Source: Privacy Commissioner
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards has welcomed the Governments plans to rethink the practice of collecting individual client level data from social service providers. The Government announced today that social service contracts will no longer require providers to disclose individual client level data until a new data protection and use policy is in place. This is in contrast to previous plans, which required service providers such as NGOs to provide information about individual clients in order to receive funding. This information included clients’ names, number of children and other social services they engaged with. Mr Edwards said I commend this pause in approach. Projects like this have the potential to do a lot of good by measuring and improving the efficacy of social services.
