Higher education providers compliance with Student Identifiers Act

To help stay compliant under the Student Identifiers Act (Cth) (the Act), please share the information below with the appropriate team members within your organisation.

What is compliance?

Ongoing compliance with the Act is essential to protect students and the reputation and quality of the education and training sector.

Types of non-compliance under the Act fall into 3 primary categories:

1. not meeting privacy requirements
2. issuing qualifications and awards to a student without a Unique Student Identifier (USI)
3. creating duplicate USIs.

Understand compliance obligations

Privacy requirements

To stay compliant with privacy requirements we remind you of your obligations to obtain permission from a student before creating or finding a student’s USI.

A Privacy Notice must be issued to the student if you are creating a USI on their behalf.

Privacy tips

• Under section 11 of the Act, any personal information and identity documents obtained to create a USI must not be retained, unless you are required by another law to keep the information.
• If storing a record of a USI you must take reasonable steps to protect that record from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Read more about privacy

Issuing qualifications

Under section 53 of the Act, a registered higher education provider must not confer a regulated higher education award to an individual without a verifiable USI, or an exemption from being assigned one.

To remain compliant students must be encouraged to provide a USI at the earliest opportunity but no later than:

• the census date for eligible students accessing a Commonwealth Supported Place or Commonwealth financial assistance
• before international students leave Australia at the conclusion of their studies, or at the point of award conferral.

International students

• International students who have completed all their study outside of Australia do not need a USI.
• International students who completed part or all of their studies in Australia must have a USI in order to graduate and receive their award.

Creating duplicates

To remain compliant, you must attempt to find an existing student’s USI before creating one on their behalf. Under Part 3A of the Act, there are civil penalty provisions to knowingly make an application to create a duplicate USI or authorise an entity to do so.

How to find an existing USI
Organisations working with students who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander or are incarcerated may have access to use Document Verification Service Override (DVSO) to verify identity. Refer to our Provider Guide for more information on provider responsibilities for checking duplicates.

We appreciate your efforts to remain complaint. You can use our online form to report any identified non-compliance.