VIA is committed to protecting your personal information and complying with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) ('Privacy Act') and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).
Personal information is:
information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not; and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
We collect personal information from staff, contractors, partners and from the public from several areas across VIA. For example, we may hold personal information in the following types of records:
These types of files held by us from time to time may include personal information such as:
The personal information on some of these files may also include sensitive information, including information about a person’s race or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a political association, religious beliefs or affiliations, philosophical beliefs, membership of a professional or trade association, membership of a trade union, sexual orientation or practices, criminal record, health information or genetic information.
Where it is reasonably practicable to do so, we collect personal information directly from you. However, on occasions, we may need to collect personal information from other sources such as public records, parents or guardians of children under the age of 18 years and third parties. When dealing with children, we seek parental consent prior to the collection of personal information, including photographs.
We may collect personal information in various ways, including via:
With VIA’s extensive and diverse activities, we collect, hold and use personal information throughout VIA for many different purposes and using different methods. We only collect personal information for purposes directly related to our functions or activities under the SIR Act and only where it is necessary for or directly related to such purposes.
When we collect personal information from you for certain specific activities, where required, we will use a collection notice that deals specifically with that collection, including a description of the purposes for which we will use the personal information collected in that instance. Where relevant, our internal procedures and systems embed privacy protections to ensure we comply with our obligations under the Privacy Act.
We may use or hold personal and sensitive information for the following general purposes:
From time to time, we may need to disclose personal information to our joint venture partners or share information with contractors or agents who provide services to us, such as off-site file storage facilities and financial institutions which transmit payments on our behalf.
We will collect personal information from you for the purposes described in a collection notice and will only use or disclose your personal information for other purposes if:
Set out below is some further detail of how we may use personal information collected for certain of our main activities.
A cookie is a small file containing a string of characters placed on your computer that uniquely identifies your browser. It is information that your web browser sends back to our website server whenever you visit it again. We use cookies to 'remember' your browser between page visits. In this situation, the cookie identifies your browser, not you personally. No personal information is stored within our cookies.
Some services that run on our sites, such as those provided by Google, Facebook and Vimeo, may also create or read their own cookies on your browser.
When you send an email to a VIA address (name@via.farm), the content and your details, including your email address, become part of our records. Your email address, acquired in this way, will not be added to any mailing list unless specified in a collection statement or unless we obtain your consent.
Should you decide to complete and submit an online form on any part of the VIA website, we:
VIA may use online forms and surveys which are hosted by third parties to facilitate internal VIA procedures or our research activities e.g. Microsoft Forms or Survey Monkey. Where VIA uses a third party for these purposes, VIA will ensure that the platform provider is subject to a law or binding scheme substantially similar to the APPs, including mechanisms for enforcement, we have sought your consent, or we have ensured appropriate contractual measurements are met.
We may conduct research involving human participants and this research may involve the collection of personal information, including health information, genetic information, or information about a person as part of social research. The collection of such information may also have ethical approval requirements. When dealing with personal information in a research context, we will usually de-identify that information. If personal information is not de-identified, we will deal with personal information collected during research in accordance with the Privacy Act.
We may also deal with personal information of research partners or clients when providing scientific research services and testing services to both public and private sector clients. This may include the following sorts of personal information:
If we collect your personal information as part of our research activities, we will use that information for the purposes of the specific research activity and we may also add it to a database for the purpose of contacting you about future VIA activities, but only where you would reasonably expect this or have consented.
When you contact us for general information about our activities and technology generally, we will:
We store the contact details of a wide range of clients and stakeholders, ranging from direct subscribers to periodical publications, to business, research and community contacts. This information may be used to disseminate information and to facilitate participation in events and VIA activities. In managing this information, we will:
VIA collects, uses and discloses and handles personal and sensitive information to enable us to properly manage our business affairs, legal obligations and the employment, engagement and management of staff and affiliates, which may include, but is not limited to:
We collect personal information in the course of promoting and marketing our activities to the public, including via the following:
We collect personal information when administering an individual’s request for access to documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1984 (Cth).
Each area of VIA that collects personal information stores that information securely on VIA’s IT systems. These systems are password protected and, where required, only certain people are authorised to access the information.
We may use third parties to store some personal information on servers and cloud services in Australia or overseas.
We may disclose personal information overseas from time to time, for example in the course of a research project with an overseas entity, through publishing information or by storing information on a server located overseas. VIA will only disclose your information overseas in accordance with APP 8 and where certain conditions are met, for example, where the recipient is subject to a law or binding scheme substantially similar to the APPs, including mechanisms for enforcement, we have sought your consent, or we have ensured appropriate contractual measurements are met.
We will provide you with access to your personal information that we hold, subject to any applicable exceptions under the Privacy Act. We will require you to verify your identity and specify, as clearly as possible, the information that you wish to access. We will not charge you for lodging a request for access to your own personal information but may charge for reasonable administrative costs. The fee will be determined on a case by case basis and you will be informed beforehand of the likely cost.
VIA employees seeking their employment details should initially do so in accordance with VIA’s human resources processes.
If you can establish that information held by us about you is inaccurate, irrelevant, out of date, incomplete or misleading, we will take reasonable steps to amend the information. If we disagree with your view about the status of this information, we will provide reasons for the refusal and record a statement in our records of your view.
If you have a privacy related complaint about us, please email contact@via.farm or Contact Us.
Last updated 6 April 2023
