Privacy Statement / Collection Notice
This site is owned and operated by the Mornington Peninsula Shire using software licensed from Harvest Digital Planning (Harvest). For details on how the Shire collects and protects your personal information, refer to its Privacy Policy below. For details of how Harvest may access personal information, please refer to Harvest’s Privacy Policy.
Mornington Peninsula Shire takes the privacy of the participants using this site very seriously.
Our collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information is regulated by the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic). You can find more information about your privacy rights at the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner.
This privacy statement applies to Shape Our Future. By accessing this web page you consent to your information being used in accordance with this collection notice. For information about the broader collection and use of personal information by the Shire, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
What information do we collect?
Site visitor data
Shape Our Future 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 Shape Our Future including how long you spend on each
- Your route through Shape Our Future (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, the Mornington Peninsula Shire 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, postcode, address, email address, and age bracket
- Username and password for Shape Our Future
- 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 the Shape Our Future feedback tools. This includes:
- comments and votes in forums
- stories
- surveys
- interactive maps
- quick polls
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 Shape Our Future via Facebook we will verify your details with Facebook but will not store your Facebook account information.
Links
Our privacy statement does not apply to the websites of other service providers we may link to. We recommend you read the relevant privacy statement of the service provider when you access their 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 in to 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
- conduct research, or compile or analyse statistics, in the public interest
- analyse the use of the site to inform ongoing improvements and enhancements
- inform policy decisions of the Mornington Peninsula Shire
- 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 from consultations and 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 Mornington Peninsula Shire staff and selected consultants to help inform the creation of better projects, plans, and policies.
Third Parties
We may also disclose/transfer personal information to third parties listed below, and you consent to us disclosing/transferring your personal information for the purposes set out in this privacy statement:
- consultants/service providers of the Mornington Peninsula Shire who perform various services for and on behalf of Mornington Peninsula Shire.
- other local governments and State government departments, in accordance with the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014.
Access and correction
Requests for access to and correction of documents containing personal information and held by the Mornington Peninsula Shire are handled under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.
You can learn more on our Freedom of Information website page.
How do we store and protect your information?
When you sign up for a user account you provide two types of information:
- publicly available information
- information available to both Mornington Peninsula Shire and Harvest.
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 Shape Our Future
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 Mornington Peninsula Shire 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 Mornington Peninsula Shire and Harvest Digital Planning 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 Public Records Act 1973 (Vic).
Where data in Google Analytics is stored offsite, we ensure this is depersonalised and cannot be used to identify specific individuals.
Policy updates
We may update the content of this privacy statement from time to time for any reason. The updated version of the privacy statement 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).
Accessing, Updating and Deleting Personal and Health Information
Individuals can request to access or update their personal or health information by contacting the Shire’s Freedom of Information Officer via email foi@mornpen.vic.gov.au or phone 5950 1355.
Individuals can request their personal and health information held by the Shire be deleted by contacting the Shire’s Privacy Officer via email privacy@mornpen.vic.gov.au. Requests for deletion of personal and health information will be met by the Shire unless it is legally permitted to refuse to do so, in which case details of the refusal will be provided to the individual in writing.
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.
Who do I contact for more information?
You can contact the Shire’s Privacy Officer at privacy@mornpen.vic.gov.au if you have any enquires concerning Council's privacy procedures.
