The Office of the Privacy Commissioner contributed to the Law Commission's Issues Paper on the review of privacy, released yesterday. The Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff recently released a paper offering suggestions to reform the Privacy Act's enforcement, compliance and complaints machinery.

"Our proposals would keep what is best in the current arrangements. The Privacy Act processes are very successful at resolving disputes quickly and at an informal level; they get privacy problems solved for individual New Zealanders. Also, where mistakes happen, most businesses and government agencies voluntarily make changes to ensure they protect their customers' privacy in future. By keeping things out of the courts, the processes deliver low cost solutions for business and individuals and they look primarily to education rather than regulation. We need to maintain those benefits.

"However, these processes need to be supplemented by new enforcement mechanisms that will work in effective, cheap, quick and simple ways. This is particularly necessary where systemic changes are needed in order to protect consumers but where change is not likely to be driven by a complaints process. Sometimes, people simply don't know what is going on with their information and so they don't complain. Sometimes, it's not worth complaining because the effect on each individual consumer is relatively minor - but the cumulative effect of what the agency is doing may create serious privacy concerns.

"Our proposals address these concerns. For instance, a key element is that if an agency has clearly misused personal information and it does not voluntarily take steps to protect that type of personal information properly in future, I should be able to require it to do so."

Ms Shroff says, "I encourage everyone interested in the subject to contribute to the Law Commission's public consultation on its review of the Privacy Act."

The Privacy Commission paper is available at www.privacy.org.nz