Privacy Policy - Greater Say

What this statement covers

Greater Wellington Regional Council (Greater Wellington) has created this privacy statement to explain how we deal with your personal information collected by us through the Greater Say Panel (the Panel). Personal information is information about an identifiable individual – you.

Our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information addresses the requirements of the Privacy Act 2020. This Act is administered by the Ministry of Justice and overseen by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

The Greater Say Panel platform

The software platform the surveys and Panel registration page are on, and the associated technology operations, are provided by Horizon Research Ltd. Here’s its privacy policy.

What personal information do we collect?

The following information is collected directly from you. Your provision of this information is voluntary.

Profile information

When you register to join the Greater Say Panel (the Panel), we ask you for a range of information about you including your name, contact details, and demographic information such as age, ethnicity and location. We also ask you additional questions about employment, income, education and household decision-making to help give us more detailed data when we analyse the survey responses and look for social trends on the survey topics.

In any survey emailed to you as a member of the Panel, if we ask you again for demographic information on your age, gender, and ethnicity, it is because we are also inviting general members of the public to fill in the survey.

Survey data

We collect data on specific topics through surveys which the Panel are asked to complete. It is voluntary to complete any survey.

Usage information

We collect grouped data on the number of Panel members and people who fill out our surveys, such as whether the survey was completed in part or in total. This information is not linked to any named individuals.

Shared projects

We may occasionally run surveys through the Greater Say Panel on topics and work programmes where we partner with other organisations. We will advise you of this in the survey introduction if other organisations are involved.

Purposes for collecting your information

We collect the above information to:

• Carry out public research on:
  • Topics relating to Greater Wellington’s roles and responsibilities
  • Topics and work programmes where we partner with other organisations
• Analyse and share compiled information (e.g. survey themes and demographic analysis) in summaries, reports and presentations to inform and advise the relevant project team and Council. No individual will be identified or named in these documents.
• Report to the relevant project team and Council on how successful a survey was, through survey completion rates and visits to the survey webpage
• Communicate to you about the survey results
• Understand the reach of our surveys to help build representation of all parts of our community into the Panel
• Provide a benchmark for future surveys on the same topic; and to inform trend analysis over time
• Respond to your enquiries on the survey, or to advise you of a quarterly prize win as a panel member.

Using your information

We will only use the information you provide to us:

• For the purpose/s of carrying out public research to inform the relevant project team and Council, by sharing aggregated results in summaries, reports and presentations with the relevant project team and Council.
• For other reasons permitted by the Privacy Act 2020 (e.g. with your consent, for a directly-related purpose, or where the law permits or requires this use).

Data storage, security and accuracy

Greater Wellington has implemented measures to ensure that your personal information is kept safe and secure; is protected against loss, damage, misuse and unauthorised access; is kept accurate, current, complete, and relevant; and is not misleading.

These measures include:

• Information stored on the Horizon Research Ltd platform is kept secure in one of New Zealand’s Tier Three server centres, using highest level security management, regular application security and database monitoring, strict data access rules, network security support, and secure hosting infrastructure
• After analysis by Horizon Research Ltd, the Greater Wellington administrator of the platform can download related research reports, using a secure login. The research reports are  kept in a secure folder on Greater Wellington’s  document management system
• Access to the related secure folder is restricted to the relevant Greater Wellington project team and system and platform administrators.

Sharing your information

We will not share your information with other agencies.

How long do we hold your personal information?

Greater Wellington will retain your survey responses to enable us to analyse trends over time for similar topics. We will delete your registration information once you opt out of the Panel.

Accessing and correcting your personal information

You can:

• Ask us to confirm whether we hold personal information about you
• Request access to that information by emailing us at privacy@gw.govt.nz
• If applicable, ask us to correct that information (see above).

Once we have verified your identity, we will provide you with confirmation and access, unless we believe we should withhold the information under the Privacy Act 2020. We will deal with your request within 20 working days; and, if we decide to withhold, we will provide the reasons and supporting grounds.

Correction

If we:

• Agree that your personal information needs to be corrected, we will do so and provide you with an amended record (if requested)
• Refuse a request for correction, you are entitled to request that a statement is attached to the relevant personal information recording that the correction was sought but not made.

Your rights to access and correct any personal information we hold are subject to the Privacy Act 2020.

Contact us

For further information about this privacy statement and our related information practices, please contact us on haveyoursay@gw.govt.nz.

If you wish to access or correct your personal information, please contact our Principal Privacy Officer at privacy@gw.govt.nz.

 

Complaints

If you consider we have breached your privacy, or there is a privacy matter that we cannot resolve, you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner at:

Phone            0800 803 909 (Monday to Friday 10am to 3pm)

Email               enquiries@privacy.org.nz

Post                Office of the Privacy Commissioner, PO Box 10094, Wellington 6143.