Privacy policy
The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) is committed to protecting your privacy. This page explains how we handle personal information collected through our website.
The Public Guardian is also authorised to collect, use and disclose information in accordance with the following legislation:
See our full Privacy Policy for details of how we manage personal information in all our services and activities.
Information collected via websites
When you visit our website our web servers make a record of your visit and record anonymous information for statistical purposes only. This information is:
- the type of browser, computer platform and screen resolution you are using
- your traffic patterns through our site such as:
- the date and time of your visit to the site
- the pages you accessed, and documents downloaded
- the previous page you visited before visiting our site
- the internet address of the server accessing our site
- demographic data such as: gender, age and interests.
We use this information to analyse user activity to improve user experience on our websites.
If you don’t want your data collected in this way, you can opt out by adjusting your Ad Settings or installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. This add-on instructs the Google Analytics JavaScript running on websites to prohibit sending information to Google Analytics. This information will only be made available to our department.
Social networking services
We may use X (Twitter), Facebook (Meta), Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn to communicate with the community about our work. When you communicate with us using these services, we collect the personal information you give us when communicating on these networking services.
X, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), YouTube and LinkedIn all have their own privacy policies.
Use of cookies
Our website uses cookies to collect information about our visitors and to track advertising campaign data.
A 'cookie' is a small file that is sent to your computer when you visit our website. When you visit our website again, the cookie provides us with information about your interactions with our website. Cookies may store user preferences and other information. You can set your browser to refuse cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some of our website features or services may not function properly without cookies.
The information collected about you using cookies won’t normally be your personal information because you won’t be identified or reasonably identifiable to us from it.
Emails and online forms
If you send us an email or complete an online form, we will collect your email address and any other personal information you choose to include.
This information will only be used for the purpose for which you provided it, and will not be added to a mailing list without your consent, unless required by law.
Disclosure of personal information
We will not disclose your personal information to a third party unless:
- you agree to the disclosure
- it is authorised or required by law.
Security
We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. However, as the internet is not a secure environment, we cannot guarantee the security of information you send to us online.
Our website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these external sites.
Access to your information
The Right to Information Act 2009 (the RTI Act) gives a right of access to information held by government (including documents held by our organisation), unless, on balance it would be contrary to the public interest to release the information. It also provides a right to seek amendment of your own personal information.
See about right to information and privacy for more details including how to request information or amend your personal information held by us.