About ACER

ACER Privacy Policy

Protecting your privacy is important to ACER.

Every time we collect or otherwise deal with your personal information, we will be regulated by the National Privacy Principles contained within the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). ACER has developed this Privacy Statement to inform you about how ACER will collect, hold, use, and disclose personal information of our customers or other individuals, how individuals can gain access to personal information held by us and how an individual may inquire about how we deal with personal information.

Collection of your personal information

We only collect your personal information where that personal information is necessary for one or more of our functions or activities. Depending on your relationship with us, this information may include, but is not limited to the following information:
Name
Address
Email address
Telephone number
Registration information for ACER testing programs
Test answers
Survey information
Information about your use of ACER Products or Services

When collecting this personal information, we will do so only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way.

When collecting personal information about you which, for the purposes of the Privacy Act is regarded as sensitive information or health information, we will collect that information from you or from third parties only with your consent.

At or before the time we collect personal information about you (or if that is not practicable, as soon as practicable thereafter), we will provide you with a statement outlining certain basic facts concerning us and our information handling practices as required by the Privacy Act.

Where it is reasonable and practicable to do so, we will only collect personal information about you directly and not from third parties. However, in some instances, this will not be practicable. If we collect personal information about you from a third party then we will take reasonable steps to ensure that you receive the information that we are obliged to make you aware of. This may involve us contacting you directly, or a third party discharging our obligations on our behalf.

Use and disclosure of your personal information

ACER collects, uses and discloses your personal information for a range of purposes. These purposes depend largely upon your relationship with us.

We will use personal information for the primary purpose for which it was collected. The primary purpose of collection is the main reason we collect your personal information in the first instance. For example, if you are a customer of ACER, the primary purpose may be to facilitate your purchase of an ACER Product or Service, or if you are a job applicant it may be to conduct the recruitment exercise to select ACER staff.

Generally speaking, ACER uses and discloses personal information for purposes such as:
• to provide ACER Products and Services
• to conduct educational research
• to provide educational assessment and testing programs

ACER sometimes contracts out various services associated with our functions and activities. This may involve the disclosure of your personal information to other persons and organisations, both within Australia and overseas. In general these include disclosure (where necessary) within ACER and to service providers that assist us to provide ACER products or services such as insurance companies, credit providers and those that assist us in tailoring our products and services to our client needs.

Where ACER does disclose your personal information to other parties it has in place
arrangements or understandings with those third parties to ensure that your personal information is handled in a manner consistent with our obligations under this privacy policy. Where appropriate, we will ensure that your personal information is de-identified before being used or destroyed or de-identified if it is no longer necessary that it be retained.

The types of persons and organisations to which may disclose your personal information include the following:
• organisations with whom we have arrangements or agreements for the purpose of promoting
our products or services and any agents used by us in administering such arrangements or
agreements;
• our agents, contractors and external advisers who carry on our functions and activities or who
assist us to carry on our functions and activities from time to time;
• payment systems operators;
• other parties to whom we are authorised or required by law to disclose information.
• schools, educational systems, psychologists, human resource practitioners and others who have contracted with ACER for the provision of its products and services. For example, if you are a candidate for an ACER scholarship test ACER will supply your test results to those schools to which you have applied for a scholarship.

Consent and sensitive information

We will only collect sensitive or health information from you or about you with your consent. By supplying sensitive or health information about yourself in writing you will be taken to have given your consent to our collection of that information.

In most instances, when we collect sensitive information directly from you, we will obtain your consent to use it for our various purposes. When we obtain such information from a third party we will usually enlist that third party to obtain consent on our behalf. Where this occurs, we shall comply with the Privacy Act at all times.

Security and quality of your personal information

ACER will take reasonable steps to ensure that any of your personal information that we collect, store, use or disclose is accurate, complete and up to date.

We will also take reasonable steps to protect your personal information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure in accordance with the requirements of our privacy policy and the Privacy Act.

Requests for access to and correction of your personal information

You have a right of access to your personal information.

You may request details of the personal information we hold about you, by writing to or
contacting us at any time.

No fee will be charged for making the request. We may charge a fee for the provision of this information to cover administrative costs. However, we will inform you of any fee at the time a request is made.

In general, we will allow access to the personal information we hold about you. However, we may deny access to personal information to you to the extent that:

• providing access would pose a serious threat (or in the case of personal information other than health information, a serious and imminent threat) to the life or health of any individual;
  or
• providing access would have an unreasonable impact upon the privacy of other individuals;
  or
• your request for access is frivolous or vexatious;
  or
• it is otherwise appropriate for us to deny access in accordance with the Privacy Act.

We will not deny you access to any personal information following an access request without providing you with a reason for the denial.

Where providing access would reveal evaluative information generated within ACER in
connection with a commercially sensitive decision-making process, we may give you an explanation for the commercially sensitive decision rather than direct access to the information.

If you are aware that any of your personal information is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date following an access request, or because your circumstances have changed, please inform us so that we can update our records. We will correct any incorrect personal information and will not refuse to make a correction without providing you with a reason for the refusal. However, if we do refuse to make a correction, we will take reasonable steps to place with the disputed information a statement from you claiming that the disputed information in your opinion is not accurate, complete or up-to-date.

CHANGES TO THE PRIVACY POLICY STATEMENT

We may change our policies and update the Privacy Policy Statement from time to time. We may send you an updated Privacy Policy Statement using methods we choose from time to time, and may publish it on our website at www.acer.edu.au

To get a copy of our most current Privacy Policy Statement, please contact us at the address above.

Inquiries

If you have any concerns or inquiries about how we deal with your personal information, you should contact us.

We are committed to discussing with you any concerns you may have and to addressing these concerns promptly and appropriately. You may require more general information from us concerning how we handle your personal information and we will take reasonable steps to provide this to you. All correspondence should be directed to:

The Manager Legal and Corporate Services
The Australian Council for Educational Research Limited
19 Prospect Hill Road
Camberwell
Victoria
Australia 3124
Email farkota@acer.edu.au