Privacy

The Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (the Department), through Business Victoria (BV) collects your personal information when you interact with us online. Below you can find a summary of our on-line privacy practices. A detailed version of the Privacy Statement is also available.

We collect some information automatically when you visit the BV website via third-party vendors such as Google Analytics. This is aggregated, information collected in an anonymous form and includes information such as the number, date and timing of visits to the website and the pages of the website visited frequently. This information is not personal information and collected for statistical purposes only. For further details of how we use Google Analytics, please refer to the 'Website Useage Management' section below.

You may also choose to provide us with personal information if, for example, you subscribe to our newsletter, send us questions through e-mail, register for an event or participate in our on-line activities. We may sometimes also use automatically collected information about you in conjunction with other data we have about you, including personally identifiable information you have voluntarily provided us. For further details of the personal information we may collect and how we may use this, please refer to the 'Our Services' section on our detailed Privacy Statement.

Personal information that is collected by the Department/BV will be used by, and disclosed to, Departmental employees, contractorsor third party vendors whose duties require them to use it in order to help the Department/BV fulfil transactions with you or to otherwise help the Department/BV provide goods and/or services to you. Such contractors may be located inside or outside Victoria. For further details of how third parties will process and handle personal information passed onto them, please refer to the 'Our Services’ section in our detailed Privacy Statement. Personal information collected by the Department/BV will also be disclosed to the cloud service provider, Telstra or collected on behalf of the Department by third party service providers, such as Eventbrite.

Access to and correction of personal information

You may request access to any personal information that the Department may have collected about you. You may also request correction of your personal information if you believe that it is not accurate, complete or up-to-date. For access and correction, contact:

Privacy Officer
Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions
GPO Box 4509
Melbourne, VIC, 3001, AUS
Email: privacy@ecodev.vic.gov.au

Business Victoria will pass on the information to the Manager, Freedom of Information & Privacy, as required.

Information we collect via the BV website and social media/eUpdate channels

If you choose to engage with any of the services provided on our online channels we collect information in two ways:

  1. Information you provide  (Personal Information) For example, to use some of our services we may ask for personal information, like your name, email address, telephone number. If you want to join our social media communities, we have access to your public profile, which may include your name and photo
  2. Information we get from your interaction with our services (Aggregated information - collected in an anonymous form) For example, we may identify the type of device you use to access our services, age, gender and interests through third-party vendors such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics.

If you access social media/subscription channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the Business Victoria Update, you should be aware that any information you post onto such media is available for the public to see. You should therefore check your individual privacy settings for profiles and accounts on social media networks and their privacy policies. BV strongly recommends that you regularly check and configure the privacy settings for your profiles and accounts to make sure that you know what information you are making available, and to which audience.

Sharing of personal information on Business Victoria social channels, including through the closed Facebook Group, I am a business owner in Victoria, Australia, is done on the onus of the individual posting. Any third party personal information, including but not limited to email addresses and phone numbers, should be shared only with the express consent of the individual to whom the information pertains. The administrators of Business Victoria social channels reserve the right to remove posts without consulting the poster where issues of consent or data privacy are deemed to be of concern.

Information collected via the Australian Business Register

The State Government of Victoria has an obligation to keep businesses abreast of changes to Legislation and Acts that are of critical importance and present regulatory compliance obligations.

To facilitate the provision of this information, the Department relies upon information supplied by the Australian Business Register (ABR) in accordance with the Personal information available to government agencies section of the ABR’s Privacy Statement.

This information includes, but is not limited to, email addresses and mobile phone numbers utilised in email and SMS communication sent as the Business Victoria Update.

Business Victoria Updates

Any information communicated via the Business Victoria Update is purely factual and defined as designated commercial electronic messages as per Schedule 1 of the Spam Act 2003.

As designated commercial electronic messages, Business Victoria Updates are exempt from section 16 (unsolicited commercial electronic messages must not be sent) and section 18 (commercial electronic messages must contain an unsubscribe facility) of the Act.

Courses and webinars

If you do not accept these terms of use, do not use the Courses & webinars section of this website. If you continue to use content found through the courses and webinars section you will be deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions.

In these Terms of Use, the expressions ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ are a reference to the State of Victoria through the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions.

