USI Bulletin Number 06 - 18 July 2019

Adelaide office up and running

In the 2018 Budget, the Australian Government announced its decision to relocate the USI Office from Canberra to Adelaide, as part of its decentralisation agenda to promote economic activity in Australia’s regions.

We are happy to announce that the Adelaide office is now up and running and we look forward to continuing to working with you and to providing you with high quality customer service and communications.

Photo of the new Adelaide office in action

OAIC Report

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) recently undertook a privacy assessment of the USI Office's management of personal information under the Student Identifiers Act (Cth) 2014.

The USI Office collects personal information for the purposes of assigning USIs to students, verifying students' identities, and providing students with access to transcripts.

A student's authenticated Vocational Education and Training (VET) transcript is a document prepared by the Student Identifiers Registrar that sets out information relating to training undertaken by the student. Under the SI Act, the USI Office facilitates access to all or part of this transcript when certain conditions are met. This is known as the Transcript Service.

The purpose of the assessment was to determine whether the USI Office is taking reasonable steps to implement practices, procedures and systems relating to its Transcript Service in accordance with the Privacy Act (Cth) 1988’ and the Privacy (Australian Government Agencies - Governance) APP Code 2017.

We are awaiting the final report from the OAIC, however exit interview and initial feedback from the OAIC was complimentary. The OAIC expressed a view that the USI Office has:

  • taken a 'privacy by design' approach to designing and operating the system it uses to manage transcripts
  • a privacy-aware culture that is supported by ongoing training, refresher courses and awareness initiatives
  • taken a proactive approach to privacy management by establishing an effective privacy organisational structure
  • comprehensive policies and procedures to help ensure that personal information is managed an open and transparent way.

The final OAIC report will be available soon on the USI website.

Eighth edition of TRANSPARENT now available

A new edition of our privacy e-newsletter, TRANSPARENT, is now available.

This newsletter focuses on data breaches, with some very useful resources to help you to prepare and respond if and when the need arises.

Inside this edition:

  • What does APP 8 say about disclosing personal information to an overseas recipient?
    • What is an 'overseas recipient'?
    • What does it mean to disclose personal information to an overseas recipient?
    • How is 'disclosure' different to the 'use' of personal information?
    • Taking reasonable steps to ensure an overseas recipient does not breach the APPs
    • What are the exceptions?
  • Does the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) apply to my organisation?
  • Recap of past TRANSPARENT editions
  • OAIC resources

Read the next edition now.

All editions of TRANSPARENT can be found on the USI website.

Create date: 
18 July 2019