Privacy

Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) Register

The Parliamentary Workplace Support Service’s PIA Register is published pursuant to section 15(1) of the Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code. 

Individual accessing services of the PWSS – APP5 notice

Your personal information

The Parliamentary Workplace Support Service (PWSS) collects personal information about individuals for a range of purposes to enable it to carry out its functions and provide its services. The PWSS Privacy Policy, available on its website or on request, explains how we handle the personal information we collect, including how to request access to or correction of your personal information the PWSS holds and how to make a privacy complaint.

Further details about the collection of your personal information are provided below.

Who is collecting your personal information?

The PWSS is collecting your personal information. The PWSS is an independent Commonwealth statutory office. PWSS employees are Australian Public Service (APS) employees, bound by the APS Code of Conduct.

Collection of your personal information

The PWSS collects and uses personal information to perform its functions and activities, outlined below.

Authority for collection of personal information

Under the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service Act 2023 (PWSS Act), the PWSS has a range of functions relating to parliamentary workplaces and workplace participants. These functions include:

• A human resources function empowering the PWSS to advise and assist current and former parliamentarians, Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984 (MOPS Act) employees and other workers in relation to their employment, including with respect to code of conduct and work health and safety matters
• A support service for current and former parliamentary workplace participants who have been affected by alleged misconduct in the course of their duties.
• An independent complaint resolution and early intervention service for current and former parliamentary workplace participants.
• The development and publication of employment related policies and procedures, including with respect to work health and safety.
• The provision of training and education, including with respect to work health and safety, codes of conduct, and establishing and maintaining safe and respectful workplaces
• Reviewing complaints of misconduct and making recommendations.

Why does the PWSS collect your personal information?

The PWSS collects and uses your personal information in order to carry out its functions and activities, which include:

• Providing support to Commonwealth parliamentary workplace participants in relation to workplace conflict;
• Assessing and managing cases;
• Receiving and assessing reports (or complaints) about workplace conflict;
• Assisting in the resolution of workplace conflict;
• Formulating, facilitating and administering local resolution of workplace conflict and complaints;
• Referring reports made by parliamentarians and MOPS Act employees for workplace reviews;
• Receiving reports on workplace reviews;
• Providing reports on workplace reviews to the Speaker of the House of Representatives or President of the Senate where recommendations are not implemented;
• Communicating outcomes of reviews;
• Providing referrals; and
• Providing relevant training and education to Commonwealth parliamentary workplace participants and contributing to understanding about issues in Commonwealth parliamentary workplaces.

What would happen if the PWSS did not collect your personal information?

You can choose to remain anonymous when interacting with the PWSS and you can submit a report anonymously through our website. The PWSS can also record an incident report made by you in a de-identified way. However, if the PWSS is unable to identify you or collect your personal information or your contact details, this may limit its ability to help you seek resolution through the PWSS or to contact you about your report.

The PWSS collects your personal information when you email, call or contact the service using the online form, for the purpose of dealing with your enquiry, complaint or report (including potential referrals). If you choose to remain anonymous or elect not to provide the PWSS with some or all of your personal information, we may not be able to respond to your enquiry or complaint, or refer you to an appropriate authority for further assistance.

Where the PWSS is assisting the resolution of a workplace conflict or complaint, we may collect your personal information from your employer or former employer. The purpose of this collection would be to enable us to offer local resolution services to you.

Who will the PWSS disclose your personal information to?

The PWSS will only disclose your personal information with your consent, except in limited circumstances as provided by law. Examples where we may seek your consent include the PWSS disclosing your personal information to an external service provider if you require specialised support; to the police if you wish to make a police report; to your employer or to the Department of Finance for other work-related support managed by them; and to an independent workplace reviewer if a workplace review has been commissioned.

Circumstances where the PWSS may also disclose your personal information to a third party without your consent include where the PWSS reasonably believes there is an imminent threat to your or someone else’s safety; where a notifiable workplace health or safety risk is identified; or where disclosure is otherwise required by law (e.g. to support criminal investigations by the police or related legal proceedings). If this is necessary, your PWSS case coordinator will take reasonably practicable steps to discuss the process with you and respect your privacy.

