Employee information provided to ballot agents in Enterprise Agreement bargaining

James Smith made this Freedom of Information request to Department of Industry, Science, Energy & Resources as part of a batch sent to 42 authorities

This request has been closed to new correspondence from the public body. Contact us if you think it ought be re-opened.

The request was successful.

Dear Department of Industry, Innovation and Science,

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

I request the document(s) which describe the data provided to the external organisation(s) responsible for conducting the ballot(s) for all Enterprise Agreements put to staff for a vote.

The scope of this request is limited only to those ballots undertaken for enterprise agreements which were proposed to take effect after 30 June 2014.

The document shall describe the data given to the ballot agent. For example, employee name, employee identification number, employee email address, etc. I exclude the data for specific employees here; I am only after the 'meta-data'.

If it assists you to treat this as an administrative request for information I encourage you to do so. Otherwise, please consider this a formal FOI request.

Yours faithfully,

James Smith

Freedom of Information, Department of Industry, Science, Energy & Resources

Dear Mr Smith

We refer to your correspondence of 16 February 2017 (below) requesting various documents from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (the department).

The department is currently considering your correspondence and will provide you with a response as soon as possible.

Should you have any queries in relation to this email, please do not hesitate to contact the FOI team.

Kind regards

FOI team
Legal, Audit and Assurance Branch| Corporate Network
[email address]
———————————————————————
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science | www.industry.gov.au

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Freedom of Information, Department of Industry, Science, Energy & Resources

Dear Mr Smith

I refer to your correspondence of 16 February 2017 to the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science (the department), in which you request:

… the document(s) which describe the data provided to the external organisation(s) responsible for conducting the ballot(s) for all Enterprise Agreements put to staff for a vote.

The scope of this request is limited only to those ballots undertaken for enterprise agreements which were proposed to take effect after 30 June 2014.

The document shall describe the data given to the ballot agent. For example, employee name, employee identification number, employee email address, etc. I exclude the data for specific employees here; I am only after the 'meta-data'.

You have suggested the department treat this as an administrative request for information. The department is pleased to provide the following information to you administratively, outside the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

The scope of your request covers two ballots undertaken by the department for the approval of a new Enterprise Agreement. A vote was conducted on 20 May 2015 and a second vote was conducted on 29 February 2016.

In relation to the May 2015 vote, a number of categories of data were extracted from the department’s people and payroll system and provided to the company, ORIMA Research, for the purpose of conducting the vote, including:

• Employee Number
• Full Name
• User Email Address
• Personal Email
• Postal Street Address
• Postal Suburb
• Postal State
• Postal Postcode
• Gender
• Date of Birth
• Age
• Employment status
• Classification
• Home Phone Number
• Mobile Phone No
• Preferred name
• Attendance Type (full-time/part-time)
• Leave Dates
• Pay Entity
• Pay Branch
• Payment Cost Code
• Acting Periods
• Acting Level
• Award

In relation to the February 2016 vote, the categories of data provided to ORIMA Research for the purpose of conducting the vote were refined to include the following:

• Employee Number
• Full Name
• User Email Address
• Personal Email
• Postal Street Address
• Postal Suburb
• Postal State
• Postal Postcode

I trust that this information satisfies your request. Should you have any queries in relation to the information provided, please contact the FOI team. The department will consider your request as withdrawn unless you advise us otherwise by close of business on Thursday 16 March 2017.

Kind regards

FOI team
Legal, Audit and Assurance Branch| Corporate Network
[email address]
Department of Industry, Innovation and Science | www.industry.gov.au

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