Detailed privacy statement

Application of this Privacy Statement

This privacy statement applies only to the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions (the Department) and this particular website. It is consistent with the Department’s privacy policy.

We collect some information automatically when you visit the Business Victoria (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 is collected for statistical purposes only. 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.

This website contains links to other websites. This privacy statement does not apply to websites outside of the Business Victoria domain.

Privacy Officer
Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions
GPO Box 4509
Melbourne, VIC, 3001, AUS
Tel: (+ 61 3) 9665 9535
Email: privacy@ecodev.vic.gov.au

Privacy and Data protection Act 2014

Personal information

In this privacy statement, the term 'personal information' has the meaning provided in section 3 of the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic.) (the Privacy Act).

Personal information is information or an opinion that is recorded in any form, whether true or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained.

The Privacy Act is the legislation that regulates our collection and handling of personal information.

Detailed information about the Act is available at the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC).

Collection of personal information

This website collects personal information when you:

provide feedback using the feedback forms
submit an enquiry
subscribe to a newsletter
make a booking for an event
share an event
submit some types of forms

Use and disclosure of personal information

If you provide personal information, the Department's privacy policy will regulate its use and disclosure. However, should the Department's intended use and disclosure of personal information deviate from the Department’s general policy, a privacy statement particular to the circumstances will be made available at the time of collection.

Personal information that is collected by the Department/BV will be used by, and disclosed to, Departmental employees, contractors, or third party vendors whose duties require them to use it in order to assist the Department /BV fulfil transactions with you or to otherwise assist the Department/BV provide goods and/or services to you. Such contractors may be located inside or outside Victoria. 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. Personal information collected by the Department/BV will also be disclosed to the cloud service provider, Telstra.

There is one exception when the collection of personal information is necessary or unavoidable. This is when someone else provides the Department with your personal information. The Department cannot prevent this. However, you are entitled to access and correct any personal information about you collected by the Department.

Personal information collected by the Department may be passed on to other agencies as required to provide the services requested. The use and disclosure of personal information collected by the Department through use of this website is described below. For further details of how third parties will process and handle personal information passed onto them for any given service, please see the 'Our Services' section below.

Personal information may also be collected by Event Service Providers on behalf of the Department in order to administer bookings for workshops and events calendars run by the Department. Event Service Providers may use your personal information to contact you about additional services or events they administer. The use of personal information collected by Event Service Providers will be governed by their privacy statement, which is available on their website.

Business Victoria holds private information in databases, backups and possibly other archives for at least seven years. The information might also have been stored and recorded in other agencies databases after it has been passed on to them in the process of providing services.

Access to and correction of personal information

You may request access to any personal information that the Department may have collected about you. In addition, you may request correction of your personal information if you can establish that it is not accurate, complete or up-to-date. The Victorian Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection has recommended that the appropriate means to access and correct information held by government departments is pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic.).

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

Freedom of Information Officer
Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions
GPO Box 2392
Melbourne, VIC, 3001, AUS
Tel: (+61 3) 9208 3112
Email:foi@ecodev.vic.gov.au

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

Our Services

We may ask you to disclose your personal information if you use the following services provided on our website:

Online Feedback

Feedback submitted using the online form provided would only be used by the most appropriate officers to review your comments and answer any questions. Any personal information will not be disclosed to any other person. Your email address will only be used to respond to specific queries and will not be added to any mailing list.

Business Victoria’s Online Feedback forms are supported by third-party vendors. Business Victoria only shares your details with them to assist with the:

management of responses to content submitted in feedback forms;
resolution of technical issues; or
detection or prevention of fraud or security issues.

Newsletter Subscription

In subscribing to BV's newsletters, you are providing the Department with personal information. We are collecting this information to send you regular newsletters and information on related programs and services. Your contact details may be shared with external organisations so that you can be contacted to take part in surveys or focus groups, in order to assist us improve our services. We will notify you if we want to share your information with any external organisations.
The Department will not disclose your personal information for any other purpose without your consent.

Subscription to newsletters can be successfully carried out by:

subscribing on the Business victoria Subscribe to newsletters page; and
subscribing via the 'Stay updated' module found on most Business Victoria website pages.

You will be asked to provide an email address for all subscriptions.

You can unsubscribe at any time and your email address will be moved to a 'do not contact' email database. To do this, click on the unsubscribe link within each newsletter type you previously subscribed to. You can resubscribe at any time using either of the two methods above.

Please note that your information 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.

Newsletter Subscriptions are supported by third-party vendors. Business Victoria only shares your details with them to assist:

provide online forms to assist in subscription to the various newsletters available;
delivery of the relevant newsletter(s) to the email address nominated;
resolution of technical issues; or
detection or prevention of fraud or security issues.