Aggregate information will be used to prepare publicly available reports and to help contribute to the understanding about issues in Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces to support PWSS’ work to improve these workplaces.

We use a number of service providers to whom we disclose personal information. These include providers that host our website servers, manage our IT and manage our human resources information. This includes the Australian Government departments (PM&C and the Department of Finance) who own the servers on which PWSS data is held. We enter into agreements with these service providers which require them to only use or disclose the information for the purposes of the agreement.

Access to and correction of your personal information

The PWSS Privacy Policy contains information about how you may access and seek correction of personal information about you that is held by the PWSS.

Privacy complaints

The PWSS Privacy Policy contains information about how you may complain about a breach of the Australian Privacy Principles and how the PWSS will deal with privacy-related complaints.

Overseas disclosure of your personal information

It is unlikely that your personal information will be disclosed to any overseas recipients.

Generally, we only disclose personal information overseas so that we can properly handle the complaint. For example, if:

• the complainant or respondent to a complaint is based overseas
• you have complained to an overseas entity and the PWSS about the same or a related matter.

Web traffic information is disclosed to Google Analytics when you visit our websites. Google stores information across multiple countries.

When you communicate with us through a social network service such as Facebook or Twitter, the social network provider and its partners may collect and hold your personal information overseas.

Accessing PWSS website – APP5 notice

We use Google Analytics to measure website use and improve your experience of our website and our communications. For example, we use this information to:

• Find out when our systems aren’t working as expected;
• Understand user needs and what’s hard to use on our online services and applications;
• Learn where we can streamline services;
• Cater for different types of browsers and devices you use;
• Develop relevant support information to help you interact with us; and
• Improve our ability to assist stakeholders when they contact us for help.

Google Analytics maintains servers around the world and your information may be processed on servers located outside of Australia. We use reports provided by Google Analytics to help us understand website traffic and webpage usage.

When you use our website, Google handles your information in the manner described in Google's Privacy Policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics if you disable or refuse the cookie, disable JavaScript, or use the opt-out service provided by Google. Our website may also contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites. When you go to other websites from here, we advise you to read their privacy policies.

We may also use other third-party analytics tools (such as Sprinklr) along with Google Analytics for the purpose of improving our communications with you and the public.

The types of information we may collect from third party analytic tools includes:

• Internet Protocol (IP) address;
• Browser and operating system, for example whether you use Internet Explorer or Chrome, Windows or iOS;
• Date and time of website visit;
• Pages visited, mouse clicks and documents downloaded from our websites;
• Device type, model, screen size and orientation;
• Language and geographic location (city/country) preferences (if enabled);
• Demographics and interests, for example age bracket and gender, along with interests expressed through online behaviour;
• Fields you’ve entered information into (such as search terms);
• How long it took to do certain tasks; and
• How you move through pages and the referring domain and outlink (if applicable).

To improve your experience on our site, we may also use 'cookies'.  Cookies are pieces of information that a website can transfer to an individual's computer hard drive or hand-held device for record keeping. Cookies can make websites easier to use by storing information about your preferences on a particular website. The information is used by us to help improve our website by understanding how it is used and effective communication methods for diverse audiences. We do not attempt to identify individual users in any way.

Most browsers allow you to choose whether to accept cookies or not. If you do not wish to have cookies placed on your computer, please set your browser preferences to reject all cookies before accessing our website.

Third party sites that we use to communicate with the public about our work (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) may also send their own cookies to your computer. We do not control the setting of third-party cookies. You can check the third-party websites for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

Feedback

The Parliamentary Workplace Support Service (PWSS) welcomes your feedback, including complaints. Understanding your experience is important to us because it helps improve our service and provide better support to parties through the process.

If you have been engaging with a PWSS case coordinator we encourage you to speak them in the first instance and discuss your concerns directly.

You are also able to offer feedback or make a complaint through the Feedback form or contact the PWSS via phone 1800 PH PWSS (1800 747 977).

A written record will be made of any oral feedback or complaint received about the PWSS, though you can choose to provide feedback anonymously.