If you work in IT, you really need to know about the Privacy Act 1993, because it is *really* relevant to what we do. You need to be aware of it for your own business, but also so that you can advise clients properly, and don’t design systems for them which breach the Act.

The Privacy Act restricts the use of “personal information”, which is defined in the Act as “information about an identifiable individual”.

The main part to be aware of are the 12 Privacy Principles set out in section 6.

The Privacy Commission has a summary of them here.

The ones that I think are probably the most relevant to Information Systems design are (and I’m paraphrasing here):

1. Personal information may only be collected for a lawful reason connected with the purpose of the organisation collecting it, and if it is necessary for that purpose.

2. Personal information must be collected directly from the person it’s about

5. An organisation which holds personal information must make sure it’s protected against loss, access, and misuse.

9. An organisation can’t keep personal information for longer than needed for the purpose for which it can lawfully be used (which leads to …)

10. If you colect personal information for one purpose you can’t use it for any other purpose, unless the individual concerned authorises it.

And here’s the one that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me  – I’ll just copy the whole thing:

The other principles are important too – I just think these are the ones that are most likely to come up when designing Information Systems.

For a great summary of the Privacy Act and other privacy-related issues check out the Privacy Commission web page at www.privacy.org.nz.

You can read the whole Privacy Act on the New Zealand Legislation website.

And I like this summary brochure from the Privacy Commission.

]]> http://kimhagen-hall.com/blog/index.php/archives/372/feed 0 http://kimhagen-hall.com/blog/index.php/archives/141 http://kimhagen-hall.com/blog/index.php/archives/141#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 01:19:52 +0000 Kim http://kimhagen-hall.com/blog/?p=141 Thanks to those who attended and contributed to my research presentation today (slides at www.slideshare.net/1kim).

Some of the comments:

Joanna from our Learning Skills Centre: students tell her that general study skills courses at the start of the semester do work, so questions the research that says they’re ineffective. However this may work best with more mature students.
Her belief is that the best results come from students who form groups and then help and support each other. Thanks Joanna – that’s exactly what I’d like to create online.
She also commented that information seems to be best received when from the course tutor/lecturer, as the student already respects their knowledge.

@dianefriis, our librarienne extraordinaire, points out that our library runs a lot of information literacy classes throughout the semester, which are subject-specific, and best with lecturer involvement.

@catspyjamasnz suggested the development of personal learning networks as an effective way to encourage students to help each other.

Gill in our School of Nursing told me about their online Masters students who formed a very supportive group – thanks Gill, I’ll talk to you more about what helped them do that.

It’s just so cool that EIT is filled with people who really care about helping our students succeed.

Kim.

Thanks @catspyjamasnz