This site is owned and operated by the Greater Shepparton City Council (Council) using software licensed from Social Pinpoint. For details on how the Council collects and protects your personal information, refer to its Privacy Policy below. For details of how Social Pinpoint may access personal information, please refer to Social Pinpoint’s Privacy Policy.

Council takes the privacy of the participants using this site very seriously.

Our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information is regulated by the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014. You can find more information about your privacy rights at the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner.

This privacy statement applies to this website, “Shaping Greater Shepp”. For information about the broader collection and use of personal information by the Council, please refer to our website Privacy Statement and our corporate Privacy Policy.

What information do we collect?

Site visitor data

This website collects information for statistical and system administration purposes. This includes:

  • Your server (or IP) address
  • The day and time you visited our site
  • The pages that you access within this site including how long you spend on each
  • Your route through this site (the sequence of pages and other content that you visit)
  • The operating system you are using
  • Any documents, images or videos that you download from the service
  • Your rough geographic location
  • The language of your browser
  • Your internet service provider
  • The type of browser and version you are using.

To the extent that this data could make you identifiable, Council will not attempt to identify individuals from the records the server automatically generates unless necessary to investigate a breach of law or regulation.

Member registration

If you are a registered user, we may, in addition to the above data and depending on the nature of the consultation, collect the following information:

  • Full name, gender, post code, address, email address and age bracket
  • Username and password for this site
  • Subscription by you to other (optional) electronic communications from us
  • Topics about which you have indicated an interest in being consulted or informed.

User feedback

We collect information that you provide via this website’s feedback tools. Even if you are not a registered member of this site, we may request personal information for the purpose of ensuring a varied range of submissions, or to provide you with news and updates about the projects you interact with. This information may include:

  • your name
  • your email address
  • your phone number
  • the organisation you work for
  • your job title
  • your age/gender demographic
  • your relationship with Council and/or the subject of a specific consultation

In addition this may also include information specifically relating to the consultation project you are interacting with, including:

  • comments and votes in forums
  • stories
  • surveys
  • interactive maps
  • quick polls
  • any other feedback you provide.

Cookies

Cookies are used on our site, but they do not collect any personal information. For the most part they are sessional and just contain system-generated values to identify the user's session for statistical and system administration purposes only.

We collect the data and information through a combination of Google Analytics, server logs and tools within the functionality of the site, using data security protocols.

Social media

If you register or log in to Shaping Greater Shepp via Facebook we will verify your details with Facebook but will not store your Facebook account information.

Facebook may also place a cookie on your browser. Please view the Facebook Data Policy for more details. By linking your Shaping Greater Shepp account to your Facebook profile, you also accept the Facebook’s Terms and Conditions.

Links

Our privacy statement does not apply to other websites we may link to. We recommend you read the relevant privacy statement when you access another site.


How will we use and disclose your information?

We use the personal information about you to:

  • administer the site and manage your account
  • identify when you sign into your account
  • send you newsletters and information, but only when you have agreed to us sending you this information or when the information is necessary to assist with the administration of the site
  • respond to queries that you have contacted us about
  • attribute content that you post on the site to you
  • analyse use of the site to inform ongoing improvements and enhancements
  • inform policy decisions by Council
  • for any other purposes that we indicate to you when we request your personal information.

Content that you post on the site publicly, will be able to be viewed by everyone who uses the site. Each post will contain your username and any publicly available reports derived from consultations may include quotes from participants in forums, surveys and other consultation tools.

Moderation

By monitoring this additional information that you provide, we are able to protect the integrity of the discussions from individuals and groups who may attempt to unduly influence the outcomes of a consultation process. For example, we check to ensure each user has a single email account. We also review the site to protect it from spam or trolls.

This information is analysed and interpreted by Council staff and selected consultants to help inform the creation of better projects, plans and policies.

