Department of Veterans’ Affairs Privacy Collection Notice – Consumer Survey

Mental Health and Wellbeing Service Review and Transformation Program

Privacy Collection Notice – Consumer Survey

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) is committed to transforming services to meet the needs of all veterans and families. The Mental Health and Wellbeing Service Review and Transformation Program will use input from the veteran community, staff and service providers to develop a future model of mental health and wellbeing service delivery which will guide how we provide support to current and former Australian Defence Force members and families.

Who is collecting your personal information?

Your personal information is being collected by the Commonwealth of Australia, represented by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (ABN 23 964 290 824) (‘Us’, ‘We’, ‘Our’).

What personal information is being collected?

We are collecting general information about you and your experience as a consumer of DVA mental health and wellbeing support services, including Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling.

Specifically, we are collecting information about whether you are a veteran and/or family member; your age, gender, state/territory, and type of location your reside in; the DVA mental health and wellbeing support services you have used; your experiences using the services; and your suggestions for improvement. 

You do not have to provide this information if you prefer not to. If you do not consent to us collecting and using your personal information in the manner described in this notice, you should not complete the survey and submit your responses.

Why is your personal information being collected?

We are interested in learning about the experiences of veterans and family members who have accessed DVA mental health and wellbeing support services, in order to improve the services. To make best use of the data collected, we need to collect general information about all survey participants, as well as feedback and suggestions about specific services.

Who will we disclose your personal information to?

Access to responses you provide in the survey will be restricted to members of the DVA Mental Health and Wellbeing Service Review and Transformation Program Team. Your personal responses and information will not be shared with any other parties within or outside DVA. Examples of written feedback you provide may be quoted and distributed in Program materials for internal and external audiences; but will not be specific enough to identify you, your family or individual circumstances. 

How will we manage your personal information?

Information collected in the survey will be stored securely on the Qualtrics survey platform until the survey period closes. This information will only be accessed by members of the DVA Program Team, who will download data provided by all survey respondents at the end of the survey, then delete the records on Qualtrics.

The downloaded data will be stored, collated and analysed by members of the Program Team only; and will not be shared with any other parties in raw form. During the collation process, information you provide will be combined with the data of other survey respondents, and securely stored in a way that does not identify any individual. Combined data will be analysed and used to inform Program activities and reporting of key themes and data trends. Combined data may also be shared with other areas of DVA to support service improvement activities.

All survey information will be disposed of securely when no longer legally required to be held by us. We will not disclose your personal information overseas.

What will happen if we don’t collect your personal information?

Participation in the survey is voluntary and will not in any way affect any pension, benefits or services which you or your family are entitled to from DVA, or which you may become entitled to in the future. By providing your personal information to us in the survey, you consent to us collecting and handling your personal information in accordance with this privacy collection notice. 

If we don’t collect the personal information sought in the survey, this may affect our ability to access accurate data to analyse the mental health and wellbeing support needs and service experiences of veterans and families.

Our Privacy Policy

You can find out more about accessing and/or correcting your personal information with us, making a complaint, and about our approach to managing personal information via our privacy policy which you can find at www.dva.gov.au/privacy-policy. For information about our privacy policy, please contact Information.Law [at] dva.gov.au (Information[dot]Law[at]dva[dot]gov[dot]au)

If you have any questions about the collection of your personal information in accordance with this privacy collection notice, please contact department.response.managament.team [at] dva.gov.au (department[dot]response[dot]managament[dot]team[at]dva[dot]gov[dot]au)