The purpose of this webpage policy is to clarify our position on the collection, holding, use and disclosure by Footprint Directions of personal information relating to an individual.

Footprint Directions understands that privacy is important to you, and is committed to complying with the National Privacy Principles (NPPs), which are contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act). From 21 December 2001, the NPPs have governed how organisations in the private sector handle 'personal information' (which is basically information or an opinion which can identify you).

This document is copywritten to Jane Oliver and should not be copied without written consent.

1. Collection of Personal Information

Footprint Directions is a Social, Economic and Environmental consultancy service. We may collect personal information from you when you:

·        have business dealings with us;

·        use our consultancy and design services; and

·        attend forums, workshops, or events that we are running or delivering.

In the course of doing business with you,  we may collect basic business contact information from you (e.g. your name, title and work contact details). In some circumstances you may sometimes tell us information about yourself or your family that is considered under the Privacy Act to the “sensitive information”. (eg. if you tell us you are a carer of a child with a disability and that you live in Rosebank, or that you live on the farm where your office is located, or that you’re involved in the redesign of solar-passive features of your local religious facility).

In relation to longer-term working relationships with you, it is possible that we also glean information about you and your life outside of work. For example, this may occur when we

• visit your farm to develop a soil improvement programme, or

• when we run a workshop with you and your family members who might be staff.

We might also get to meet your partners, or perhaps even your children in the course of a many-years working relationship. We don’t usually store this kind of information in writing. We make a point of avoiding storing birthdays, home addresses, names of children and their schools, astrological data, or any anniversary dates in our systems.

2. Use of Personal Information

We need to collect personal information so that we can provide our products and services, and conduct our business. Here are some typical examples:

·        When you enrol in a workshop or forum, we might sometimes collect an address from you which is also your residential address. We collect your email address to communicate receipt of your data, and to send you Tax Invoices and Receipts, confirmations of attendance and other workshop materials.

·        We also collect personal information so that we can carry out team development profiles.

·        The most explicit type of personal information we would likely gather in carrying out our work is the results of your individual Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) report in a Jungian Type workshop or private session. The ethics of using this MBTI information are carefully tested by the Australian Psychologists Press who monitor our work. With your consent we would send only you (and not your employer) information about your Psychological Profile, or your “Result”, and we might also send you an update about your “Type” and the work environment.

·        Other information of a personal nature we may glean from working with you is usually subject to agreement.

·        When preparing a design for your home or office, we might ask you significant detail about your living arrangements including the numbers of people living with you, the purpose proposed for a room/space, and/or other details that are considered by individuals to be personal. We do not publish information about your personal life.

·        When assisting your business, we might glean information about your employees based on their personnel records. This information is considered highly confidential and we usually seek to prevent our clients from revealing such information unless it’s absolutely necessary to the consultancy outcome, and the employee has given written consent for us to be privy to such information. We offer employees the opportunity to enter into a written, binding agreement with us concerning confidentiality.

·        When developing your soil programmes for you, we may uncover information about your waste practises that some people consider highly sensitive. We do not publish this kind of information.

·        When doing an Office or Residential “Utilities Audit” we may collect information about your use of water, electricity, gas and other resources. We do not publish this information about you in any identifiable manner. We may occasionally publish a summary of many clients’ data, but only in “trend” form.

If, at any time, you do not wish to receive or contribute to these kinds of communications, please let us know. Our contact details are set out at the end of this Privacy Policy. Footprint Directions’ policy is to only use personal information collected from business contacts for the business purpose for which it was collected.

3. Disclosure of Personal Information

Footprint Directions does not sell, rent or trade personal information about you to or with third parties. Personal information may be disclosed outside of Footprint Directions in the circumstances described below:

• Where you tell us (in writing) to send your details to a third party

• Where you have given consent in writing to a third party (eg. The Soil Foodweb Institute) to send you material about their events that we are organising

• Where you tell us (in writing) that you want to receive information from a related network partner.

Otherwise, Footprint Directions will only disclose personal information if this is required by law or permitted under the Privacy Act.

4. Security of Personal Information

Footprint Directions takes reasonable steps to ensure the security of your personal information. Our IT systems are password protected and we conduct regular audit and data integrity checks. We frequently, routinely and fully update our anti-virus software in order to protect our systems (and the data contained in those systems) from computer viruses.

In addition, all Footprint Directions employees and associates are required, as a condition of employment or contract, to treat personal information held by Footprint Directions as confidential.

5. Access and Correction

Under the Privacy Act, you have the right to seek access to your personal information handled by Footprint Directions. You also have the right to ask us to update or correct your personal information when it is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

If you wish to access the personal information that Footprint Directions holds about you, please set out your request in writing, using the contact details set out at the end of this Privacy Policy.

To provide you with access to your personal information held by us on our current records, Footprint Directions can provide you with a copy of the relevant personal information (ordinarily, an electronic print-out or a photocopy). Footprint Directions will not charge you for the cost of providing this type of access to these current records.

For legal and administrative reasons, Footprint Directions may also archive non current records containing personal information, such as back up data files and off site storage. Please be aware that you only have a legal right to seek access to personal information about you collected by us prior to 21 December 2001 if we use or disclose that personal information after that date, and if providing access will not cause Footprint Directions an unreasonable administrative burden or unreasonable expense.

If you do wish to seek access to personal information collected by us prior to 21 December 2001, please contact us to discuss whether access may be available. Please note that if we do provide access to old records, we may charge you for the cost of providing such access.

If you are of the view that personal information about you is inaccurate or out of date, or if you have any other queries about access and correction, please contact us using the contact details set out below.

6. Online Privacy

We sometimes collect personal information through our web site. This will be limited to

• your name,

• email address,

• telephone number and

• business contact details, such as your company name and your job title.

Like most web site providers, we generate statistics about how many people visit our site and what they look at. We use web logs and cookies to do this. This enables us to keep our site relevant and useful. However, generally this information will not identify you.

Most web browsers are set by default to accept cookies. However, if you do not wish to receive cookies you may set your browser to either prompt or refuse cookies.

Sometimes our web site contains links to other web sites, for your convenience and information. When you access a web site other than www.footprintdirections.com, please understand that Footprint Directions is not responsible for the privacy practices of that site. We suggest that you review the privacy policies of each site you visit.

We occasionally send bulk email messages to clients about special events such as the Soil Symposium or a Business Workshop. You will always be offered the choice to be deleted from our mailing list.

We do not send discriminatory jokes (which means generally all jokes), Powerpoint® presentations regarding life or religious philosophies, or personal invitations to our clients that involve our private lives. However, we respect our clients’ right to send such communications to us.

7. Further Information and Contacting Footprint Directions

This Footprint Directions Privacy Policy may change from time to time. The Footprint Directions Privacy Policy will be made available to anyone who requests it, whether at our offices or by use of our website.

If you have any questions or comments about the Footprint Directions Privacy policy, or if you wish to make a complaint about how Footprint Directions have handled personal information about you, please contact us, using the contact details below:

Email jane@footprintdirections.com 

Post Footprint Directions: 371 Emerson Road, Rosebank  NSW  2480

Telephone: +61 2 6688 2081    Fax: +61 2 6688 2081

For further information about privacy issues and the protection of privacy visit the Australian Federal Privacy Commissioner's web site at www.privacy.gov.au, and the Privacy Act 1988 www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/pa1988108/.

For information about on-line privacy see the draft Privacy Code from the Internet Industry Association at www.iia.net.au/codes.html.