Roles and Responsibilities in Data Privacy

This essay discusses the roles and responsibilities of the Australian government, businesses, and individuals in data privacy in Australia.

Running Head: Data Privacy
Data Privacy
Essay
System04104
6/5/2019

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Introduction
Data privacy is a major concern in these days as everyday one incident is reported for data
breach or theft of personal information. To protect the data privacy and ensure safe and
secure access of information is depends on both individuals and business organisations. Both
individual and organisation should follow the basic principle of privacy laws, rules, and
regulations that is formulated by the government and legislative body of the country.
However, the role of government is also crucial in data privacy as government is responsible
for formulating laws in the country and responsible to ensure that no one will involve in data
breach or unethical practices. The government is also responsible to ensure that people will
follow the basic ethical laws of the country during access the information and data from
internet. This essay is based on the roles and responsibilities of Australian government,
businesses, and individuals in data privacy in Australia.
What is Data privacy?
Data privacy is the necessity that refers to storage and protection of the individual
information, collected by a business organisation or government, from being accessed by a
third party. The data privacy helps the government, business organisation, or an individual
that what type information or data within a system is shared with others and which type of
data or information should be restricted from the public access. The unauthorised access of
data or information is called data breach and using the data for personal use or unethical use
of the information refers to a cybercrime (Martin, Borah, and Palmatier, 2017).
Roles and Responsibilities of Australian Government in Data Privacy
The protection of data or information in Australian is protected by combined legislation of
State, territory, and commonwealths regions that includes a set of privacy principles and
guidelines regarding data privacy (The Economist, 2018). The Australian government holds a
wide range of data. The data that is considered by the Australian government is like the
national resources that is responsible for formulating new economic and health policies for
the people, improving the service delivery in different industries and sectors, and also
strengthen the economy of the country. Therefore, the government plays a crucial role in data

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privacy as a little mistake may lead to leak of personal and sensitive information of millions
of people in the country (Frey and Osborne, 2017).
The Australian government follows the law of ‘Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)’ and the Australian
Privacy Principles (APPs) in protecting the data and ensure data privacy in the country. This
law and principles also applies on the private sector organisation with an annual turnover of
at least three million Australian dollars (Chalmers, 2015). However, the APP and Privacy act
1988 also applies on commonwealth government and other territories of Australia. However,
most of the Australian territory and states has their own data privacy laws and legislation,
which is apply on different business organisation and private and government sector
organisations that interacts with the state government. However, the both federal and state
government of Australian are working on data privacy after going beyond the existing
legislation of federal and state government. The Australian government also provides some
specific security and data protection to the big regulators like Australian Prudential and
Regulatory Authorities (APRA), which is responsible to control and regulates the financial
institutions. However, the roles and responsibilities of Australian government is not limited to
provide a data privacy to people by a single legislation rather the government also helps the
people, business organisation and other entities that how they can avoid the data insecurity or
data breach by following the legislation and principles of APP. The Australian government
also regulates the large and small business organisation and ensures that every organisation
and individual follow the basic privacy laws and legislation of the country and do not involve
in any unethical practices. By implementing a strict privacy laws in Australia, the
government plays a crucial role in data privacy in the country (Virgillito, 2017).
Roles and Responsibilities of Businesses in Data Privacy
The large business organisations in Australia holds a vast amount of customers data and their
secret information like bank account details, online transactions, and their purchasing
behaviour and trends. This will not only provide detail information about the customers to the
company, rather it also increases the risk of data breach. However, the roles and
responsibilities of a business organisation are to protect the customer personal information on
any cost. One of the great examples of breach of Customer data and unethical use of
information was Facebook in 2016, when more than 80 million of customer data was theft by
Cambridge Analytica for influencing the USA presidential election. Here the role of
Facebook was questionable as Facebook was failed to protect the information about its

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customers. To avoid such situations, the roles of government and business organisations both
are important (He, Cai, and Yu, 2017). The government should ensure that no organisation
would involve in such type of practices, while the organisation should require to providing a
strong data privacy and protection to the customer. However, it is also the responsibility of
individuals to access safe and secure information and never provide their person information
or credentials such as banks details, income details, taxation details, or any credentials like
these with unknown person or any organisation. In recent days, the number of cases of data
breach and data theft has been continuously growing in all over the world and it is the
responsibility of business organisation to follow the basic principles of Privacy Act 1988, and
provide a safe and secure storage and access of information to its customers (Rowe, et. al.,
2019).
Roles and Responsibilities of Individuals in Data Privacy
The role of individual in data privacy is also important as large number of people share their
bank details and personal information everyday with any organisation or with any online
purchasing companies. In such a scenario, the roles and responsibilities of individual are so
crucial while sharing data and information with other organisation or with other people.
However, the data privacy is not limited to sharing personal information or credential rather it
also covers when people try to access the information through Internet and do not follow the
basic norms in accessing and using the data from other sources (Mehmood, et. al., 2016).
However, the government should also force the organisation to maintain transparency and
accountability while they use the customer’s data and personal information. The Australian
government must focus on setting guidelines that how data will be stored, manage, and
shared with people. However, maintaining data privacy is really a tough job for individual
when they share their personal information with the other sites or with any business
organisation. Here the role of business organisation is so important that how these
organisations manage the data of individuals and provide them security from any unauthentic
data breach or unethical use of customer information (Perera, et. al., 2015).
Conclusion
In conclusion, data privacy is major concern in front of the whole world. However, if the
government, business organisation and individuals all follows the basic principles (AAPs) of
Privacy Act, 1988, the breach of data can be easily avoided in Australia. Apart from this, the

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Australian government should focus on an integrated legislation related to data privacy,
which is applicable in all territory and states of the country. The business organisations
should strongly focus on protecting and securing the data of customers by advanced
algorithm and innovative technologies in data management and dissemination. Individual
should also focuses on ethical use and access of information from the digital media, which is
a major concern among the individuals.

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References
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