Privacy and child safety | TechFest Australia

Privacy policy and collection notice

We follow the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This page is both our privacy policy and the collection notice we are required to give you before or when we collect your details, which is why it sits next to the consent boxes on the registration form.

Who we are

TechFest Australia runs the TechFest Australia competition program and festival at techfestaustralia.com.au. For anything about your personal information, including access, correction and complaints, email privacy@techfestaustralia.com.au. For general questions about entering, email hello@techfestaustralia.com.au.

What we collect

We collect the details you type into the registration form, plus the items listed below:

Everyone: entry type, division, competition category, team name, project title, project summary, project stage, the support you would like, how you heard about us, and which consent boxes you ticked, including the optional photo and marketing boxes.
School teams: the school name, suburb, state or territory and postcode; the teacher mentor’s name, role, school email address and phone number; and each student’s first name, last name and year level.
Individual and open team entries: the lead contact’s name, email address and phone number, the state or territory and postcode they are based in, their university or TAFE if they are in the Tertiary division, and the first and last name of each other team member, with an email address only if they choose to give one.
Technical: our host records the usual web server information, such as your IP address and the time of the request, to keep the site available and to limit abuse of the form.
Anti-spam: the form adds an empty hidden field and records the time you opened it. We use both only to filter out automated submissions, and we do not use them for anything else.
Payment: nothing yet. The website does not collect payment details today. When the entry fee checkout is added it will be hosted by a payment provider, so card details go to that provider and never to this website. We will update this page with the provider’s name before any payment is taken.

We do not ask for anyone’s date of birth. Students give a year level only, and we do not ask school students for an email address or a home address. We do not collect sensitive information, such as health, disability, dietary or cultural information, at registration. If we need any of it closer to an event, we will ask separately, explain why and make it optional.

Where student details come from

For a school team, the teacher mentor gives us the students’ names and year levels rather than the students themselves. Because the details come from someone else, we ask the mentor to confirm that a parent or guardian of every student has agreed to them taking part and to their details being shared with us. Parents and guardians can contact us at privacy@techfestaustralia.com.au at any time to see, correct or withdraw those details.

Why we collect it

To process your entry and confirm it by email.
To contact the lead contact about deadlines, judging, mentoring and events.
To organise judging, mentoring, workshops and the national final, including name badges and run sheets.
To keep young people safe, for example by checking that every team has a teacher mentor.
To report on the program in numbers only, such as how many teams entered from each state.

If you do not give us these details we cannot process your entry. No law requires you to give them to us. Giving them is your choice, and you can withdraw your entry at any time by emailing us.

We share entry details only with the people who need them to run the competition: the judges assigned to your category, the mentors matched to your team, and venue or hub partners for the events you attend. We give them the minimum needed. We do not sell personal information, and we do not give it to advertisers.

We also use service providers who handle information on our behalf: a website host and an email delivery service. They may only use it to provide that service to us.

Overseas storage and disclosure

Two providers handle your registration on our behalf: Vercel, which hosts this website, and Resend, which delivers the emails. Both are United States companies, so your details are stored and processed on servers outside Australia, in the United States. By using them we disclose your details overseas. We choose providers that commit to protecting personal information, but privacy law in another country may differ from Australian law.

Draft note: before registrations open we will confirm with each provider every country their servers operate in, and list all of them here by name rather than saying “including”. If a payment provider is added, it will be named here too.

How we hold it, and for how long

Registration details are sent to the organisers by email and kept in the organisers’ mailbox and entry records. That mailbox is protected with multi-factor authentication and only the named people running the program can open it. We take reasonable steps to protect information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access. No online system can be guaranteed, so we keep the amount we hold small.

We keep entry records for the season they relate to and for a reasonable period afterwards so we can answer questions about results, then destroy or de-identify them. You can ask us to delete your details sooner.

Marketing emails

Emails about your entry, such as confirmations, deadlines and results, are part of running the competition and are not marketing. Newsletters and news about future events are marketing, and we only send them if you tick the separate, optional box on the registration form. That box is never pre-ticked and is not a condition of entry. Every marketing email includes an unsubscribe link, which we honour within five working days, in line with the ACMA guidance on the Spam Act 2003. We do not collect student email addresses for marketing.

Cookies and analytics

This site does not set advertising or tracking cookies. The registration form saves your draft in your own browser’s local storage on your device so you can finish it later. That draft never reaches us until you press Launch registration, and you can clear it at any time with the “Clear draft” button on the form.

The photographs on this site are loaded from Unsplash’s content delivery network, so your browser contacts Unsplash when a page loads and Unsplash receives your IP address. We do not send them anything else, and we do not receive anything back about you.

Access and correction

You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct anything that is wrong. Email privacy@techfestaustralia.com.au and include your registration reference if you have one. We will confirm who you are, then respond within 30 days. There is no charge. If we cannot give you access or make a correction, we will explain why in writing.

Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, email privacy@techfestaustralia.com.au with the details. We will acknowledge your complaint and aim to respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can take the complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when the program or our providers change, and we will show the version and date at the top. If a change materially affects how we use details we already hold, we will contact lead contacts by email.

Child safety and wellbeing

Children and young people are the reason this program exists. We are building TechFest Australia to be a child safe organisation, and we align our practices with the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations developed by the Australian Human Rights Commission and endorsed by governments across Australia, and with the Child Safe Standards that apply where we run activities.

The full statement, including the standards we work to, what students can expect and how we check ourselves, is on its own page: child safety and wellbeing. The rules every adult in the program follows are in the code of conduct. Schools can send either link to a principal on its own.

Teacher mentors and Working with Children Checks

Every school team enters with a teacher mentor from their school. When they register, the mentor confirms they hold a current Working with Children Check or their state or territory’s equivalent, for example a Blue Card in Queensland or a Working with Vulnerable People registration in the Australian Capital Territory. We record the confirmation with the entry, and we check that volunteer mentors and judges hold the check required where the activity takes place before they are matched with a team.

Photo and video consent is optional and separate from entry. Saying no has no effect on an entry or on judging. For students, the consent comes from a parent or guardian through the mentor. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing privacy@techfestaustralia.com.au, and we will stop using the material in anything we publish from that point.

The photographs on this site are stock images used for illustration. They are not photographs of TechFest participants.

Raising a concern

If something about the program worries you, tell us. Students, parents, guardians, teachers and volunteers can all raise a concern, and you can ask to stay anonymous.

If a child is in immediate danger, call 000. To report a concern about a child’s safety to us, email hello@techfestaustralia.com.au with “Child safety” in the subject line. We will respond promptly, act on what you tell us and report to police or the child protection authority in the relevant state or territory where we need to.

This draft was written against public guidance from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the National Office for Child Safety and the ACMA. It still needs a legal review.

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Your details, handled with care.