Social media

Businesses and individuals who choose to engage with Business Victoria via social network channels including Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube should be aware of the following:

Business Victoria only collects information that you voluntarily provide via polls, responses, posts, comments and tweets
This information is collected in order to understand the type of information and activity you may choose to participate in when engaging with Business Victoria’s social networks. The information provides us with valuable insight that allows us to offer you the most appropriate tools and resources for your business
Your social media profile contact details may be used by Business Victoria to:
1. contact you for feedback
2. offer you new tools and resources to assist in developing your business
3. to engage you in conversation.
Any information you post on social media sites is potentially accessible to anyone else engaging with Business Victoria via the same social media.
Your individual privacy settings for profiles and accounts on social media networks are your responsibility. Business Victoria has no control or jurisdiction over these settings
Each social network has inbuilt privacy settings. Business Victoria 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.
When you choose to join Business Victoria’s social networks and/or participate in any way, some of your personal information may be made visible to others. For example, if you choose to ‘Like’ Business Victoria’s Facebook Page, post a comment or update, share a link, follow Business Victoria on Twitter, tweet a mention or retweet an @BusinessVic message, follow @BusinessVic on Instagram or join the Facebook Group your activity may be made visible to others within these networks.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube have channel-specific privacy policies that all users should be aware of, take into consideration and adhere to when using these channels for business, personal or private use.

Online Forms

All users of this facility are advised to examine the Privacy and Security policies of contributing Agencies and Departments online, or to contact the Agency or Department directly.

Business Victoria forms and payment services are supported by third-party vendors. Business Victoria only shares your details with them to assist:

resolution of technical issues; or
detection or prevention of fraud or security issues.

Online booking system

Personal information that is collected by the Department/BV will be used by, and disclosed to, Departmental employees, contractors or 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.

If you are using a third party application to transact with the Department, such as Eventbrite, please check the individual privacy policies of these organisations.

Workshops and Events Calendar (Calendaring and Booking system)

We will only ask for personal information we reasonably require to do business with you. We may also collect personal information via phone or through printed forms. We will use a third party event service provider, ('Event Service Provider') to help collect personal information and administer bookings for workshops and events calendar. The following are some examples of the types of personal information the Event Service Provider may collect from you:

Booking Events - When you book an event the Event Service Provider will need your name, business/organisation name, phone number, email address and postal address in order to make a booking.
Waiting Lists - When you book/sign up to an event ‘Waiting List’ the Event Service Provider will need your name, email address and phone number
Paying for an Event - When you book an event and there is a cost to attend the event, you will need to enter in your credit card details on the Card Authoriser's secure server via the Event Service Provider’s booking system website. See Online Payments above for full details.

Email Event Details

Personal details that are collected when you book an event may be retained by Business Victoria beyond 24 months to satisfy Victorian Government record-keeping responsibilities. These details may be sent to, examined, or used by third parties, including Event Service ('Once this information has been received by the relevant Event Provider the handling of this information will be governed by their terms of use and their privacy policy).

For information on an Event Service Provider’s specific policies, please contact the relevant Event Provider as specified on the individual event. We may use your personal details to communicate transaction records, reminders about the event, changes to the event and create name tags.

Attendance records may also be used by the Department’s authorised officers to focus services and to develop workshops and seminars programs.

Data Quality and Security

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

We advise users to follow good security practices when using Business Victoria services. Basic practices recommended:

Install security updates for all software on your computer
Use reputable anti-virus software and keep this software up to date
Select strong passwords and keep your passwords safe (Secure Password Guidelines)
Ensure the website is authentic through the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

Business Victoria relies on the information that users provide and it is the users’ responsibility to ensure that information they submit is accurate. Users are prohibited from posing as someone else.

Business Victoria will deactivate accounts and delete information from its database if someone can show that someone inappropriately masqueraded as them.

Internet user risks

The Department does not warrant that the functions contained in the site will be uninterrupted or without error. In addition, the Department shall not be responsible for the propagation of computer worms, viruses or other harmful components transmitted from this site and other third-party sites.

The Department recommends that you ensure that your browser is equipped with updated virus protection software.

The SSL protects the Business Victoria Logon facility by encryption while the user remains on the facility. Users should be aware that links from this facility may not use encryption technology and that information transferred from the facility to an unsecured site will be passed on an unsecured link. Your browser settings should be set to alert you if you are leaving a secure site.

Users seeking more information about SSL in general are referred to W3C the World Wide Web Consortium where a search on the word 'SSL', or browsing the Security FAQs will provide current information.

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/eUpdate channels and other internet services provided, how long you are on those sites, how you got there (for example from a search engine link, an advertisement etc).

Google Analytics cookies standard internet log information and behavioural information about your visits to the website in an anonymous form. They do however collect other non-personal information including your IP address which is transmitted to and stored by Google on its 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 is collected through these processes.

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.

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

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. 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.