This site is owned and operated by Bay of Plenty Regional Council using software licensed from Harvest Digital Planning (Harvest). For details on how Bay of Plenty Regional Council collects and protects your personal information, refer to their Privacy Policy below. For details of how Harvest may access personal information, please refer to Harvest’s Privacy Policy.
Privacy Statement for Participate BOPRC
(Updated 1 March 2022)
The Bay of Plenty Regional Council (collectively referred to as “BOPRC”, “we”, “our” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information.
This privacy statement tells you about our collection and use of your personal information through your use of the Participate BOPRC website (“Participate BOPRC”).
Participate BOPRC is owned and operated by BOPRC using software licensed from Harvest Digital Planning Pty Limited (“Harvest”).For details of how Harvest may access personal information, please refer to Harvest’s Privacy Policy available at www.the-hive.com.au/privacy-policy.
We are subject to the Privacy Act 2020 (the “Privacy Act”) and the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 (“LGOIMA”), which govern how personal information is collected, used, stored and accessed.This privacy statement has been prepared in accordance with our obligations and your rights under the Privacy Act and the LGOIMA.
By using Participate BOPRC and providing us with your personal information, you consent to our use of your personal information in accordance with this privacy statement (as amended from time to time).
For personal information collected through any of our other platforms, please refer to BOPRC’s general privacy statement available at www.boprc.govt.nz/privacy-statement.
Why do we request personal information?
Bay of Plenty Regional Council is requesting to collect your personal information for several reasons:
- to enable us to respond to you should you request that
- to enable us to include you in any future events on any specific topics that you request
- to provide us with the demographic information to determine the extent to which the feedback collected is representative of the community
- to allow us to gather participation data (such as numbers interacting from specified areas) with specific topics to better inform our feedback to Council
- to understand the reach and representation achieved and address any gaps to ensure diverse representational engagement across the Bay of Plenty community
- to ensure that any one participant or spammers and trolls are not unduly influencing the feedback results
What personal information do we collect?
Registered Participants
When you register for Participate BOPRC or sign in to an existing account, the personal information we collect includes:
- name
- email address
- post code
- username (this will be published on the site alongside any public comments you make so you are welcome to use a pseudonym)
- sign up date
- last login date
- last contribution
- number of contributions
The optional information we encourage you to provide includes:
- ethnicity
- gender
- age (if you are under the age of 12 you must seek parental guidance before registering for and using our online engagement tool)
Participant Feedback
We collect comments, votes, posts and selections you contribute when interacting with the feedback mechanisms provided through Participate BOPRC which may include:
- forums
- interactive maps
- surveys
- quick polls
This information is analysed to inform Council’s decision makers in the creation of better projects, plans and policies.
Can you remain anonymous or withhold personal information?
Yes. You can access and participate in select Participate BOPRC engagements anonymously, without disclosing any personal information. Some identified projects may require you to register and establish an account in order to participate. As stated above, users may choose to adopt a pseudonym for these projects.
Website Information
Participate BOPRC is equipped with analytics services which assist us to collect and interpret information.The information collected may include your IP address, web browser, mobile network information, pages viewed, time spent on pages or in apps, links clicked and conversion information.This information is aggregated and all users are anonymous and not personally identifiable.
This statistical information will be viewable by website administrators and Harvest. This information may be used by us to analyse and track data, determine the popularity of certain content, and better understand online activity.
Email notifications
If you subscribe to receive notifications about upcoming projects or other engagement activities, the email address you provided will be used by us to send you that information. You can unsubscribe from these notifications at any time.
Sharing of your personal information
Access to your personal information is confined to authorised users only, which includes employees of BOPRC on a need to know basis, our website administrators, and Harvest.
BOPRC respects the privacy of your information and will take all reasonable measures to prevent unauthorised access to, or unlawful disclosure of, your personal information.
Publicly available information
When you sign up to and use Participate BOPRC, some of the information you provide will be publicly available.
Information that is available to the public is limited to your username and any comments you leave under that username in the forums or other feedback tools published to Participate BOPRC. As above, you can use an anonymous user name if you do not want your full name attached to your comments.
Feedback (including overall results of polls and surveys, and in some instances, quotes from forums and surveys with the username referenced) may be published in publicly available reports at the end of the consultation period.
You may use Participate BOPRC to make submissions to BOPRC pursuant to the Local Government Act 2002 (for example, submissions on annual plans or long term plans).By taking part in the public submission process, submitters agree to any personal information (including names and contact details) in their submission being made available to the public and published on our website, and for the information collected to be held in accordance with BOPRC’s general Privacy Statement available at www.boprc.govt.nz
Application Programming Interface
We provide an application programming interface (‘API’) to enable third party applications to interface with Participate BOPRC.
If you choose to allow the application to connect to your Facebook account to create an account for Participate BOPRC, then that application will be able to access information that you can see when you are logged in to your Facebook account. You should only allow applications you trust to access your account. If you set up your Participate BOPRC account using an API with a third party social media platform, you consent to us obtaining and using your information from such platform.
BOPRC may use third party applications to analyse the comments, votes, posts and selections you contribute to better understand the themes and trends in the feedback received. This information will be provided anonymously i.e. personal details such as responses to name and email address categories are not provided to the third party application. The analysis will assist with reporting themes and trends back to participants, BOPRC staff and councillors from the aggregated responses.
Storage of personal information
Information collected through Participate BOPRC will be held by Harvest in accordance with its privacy policy. Harvest is an offshore service provider based on Australia so personal information collected will be stored in their server located in Sydney, Australia. The information will also be downloaded on BOPRC servers with privacy protections in place. We comply with the requirements of the Privacy Act in relation to the transfer of personal information offshore.
Access and Correction
If you would like to access, update, correct, or delete the personal information that the BOPRC is holding about you, you are welcome to make these requests by emailing BOPRC at privacy@boprc.govt.nz.
We will provide you with access to your personal information unless we are required or authorised to refuse such access by law.
You may also request a change or correction of personal information that we hold about you. When you are a registered user you will have the ability to correct your personal information at your discretion through the ‘edit profile’ function. You may also choose to contact us to request a change or correction of your personal information. We will take all necessary steps to accommodate your request unless we are required or authorised to refuse that request by law.
If you want to check personal information that we hold about you or have any other access or correction request, please contact us at privacy@boprc.govt.nz. Please quote your name and address and, if possible, provide brief details of what information you want a copy of (this helps us to more readily locate your information).
Links to external websites
Participate BOPRC may contain links to other websites. Those links are provided for convenience only and may not be current or be maintained. BOPRC is not responsible for the content, accuracy or privacy practices associated with the linked websites.
Any links to other websites should not be construed as any endorsement, approval, recommendation, or preference by BOPRC of the owners or operators of those websites, or of any information, graphics, materials, products or services referred to on those websites.
Changes to this privacy statement
We reserve the right to amend this privacy statement from time to time by posting an updated privacy statement here on this website.We will collect, use, hold and disclose your personal information in accordance with our most recently updated version of the privacy statement. We recommend that you regularly review this privacy statement when you visit this website.
If you do not agree with any aspect of the updated privacy policy, you must promptly notify us using the contact details set out below.
Who can you contact?
If you have any questions, queries, or complaints about the handling of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer in the first instance using the contact details set out below and we will do our best to assist.
Email address: privacy@boprc.govt.nz
Postal address: PO Box 364, Whakatāne 3158, New Zealand
You can also make a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner.Further details on how to do this are available from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner website at www.privacy.org.nz.
