What can I access about me?
You may request information through administrative access. Administrative access is a less formal process than making an FOI request.
Some examples of information that may be appropriate for administrative access include:
- your own personal information (minimum requirements of Australian Privacy Principle 12 under the Privacy Act must be met),
- data or statistics that are not already available online, or
- policies and guidelines that are not already available online.
Most requests for information or copies of documents can be dealt with informally and quickly — a phone call or email may be all that is required. You can contact us to informally request access to DHA information.
We are obliged, as a minimum, to deal with your requests to access your personal information in accordance with Australian Privacy Principle 12 under the Privacy Act.
For other documents, we will generally aim to provide you with administrative access to those documents within 30 days. Decisions to refuse documents under the administrative access are generally not reviewable.
However, you also have the right to make an FOI request for documents containing the information at any time. If we are unable to fulfil your administrative access request, we may ask you to make an FOI request for the information.
The Australian Privacy Act gives you the right to access your personal information.
To find out what personal information we may hold about you and how we use this information, you can go to our Privacy policy.
Your right to access your personal information is not absolute.
Where your information may cojoined with another person’s information, we may refuse access under some circumstances.
For example, spouse, contractor or address information.