Privacy Statement

Have Your Say Website Privacy Statement

What this statement covers

Greater Wellington Regional Council (Greater Wellington) has created this privacy statement to explain how we deal with your personal information collected by us on the Have Your Say website. Personal information is information about an identifiable individual – you.

Our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information addresses the requirements of the Privacy Act 2020. This Act is administered by the Ministry of Justice and overseen by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

External links

This website may contain links to other websites. Those links are provided for convenience and may not remain current or be maintained. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of linked websites and suggest you review the related privacy policies before using those websites.

The software platform this website runs on, and the associated technology operations, are provided by Bang the Table Pty Ltd. Here’s the company’s Privacy Policy.

What personal information do we collect?

The following information is collected directly from you. Your provision of this information is voluntary.

Profile information

When you register to use this website, we ask you to create a user name and password, and for your email address and which part of the Wellington Region you live in. We also ask which Greater Wellington-related topics you are interested in.

If you don’t register, you can still browse any publicly accessible sections of this website. However, you may be unable to provide submissions on some public consultations where registration is required.

As part of a consultation, we may also ask you for demographic information on your age, gender, and ethnicity to help us know whether we are reaching a range of people across the Wellington Region.

Engagement information

This is the content you create as part of your interactions with this website. This information can include responses to consultations which may be through surveys, comments on discussion forums, or any of the other engagement opportunities presented in the consultation.

We may also request your name, email address, and contact phone number if you wish to deliver your submission in person at a hearing related to the public consultation. If you don’t provide this information, we will not be able to contact you to appear at the formal hearing.

Usage information

We collect grouped data on usage of this website, such as the pages visited, documents downloaded, etc. This information is not linked to any named individuals.

Purposes for collecting your information

We collect the above information to:

Meet our public consultation obligations
Analyse the information to inform and advise governance bodies on the related decisions
Report on how successful the consultation was through related usage data (for example, the number of visits to the consultation webpage, number of documents downloaded, or number of surveys completed)
Communicate information to you about Greater Wellington’s other engagement opportunities (for example, other consultations you may be interested in) and community opportunities, projects events and other initiatives undertaken by Greater Wellington for the topics in which you indicated your interest when you registered.
Group demographic information such as age, gender, ethnicity and location to understand who we are reaching in our public consultations, and to help with planning to reach all parts of our community for future consultations
Respond to your enquiries relating to the public consultation.

Information collected through internal Greater Wellington staff consultations is used to inform the development of Greater Wellington’s related policies, processes, and initiatives.

Using your information

We will only use the personal information provided to us:

For the purpose/s you provide that information
For other reasons permitted by the Privacy Act 2020 (e.g. with your consent, for a directly-related purpose, or where the law permits or requires this use).

Data storage, security and accuracy

Greater Wellington has implemented measures to ensure that your personal information is kept safe and secure; is protected against loss, damage, misuse and unauthorised access; is kept accurate, current, complete, and relevant; and is not misleading.

These measures include:

Information stored on the Have Your Say website is kept secure by Bang the Table Pty Ltd, by: ISO27001 Compliance for information security management, regular application security and database monitoring, strict data access rules, network security support, and secure hosting infrastructure
This information is downloaded by Greater Wellington and kept in a secure folder on our document management system
Access to this secure folder is restricted to the relevant Greater Wellington project team and system administrators.

Sharing your information

Compiled information (e.g. submission themes and demographic analysis) will be shared in summaries, reports and presentations to decision makers (e.g. the relevant hearing committee and Council). No individual will be named in these documents, except where you request to have your submission heard in person at a formal hearing.

How long do we hold your personal information?

We will retain the personal information for the period stated in each consultation’s privacy statement.

You may ask us to remove or change the personal information collected during registration at any time.

Accessing and correcting your personal information

You can:

Ask us to confirm whether we hold personal information about you
Request access to that information by emailing us at privacy@gw.govt.nz
If applicable, ask us to correct that information (see above).

Once we have verified your identity, we will provide you with confirmation and access, unless we believe we should withhold the information under the Privacy Act 2020. We will deal with your request within 20 working days; and, if we decide to withhold, we will provide the reasons and supporting grounds.

Correction

If we:

Agree that your personal information needs to be corrected, we will do so and provide you with an amended record (if requested)
Refuse a request for correction, you are entitled to request that a statement is attached to the relevant personal information recording that the correction was sought but not made.

Your rights to access and correct any personal information we hold are subject to the Privacy Act 2020.

For further information about this privacy statement and our related information practices, please contact us on haveyoursay@gw.govt.nz.

If you wish to access or correct your personal information, please contact our Principal Privacy Officer at privacy@gw.govt.nz.

Complaints

If you consider we have breached your privacy, or there is a privacy matter that we cannot resolve, you can make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner at:

Phone 0800 803 909 (Monday to Friday 10am to 3pm)

Email enquiries@privacy.org.nz

Post Office of the Privacy Commissioner, PO Box 10094, Wellington 6143.