Improving Personal Information Privacy Using The Privacy Impact Assessment Guide

Agencies deal with personal information on a daily basis. Aside from being a legal requirement, protection of personal information privacy is an issue to which the public is increasingly attaching importance. By demonstrating that it will deal appropriately with personal information an agency is likely to increase public confidence in its processes, improve community participation and generally obtain a good public reputation.

A Privacy Impact Assessment ("PIA") is essentially a risk management tool that is utilised by administrations internationally, including Australia, through which an agency is alerted at an early stage to privacy risks posed by existing or planned activities so that it can take steps to mitigate those risks. It involves the identification of a particular activity or project that might raise privacy issues, mapping the information flows that occur in the project and identifying how those processes impact on privacy. From there, recommendations about how the