This site is owned and operated by the City of Melbourne using software licensed from Social Pinpoint. For details on how the City of Melbourne collects and protects your personal information in the course of your engagement with Participate Melbourne, refer to its Privacy Statement below. For details of how Social Pinpoint may access personal information, please refer to Social Pinpoint’s Privacy Policy.

The City of Melbourne takes the privacy of the participants using this site very seriously.

Our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information is regulated by the Victorian Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014. You can find more information about your privacy rights at the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner.

This Privacy Statement applies to Participate Melbourne. For information about the broader collection and use of personal information by the City of Melbourne, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

We use the personal information about you to:

• administer the site and manage your account
• identify when you sign into your account
• send you newsletters and information, but only when you have agreed to us sending you this information or when the information is necessary to assist with the administration of the site
• respond to queries that you have contacted us about
• attribute content that you post on the site to you
• analyse use of the site to inform ongoing improvements and enhancements
• inform policy decisions by the City of Melbourne
• for any other purposes that we indicate to you when we request your personal information.

Content that you post on the site publicly will be able to be viewed by everyone who uses the site. Each post will contain your username and any publicly available reports from consultations, and may include quotes from participants in forums, surveys and other consultation tools.

Your feedback, including all demographic details you choose to submit, will be forwarded in the first instance to the relevant City of Melbourne work area with responsibility for administering the subject matter or project to which your feedback relates.

The City of Melbourne has created a central repository (the Knowledge Bank) of all survey responses. The City of Melbourne seeks to maintain your anonymity within the Knowledge Bank. Any personally identifiable information that you provide, including name and contact details, will be excluded or masked within the Knowledge Bank to preserve your anonymity. When you have consented, staff members will also add any verbal feedback you provide to them, in their interactions with you, to the Knowledge Bank. The Knowledge Bank tags survey responses based on the subject matter and the suburb from which they are received. Staff members can filter the responses in the Knowledge Bank by subject matter, suburb, age, and/or gender to inform future projects, gain insights into neighbourhood sentiment or key themes, and to ensure the provision of consistent service delivery across the organisation.

To further protect your anonymity, staff members can only view statistics on responses to questions about sexual orientation and ethnicity in the Knowledge Bank where a minimum 10 per cent of participants provide the same response. Unlike other demographic responses staff members cannot filter these statistics in conjunction with detailed survey responses.

While the City of Melbourne takes multiple measures to protect the anonymity of survey respondents, we ask that you help us reduce the risk of inappropriate information access and exposure by not including other information in your survey response that could possibly identify you or others.

Moderation

By monitoring this additional information that you provide, we are able to protect the integrity of the discussions from individuals and groups who may attempt to unduly influence the outcomes of a consultation process. For example, we check to ensure each user has a single email account. We also review the site to protect it from spam or trolls.

Third parties

We may also disclose personal information to third parties, and you consent to us disclosing your personal information, for the following purposes:

The following research consultants engaged by the City of Melbourne to assist with reviewing, interpreting and gaining insights into feedback submitted via Participate Melbourne:

• Global Research Limited (ABN: 26158335950). Global Research securely stores the raw feedback responses on Microsoft Azure servers located in Melbourne and Sydney data centres.
• Capire Consulting Group (ABN 52 125 105 660)
• Cultural Perspectives (ABN 30 065 353 951).
• Elton Consulting (ABN 56 003 853 101).
• Liminal by Design (ABN 20 614 850 190).
• Max Hardy Consulting (ABN 44 704 423 122)
• MosaicLab (ABN 29 650 739 230).
• Red Road Consulting (ABN 99 080 294 522).
• RPS AAP Consulting (ABN 97 117 883 173).
• C3X (ABN 68 606 157 091).
• Phoenix Facilitation Limited (ABN 74 098 731 830).
• Jacinta Cubis (ABN 33 233 001 231).
• Conversation Caravan (ABN 25 824 367 005)

The insights derived from the feedback by the research consultants assist the City of Melbourne with identifying particular patterns or areas for service improvement and the creation of better projects, plans and policies. The information supplied to the research consultants is limited to raw feedback responses and excludes the provision of your name, contact details or other information that could directly identify you. All consultants have agreed to the collection, use and disclosure of the raw feedback responses in accordance this Privacy Collection Statement for using Participate Melbourne.

In the case of submissions you make on planning scheme amendments, the Council will disclose your entire submission including your contact details to Planning Panels Victoria which sits within the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Submissions and contact details are stored in a Panel Book (typically a OneDrive file shared between all parties to the panel, where it is stored for 3 months before deleting). Planning Panels Victoria will facilitate all contact with you on matters relating to the panel process including to circulate agendas, inform you of the date and time of the panel hearing and to send correspondence to you on any other matters relating to the relevant planning scheme amendment.

The City of Melbourne will not disclose your information to another external party without your consent, unless required or authorised by law.

From time to time, the City of Melbourne engages research consultants to help identify particular patterns or areas for service improvements, and for project and policy development. Knowledge Bank information, when supplied to research consultants, will have personally identifiable information excluded but include demographic details you have chosen to share in your survey response. All consultants have agreed to the collection, use and disclosure of survey responses in accordance with this Privacy Collection Statement for using Participate Melbourne.

Access and correction

If you wish to access, correct or delete any of the personal information you have supplied to the City of Melbourne, please send your request to Council via email to participate@melbourne.vic.gov.au.

Updated July 2023