta phase | July 2021 |
| Phase 1 of the Gateway Project | June 2021 |
| Community Child Care Fund (CCCF) Restricted Services Notification of Serious Incident Form | June 2021 |
| Elasticity review of Australian Apprenticeship Incentives | June 2021 |
| Amendments to the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 to include information sharing provisions | May 2021 |
| Data sharing with the ATO for wage subsidy administration | March 2021 |
| Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students | March 2021 |
| Supporting Apprentices and Trainees Wage Subsidy Measure | February 2021 |
| Non-government school census 2020 | January 2021 |
| English Language Learning for Indigenous Children (ELLIC)- alpha phase | December 2020 |
| Solv Safety and Solv Injury Case Management System | December 2020 |
| Tuition Protection Service – Up-front payments guidelines | December 2020 |
| Commonwealth Scholarships Program for Young Australians | December 2020 |
| Time to Work Employment Service | December 2020 |
| Data Sharing Project | December 2020 |
| Tuition Protection Service Extension | November 2020 |
| Unique Student Identifiers Extension Project | November 2020 |
| Whispli | November 2020 |
| Youth Jobs PaTH Industry Pilots | November 2020 |
| Seasonal Worker Programme Regional Pilot | October 2020 |
| Capacity to Contribute Score Review Process | September 2020 |
| National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Regulations 2020: National Register details | August 2020 |
| PaTH Internship Vacancy and Caseload Qlik App | August 2020 |
PIAs completed by the then Department of Education between 1 July 2018 and 31 January 2020
| Title of PIA | Completed |
|---|---|
| Proposed HESA and VSLA Amendments: impact on the TCSI solution | December 2019 |
| SEMS Project (myHELPbalance application and StEME | December 2019 |
| Trades Recognition Australia Note: This PIA relates to a function that was transferred to the Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business on 29 May 2019. |
June 2019 |
| NCCD Data Assurance Project | May 2019 |
| Schools Census Post-Enumeration Process | December 2018 |
| 2018 Student Residential Address Collection | September 2018 |
| Schools Special Circumstances Application | August 2018 |
PIAs completed by the then Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business between 1 July 2018 and 31 January 2020
| Date Added | Reference | Program/Initiative | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24/01/19 | D19/59748 | Case study library | Case studies for media events and media articles |
| 01/11/2019 | D19/1839278 | Salesforce Marketing Cloud procurement | Online platform for use in New Employment Services Model |
| 01/11/2019 | D19/1839233 | Trades Recognition Australia (TRA) | Trades Recognition Australia assessment services |
| 01/11/2019 | D19/1839417 | Use of Online Survey Tool | Departmental online survey tool ‘Qualtrics’ |
| 01/11/2019 | D19/1850510 | Seasonal Workers Program Online | Electronic administration of the Seasonal Worker Programme |
| 19/12/2019 | D19/2038120 | NEIS Payroll and Administration Project | Online collection of NEIS participant information |
| 16/01/2020 | D20/26185 | New Template Deed of Agreement for the Seasonal Worker Programme | Implementation of new template deed for SWP Approved Employers |
Complaints
If you think we may have breached your privacy you may contact us to make a complaint using the contact details below. In order to ensure that we fully understand the nature of your complaint and the outcome you are seeking, we prefer that you make your complaint in writing.
For further information about our complaint handling processes please see our Privacy Complaint Handling Procedures.
Contact Us
If you have any enquiries or complaints about privacy, or if you wish to access or correct your personal information, please email us at privacy@dese.gov.au or write to:
Privacy Officer
Legal Services
Department of Education, Skills and Employment
LOC: C50MA1
GPO Box 9880
Canberra ACT 2601.
Changes to this privacy policy
Please note that the privacy policy may change from time to time.
Last updated: November 2020