Privacy Awareness Week is a global campaign that highlights the importance of privacy and raises awareness for public sector agencies about how to protect the personal information of the people we serve.

Privacy Awareness Week NSW takes place from 1 – 7 May 2023 and this year’s theme is Back to Basics: Privacy foundations in NSW and will focus on reminding agencies and citizens of the fundamentals of privacy, and highlight basic steps we can all take to keep personal information secure.

The Department of Communities and Justice is a proud Champion of Privacy Awareness Week NSW 2023.

To celebrate the week, we will be hosting a Privacy Forum and Panel Discussion on 1 May 2023 from 10:00AM to 11:00AM. The event will take place via MS Teams.

Attendees will be addressed by the Department’s Secretary, Michael Tidball on how we can raise the profile of privacy in our work across the Department and our contracted service providers and work together to better protect and handle our clients’ information. This will be followed by a Panel Discussion between senior staff working in the privacy, contract management and program and policy design space across the Department.

The event will focus on this year’s theme Back to Basics. Specifically:

That personal information handled by contracted service providers in delivering services on behalf of the Department under a contract is subject to the obligations under NSW privacy law;
The role and obligations of programs and policy teams, contract managers and service providers in managing information handling practices and privacy breaches;
Common sense and practical information protection practices that can be adopted to meet our security obligations;
The introduction of the Mandatory Data Breach Scheme in November 2023 and what that means for the Department and our contracted service providers; and
How privacy-by-design and greater privacy maturity and awareness can improve information handling practices across the Department and our service providers.

For more information about Privacy Awareness Week 2023, go to www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/PAW2023