Third Parties

We may also disclose personal information to third parties, and you consent to us disclosing your personal information, for the following purposes:

  • consultants of the Council who perform various services for and on behalf of Greater Shepparton City Council. These contractors have agreed to be bound by the provisions of the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014. Information provided to these contractors is limited to contact details provided by you whilst contacting us
  • other local governments and State government departments, in accordance with the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 and for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

Access and correction

Requests for access to and correction of documents containing personal information and held by the Council, are handled under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and can be addressed to the:

Governance Compliance Officer
Greater Shepparton City Council
Locked Bag 1000
SHEPPARTON VIC 3632
council@shepparton.vic.gov.au


How do we store and protect your information?

When you sign up for a user account you provide two types of information:

  1. publicly available information
  2. information available to both Council and Social Pinpoint.

Publicly available information

Publicly available information is limited to your username and any comments you leave under that name in the forums or other feedback tools on this website.

Content that you post on the site publicly, will be able to be viewed by everyone who uses the site. Each post will contain your username and any publicly available reports from consultations, and may include quotes from participants in forums, surveys and other consultation tools

Please note that Council is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) legislation. The Freedom of Information Act 1982 gives individuals and corporations a general right of access to documents held by Council. This includes documents created by Council, documents held by contracted service providers and documents supplied to Council by external organisations or individuals.

Information available to both Council and Social Pinpoint includes:

  • all information from the sign-up form
  • comments, questions, stories, guestbook posts
  • survey responses, quick poll responses, map pins
  • general site activity such as document downloads, videos viewed, images viewed etc.
  • information on the technology used to access the site.

Hosting

Regardless of whether you are a registered user, we will retain any communications that you send to us in accordance with the Victorian Public Records Act 1973. The personal information you submit through Shaping Greater Shepp will generally be hosted in Victoria and New South Wales but may be hosted on occasion in New Zealand. Please be aware that New Zealand may not have privacy protections substantially similar to Victoria.

Where data in Google Analytics is stored offsite, we ensure this is depersonalised and cannot be used to identify specific individuals. Where data and information is collected via the site’s servers and tools, this is managed through our data security protocols and processes.

Policy updates

We may update the content of this Privacy Policy from time to time for any reason. The updated version of the Privacy Policy will apply to you as soon as it is posted on the website, so we suggest that each time you return to the consultation website you should review the Privacy Policy (and the Terms of Use) to make sure you are aware of our most up-to-date policy.


When will we contact you?

We may send you information and announcements from time to time by email or via social media networks.

You can choose to receive newsletters and other updates from us by email. If you choose this but then change your mind, you can unsubscribe at any time by following the process set out in the emails and newsletters that we send you.


Contact us

To contact us about our Privacy Policy, compliance with any applicable privacy laws, or to modify or delete your personal data, please email Council’s Governance Compliance Officer at council@shepparton.vic.gov.au. The Governance Compliance Officer will review all messages received and respond to each message upon due consideration. We may require further information to respond to your message.




Appendix – The Privacy Act and the APPs

The Privacy Act and the APPs set out the core requirements for the protection of personal information in Australia. Please read the Privacy Policy above and this Appendix carefully and contact us at the details above if you have any questions.

How do I access, change or delete my personal information?

In some cases you may be able to access and correct your personal information by logging into your account, where you can update your personal details.

You may also request a copy of, changes to, or deletion of, the personal information we hold, and we will act on this request within a reasonable period of time unless we are legally permitted to refuse to do so, in which case we will provide you with details of our refusal in writing.

Council will endeavour to respond to your request or inquiry within 30 days.

How do I make a complaint?

If you wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details above and provide us with full details of the complaint. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take in response to your complaint. If you are not satisfied with our response you also have the right to contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Will my personal information be transferred overseas?

In very rare cases where we disclose your personal information to third parties in our Privacy Policy, these third parties may store, transfer or access personal information outside of Australia, including but not limited to the United States of America and the Philippines.

For example, the consultation feedback you provide may be sent to automated web services overseas for sentiment analysis.

We will only disclose your personal information to countries with laws which protect your personal information in a way which is substantially similar to the Australian Privacy Principles or we will take such steps as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure the third party protects your personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles.