Privacy

The Judicial Commission of Victoria values the privacy of every individual's personal information and health information. The Judicial Commission of Victoria is committed to protecting the information it collects and uses by compliance with its obligations under the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic) (External link) and the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic) (External link). Protecting your privacy and your personal and health information is an important aspect of the way we create, organise and implement our activities online and offline.

This Website Privacy Statement applies to this Website which is operated by the Judicial Commission of Victoria under the domain name www.judicialcommission.vic.gov.au (External link) ('Website'). This Website Privacy Statement explains how your personal information (being information capable of identifying you as an individual) will be handled as you access and interact with this Website. The practices outlined in this Website Privacy Statement are subject to any rights we may have to handle personal information in accordance with law.

The personal information we collect via this Website includes:

• the content of any electronic forms you submit via this Website, requesting us to provide services or information, or take actions
• any messages or comments you submit to us via this Website or to email addresses displayed on this Website, which may include personal information such as your name, email address and telephone number.

Pages on the Website may be coded with Google Analytics software. This is not transparent to the user, as the software makes use of an invisible image at the bottom of the web page. This software stores a cookie in your browser, which contains a unique identifier, and sends information to Google Analytics. This enables Google Analytics to track the number of unique visitors to the site. In no way does this unique identifier identify a user personally. We do not and will not marry any data collected by Google Analytics with any personal information.

While you can browse this Website anonymously, without disclosing your personal information, we may not be able to provide the full range of services through this website if we are not provided with the information outlined above.

When you provide us with personal information about other individuals, we rely on you to make them aware:

• that such information will or may be provided to the Judicial Commission of Victoria
• of the types of third parties we may provide it to
• of the relevant purposes that we and such third parties will use it for
• how they can access it.

In addition to providing our services to you and carrying out your requests, we may use or disclose personal information that we collect about you for purposes including the following:

• for the purpose that we have collected the information
• purposes related to our research, planning, product and service development, security and testing
• purposes connected with the operation, administration, development or enhancement of this Website
• where we suspect that fraud or unlawful activity has been, is being or may be engaged in
• any other purposes required or authorised by law.

The personal information we collect from any documents provided by you to the Judicial Commission of Victoria as part of your complaint or referral which include personal information such as name, address and date of birth, will only be used for the purpose you have provided it, or for other purposes consistent with the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic) (External link). 

We may share personal information within the Judicial Commission of Victoria and with third parties including the judicial officer or VCAT member your complaint relates to, relevant heads of jurisdiction, members of an investigating panel, members of the Board of the Judicial Commission, the IBAC, the Victorian Inspectorate, the Attorney General and the Governor. The types of third parties to whom we may disclose that personal information includes our service providers who assist us in providing this website and our products and services such as organisations who provide archival, auditing, professional advisory, banking, mailhouse, delivery, recruitment, call centre, technology, research, utility and security services. We may also disclose your personal information to third parties acting on your behalf, for example your solicitor or interpreter.

If your complaint is deemed a protected disclosure under the Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012 (Vic) (External link) then it will be subject to greater protections and restrictions.

We have implemented technology and security policies, rules and measures to protect the personal information that we have under our control. However, you should be aware that there are risks in transmitting information across the internet. So while we strive to protect such information, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information transmitted to us online and individuals do so at their own risk.

Once any personal information comes into our possession, we will take reasonable steps to protect that information from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification and disclosure. If you are concerned about conveying sensitive material to us over the internet, you might prefer to contact us by telephone or mail. We will remove personal information from our system where it is no longer required (except where archiving is required).

We may preserve the content of any email or other electronic message that we receive. Any personal information contained in that message will only be used or disclosed in ways set out in this Website Privacy Statement.

This Website Privacy Statement does not extend beyond this Website. When following links to other websites from this Website, we recommend that you read the privacy statement of that website to familiarise yourself with its privacy practices.

This website's web server automatically records non-personal clickstream data. To the extent that any clickstream data could make you identifiable, we will not attempt to identify you from clickstream data unless required by law or to investigate suspected improper activity in relation to the website or to assist in law enforcement.

The following clickstream data are automatically recorded by this website's web server for statistical and system administration purposes only:

• your server address
• your top level domain name (e.g. .com, .au, .gov)
• the date and the time of your visit to the site
• the pages you accessed and downloaded
• the address of the last site you visited
• your operating system
• the type of browser you are using.

Like many websites, this Website may use cookies from time to time.

Cookies are small data files that a website is able to place on a user's hard drive to record aspects of that user's experience of the website. For example, we may use cookies to record that a user visited a particular section of the website, that their browsing software was a particular version or to ensure that online applications and transactions do not require you to re-input information when moving between web pages. In this way, cookies can improve the operation of the website, and make the experience more efficient, more enjoyable or more personalised. Importantly, in depositing information on a user's computer and referring to it later in the same session (sessional) or on a subsequent visit (persistent), cookies do not need to identify the user or record any personal information.

The default settings of browsers allow cookies, but users can easily take steps to erase cookies from their hard-drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. However, some parts of websites may not function fully for users that disallow cookies.

Please visit our Access to information page.

To contact the Judicial Commission of Victoria, please visit our Contact page.