Page 3872 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 30 November 2021
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the way she was treated whilst trying to get her injuries compensated for and properly treated. And then this on top of it!
The following details were released: claimants’ birth year, claimants’ gender, details of their occupation, details of where they are or were employed, their job titles, the date of claimants’ injuries, the type of claimants’ injuries, the location on the body of claimants’ injuries, and the compensation and treatment costs funded for these claimants. This is the most personal information that is directly related to their health status. It is scandalous that it was freely available on an ACT government website for three years because no-one in this government seemingly knew or cared about the sensitive nature of this information. It reflects breathtaking arrogance.
Whether or not the information should have been protected by the Privacy Act 2014 or the Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act 1997 turns upon whether this information can be connected to an individual’s specific health status. The Canberra Times has been able to connect this information to individuals. People who work in the ACT workers compensation system have easily been able to link this information to people that they know and have assisted. This, I believe, is clearly health information that should have been protected under the health records act, and that is why, on Thursday, I wrote to the Health Services Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission demanding an investigation, if at all possible. The legal framework is a distraction.
My office has received numerous calls from Canberrans who know that they are on the list because they have been injured while working for the ACT government. Some of these people have incurred psychological injuries by working in the ACT government because they were both frontline workers and, when they got injuries such as post-traumatic stress injury, they were bullied by senior management. The ACT government has released the details of their claims, some of which are the result of long, long-fought battles with Comcare or with the current insurer, online. Unbelievable!
This breach raises major questions in my mind about how personal health data like this is managed in the ACT government on a day-to-day basis. Is it stored on shared drives, open to anyone? Is it emailed between directorates? Do ACT public servants get training in privacy and their legal obligation to protect people’s private information? Given the level of transparency and accountability demonstrated by this government, it is not surprising that there is little information publicly available about such matters.
One relevant, but admittedly old, report was prepared by the ACT Ombudsman when reviewing the ACT Revenue Office’s handling of revenue objections in 2007. After reviewing the ACT Revenue Office’s records management, the Ombudsman observed that the review of files by the Ombudsman revealed a pattern of shortcomings in the records management systems of the Revenue Office. The Ombudsman also observed:
No file had folio numbers and files were not consistently maintained in an orderly manner to facilitate folioing. Records were often not in date or event order.
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