Site Changes

On 1 November 2010 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was integrated into the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and a new website established at www.oaic.gov.au.

Note 1: Major changes to the Privacy Act 1988 will come into effect in March 2014. Agencies, businesses and not for profits need to start preparing for these changes. For more information go to our privacy law reform page at www.oaic.gov.au
Note 2: From 12 March 2013 content is no longer being added to, or amended, on this site, consequently some information may be out of date. For new privacy content visit the www.oaic.gov.au website.

What does my agency have to make an individual aware of when collecting personal information? (`IPP 2 Notice`)

When collecting personal information from an individual, Information Privacy Principle 2 requires that the agency do what is reasonable to ensure that the individual is made aware of:

the purpose for which the information is being collected;
whether the collection is authorised or required by or under law - and if so which law; and
any person or agency that this kind of information is usually disclosed to, and if it is known, who this person or agency then usually passes this information to.

Providing this advice to an individual is generally referred to as giving 'an IPP2 notice'. Agencies need to consider their IPP 2 notices carefully, because how they can go on to use or disclose personal information will depend in part on whether the individual was made aware of the likely uses or disclosures of their information via this statement. For more information, our website includes Guidelines to the Information Privacy Principles, which discuss the application of IPP 2 in some detail.