The content of the Courses & webinars section is provided for information purposes only on an ‘as is’ basis. No claim is made as to the accuracy or authenticity of the content provided.

You must not access or use content in the Courses & webinars section for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms of Use.

Information, data and advice in Courses & webinars is provided on the basis that site users undertake responsibility for assessing the relevance and accuracy of its content. We make no representations, either expressed or implied, as to the suitability of anything on or available through this content for any particular purpose.

This section content contains links to other websites (Linked Sites). Those links are provided for convenience only and may not remain current or be maintained. We are not responsible for the content or privacy practices associated with Linked Sites.

To the extent available at law, we do not accept any liability to any person:

  • for the information, data or advice (or the use of such information, data or advice) which is provided in this content or incorporated into it by reference
  • for any interference with or damage to a user's computer, software or data occurring in connection with or relating to this content or its use
  • for any loss or damage as a result of the use of a Linked Site

If you use automatic language translation services in connection with this site you do so at your own risk. We make no representations, express or implied, as to the accuracy or usefulness of any translation of the information on this website.

Our links with Linked Sites should not be construed as an endorsement, approval or recommendation by us of the owners or operators of those Linked Sites. We have no control over, and are not responsible for, their content, products or service, privacy practices or other policies. Third-party sites should contain their own privacy notices, and those third parties are responsible for their own privacy practices. Any privacy or other complaints in relation to a Linked Site must be made to the owners of that site.

You may be asked to enter into an end user agreement with the owner of the Linked Site for its services. We are not a party to, nor liable under, any third party agreement and you must make independent enquiries before entering into any agreement on a Linked Site at your sole risk.

These Terms of Use are governed by Victorian law. Users agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Victoria.

Data quality and security

While BV takes reasonable precautions to protect the information it holds from unauthorised use, the nature of the information systems is such that the security of information cannot be guaranteed. BV relies on commercially available technologies for the security of its information systems - this applies not only to BV but to the use of online information security systems in general.

BV relies on the information that users provide and it is the users' responsibility to ensure that information they submit is accurate.

Website usage measurement

This website uses Google Analytics tracking code to understand how you are using the internet and the BV website.

We have implemented the following Google Analytics features for Display Advertising:

  • DoubleClick Campaign Manager integration
  • Demographics and Interest Reporting

BV and third-party vendors, including Google, use first-party “cookies” (such as the Google Analytics cookies) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick cookie) together  to retrieve statistics on how our visitors use the BV website, social media/Update, newsletter subscriptions and other internet services provided, how long you are on those channels, how you entered the channel etc. Google Analytics cookies do not collect personal identifiable information about your visits to the website. They do however collect other non-personal information including your IP address which is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. This information will help us understand and better meet our audience’s needs.

Business Victoria also has other technologies in place that use cookies to allow the website to track personal usage information and 'remember' users when they return to this website and other online services provided by Business Victoria. No personal information will be collected through these processes.

By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner described in Google’s Privacy Policy for the purposes set out above.

How we use information we collect

BV collects information (such as age, gender and interests) in order to understand the type of information and activity you may choose to participate in when engaging with BV's website content, social networks, eUpdates and other services. This information helps us to provide a better service, ensure content is relevant and improve how and when we communicate with you.  For further details of the personal information we may collect and how we may use this, please refer to the 'Our Services' section in our detailed Privacy Statement.

BV will not merge personally identifiable information with non-personally identifiable information collected via Google Analytics tracking code without your consent.

You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display advertising using the Ads Settings and/or by using the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. Please note that if you opt-out, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you in the manner and for the purposes set out above.

Data storage

Please note that the personal information you submit using some of the services on our website (including Google Analytics, Newsletter Subscriptions and the Business Vic Live Chat) will be stored on secure databases which reside in Australia, and in some cases, by a United States of America owned company with the database located in Japan. If you do not want your personal information being stored offshore, please do not submit personal information to us when you use any of the services on our website.

Personal information submitted using other services on our website, unless indicated to the contrary will be stored in in a cloud infrastructure provided by the cloud service provider, Telstra. The cloud will only be accessible by the Department and members of the Telstra cloud service provider team. Personal information will predominantly be stored on Telstra's data centres located in Victoria and New South Wales.