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Privacy Statement

General Privacy Statement

The Australian Government Procurement Information System, AusTender, is managed by the Department of Finance (Finance).

The Department of Finance seeks to adhere to the Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government World Wide Websites developed by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. In particular Finance seeks to comply with the Information Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (a copy of the Act is available at COMLAW the legal information retrieval system owned by the Attorney General's Department.

This privacy policy applies to all the publicly accessible pages on AusTender. Responsibility for the privacy policies or practices of third party sites, linked to AusTender, is beyond the control of the Commonwealth.

If you have any questions about AusTender, or the application of this privacy policy or wish to access information held, please contact the AusTender Help Desk (see Contact Us link).

Any information provided by users of AusTender will be treated in accordance with the Guidelines for Federal and ACT Government Websites (Guidelines) issued by the Federal Privacy Commissioner.

Information Collection

In accordance with the Guidelines, the Commonwealth collects and uses the following information in AusTender:

1.  System information

2.  Personal and organisational information

3.  Tender notification information.

System Information

For each page you access on the AusTender site, information that identifies the following is recorded:

  • IP (Internet Protocol) address of the machine which has accessed it
  • top-level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .au, .uk etc.)
  • address of your server
  • date and time of your visit to the site
  • pages accessed and documents downloaded
  • previous website visited
  • type of browser and operating system you have used.

The information collected during each visit is combined to produce reports in order to identify patterns of usage of AusTender. This will assist us in improving AusTender and the services offered on it.

The Commonwealth will not disclose or publish information that identifies individual machines, or potentially identifies sub-groupings of addresses, without consent or otherwise in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988.

Personal and Organisational Information

When you become a registered user of AusTender you are asked to provide the following information, some of which (those marked with *) is mandatory:

  • Email Address *
  • Password *
  • Identity Validation Question *
  • Identity Validation Answer *
  • First Name *
  • Last Name *
  • OrganisationCompany Name *
  • ABN
  • Trading Name
  • Street Address
  • Town/City
  • State/Territory *
  • Postcode *
  • Country *
  • Phone Number *
  • Fax Number
  • Mobile Number

This information is used to identify those who have registered on AusTender. The system records this information for the business of tendering, specifically who has registered their interest in a particular Approach to Market (ATM) by downloading documentation and who has lodged a tender in response. This information is vital to the integrity of the tendering process.

The information is not used for any purpose other than tendering related matters or the support of registrants in the use of AusTender. For example, if a tender has changed since it was published on the system, registrants who have downloaded documents for that specific tender will be sent an email notification of the change. Users are responsible for keeping their contact information current.

The Commonwealth will not add email addresses to any mailing lists or disclose email addresses for other purposes without the owner's prior consent by way of a specific request in writing.

Tender Notification Information

Registered users who select to use the automatic notification service offered within AusTender (you must register your details to use the service) are required to identify the types or categories of tenders that they are interested in being notified about. This means that the following details are also sought and recorded:

  • Keyword(s)
  •  Location
  • Category
  • ATM Type
  • Estimated Contract Value Range

These details are used only within AusTender to determine who should be sent notification about ATMs. The Commonwealth monitors the number and frequency of notifications being sent but does not monitor the nature of the notifications to specific registrants.

AusTender uses a cookie to maintain contact through a session. The cookie allows AusTender to recognise you as an individual as you move from one page of the website to another. The cookie will expire when the browser session is closed or the computer is shut down. No attempt will be made to identify anonymous users or their browsing activities unless legally compelled to do so, such as in the event of an investigation.

More detailed information about cookies can be found at the site of the Federal Privacy Commissioner at Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Exceptions to the Agreed Use of Information

The Commonwealth reserves the right to make disclosures to relevant authorities where the use of AusTender raises a suspicion that an offence is being, or has been, committed. In the event of an investigation, the Commonwealth will provide access to data to any law enforcement agency that may exercise a warrant to inspect AusTender records.

The circumstances where this would occur include:

  • unauthorised attempts to access files that are not published pages of AusTender
  • unauthorised tampering or interference with files published on the site
  • unauthorised attempts to index the contents of AusTender by other sites
  • attempts to intercept messages of other users of the site
  • communications which are defamatory, abusive, that vilify individuals or groups or that give rise to a suspicion that an offence is being committed, and
  • attempts to otherwise compromise the security of the web server, breach the laws of the Commonwealth of Australia, or interfere with the access to AusTender by other users.

Security of Stored Information

All information collected from AusTender is stored in a high security environment, elements of which are certified by the Defence Signals Directorate and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Information Provided to the Help Desk or via Feedback

This information will only be used for the purpose for which it was provided. Finance will not add your email address or name to any mailing list. Finance may publish aggregated information about feedback and/or queries on the site, but only to the extent that it does not identify or cannot be used to identify individual users.