This year’s Privacy Awareness Week will be held from 15 to 19 May, according to the Australian Government.

With an aim to foster good privacy practices, this year’s theme for Privacy Awareness Week is “trust and transparency”, which emphasises the importance of organisations handling personal information with care.
Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said there has been a 20 per cent increase in privacy complaints this financial year.

“This highlights just how Australian expectations of privacy are maturing each year. So I’m pleased that the latest release of our national privacy survey will be the focal point of this year’s Privacy Awareness Week,” Commissioner Pilgrim said. 

The Australian Community Attitudes to Privacy Survey 2017 will be released during the Privacy Awareness Week.

‘This will give us the latest understanding of Australians’ views on key concerns such as data breaches, social media, oversharing, notice and consent, government use of personal information, and ID theft. The results will offer Australian business and agencies an insight into community expectations about privacy and data protection,” Commissioner Pilgrim said.

Also, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is encouraging businesses and agencies to sign up as a partner for the Privacy Awareness week. 

Further, the OAIC will release practical tools during the awareness week to assist organisations understand and implement Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) within their system.

For more information about the Privacy Awareness Week, visit www.oaic.gov.au/paw. To join the conversation follow #2017PAW or @OAICgov.