General Enquiry Collection Notice

This Collection Notice explains the collection of your personal information by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) through the General Enquiry form (the form) and/or the General Enquiries 1300 telephone service (the phone service). The purpose of both the form and the phone service is to provide you with a way of contacting the ABS with general enquiries or in relation to ABS business. 

To communicate with you about your enquiry we may collect the following personal information: 

• your email address 
• your phone number  

Additional information that may be collected by the free text box on the form, or during the phone call, could be further personal or sensitive information, including but not limited to: 

• Opinions or beliefs of preferences, activities, political or religious 
• Gender or sexual orientation 
• Cultural status 
• Disability and health information 

The ABS will collect the personal or sensitive information provided and only use the relevant solicited personal information for the business function of responding to the enquiry or for referral to another ABS business unit for managing the enquiry. 

Additionally, the ABS may collect personal or sensitive information you provide by audio recording and a transcript of the conversation. This is to support ABS staff for training, coaching and quality purposes or any other relevant business functions required by the ABS. You may withdraw your consent to the recording at any time during the call and the recording and transcription will be stopped by the ABS staff member.  

The ABS uses a 3rd party cloud platform known as Genesys, to store the audio recordings and transcripts from the phone service.  All data stored in Genesys cloud are in locations in Australia.   

Personal and sensitive information collected by the phone service or the form is held within the secure ABS environment and managed by authorised ABS staff in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988, its Australian Privacy Principles and any other relevant legislation.  

The ABS will use personal or sensitive information for the purposes mentioned above.  The ABS will not disclose personal or sensitive information outside the ABS to any 3rd parties unless required by law, and Genesys will be contacted for systems support and issues related to the ABS only. 

The retention and deletion of personal or sensitive information will be managed by the relevant ABS business unit managing the enquiry in accordance with the ABS Records Authority and any other relevant legislation. 

The ABS Privacy Policy for Managing and Operating Our Business has information about how you can make a complaint if you feel the ABS has not adequately protected your privacy. The Policy describes how the ABS will respond to your complaint, and what you can do if you are not satisfied with our response. 

You can contact the ABS Privacy Officer (details below) who will respond to enquiries or assist with complaints.

By email: privacy@abs.gov.au 

By post: ABS Privacy Officer 
Australian Bureau of Statistics 
Locked Bag 10, Belconnen ACT 2617