Inquiry ordered over privacy breach involving vulnerable students

ABC
Apr 12, 2017, updated Apr 12, 2017

The details were on the Victorian Education Department website for about 24 hours. Photo: ABC

Personal details of the families of vulnerable children who have self-harmed or been victims of bullying have been accidentally published on the Victorian Education Department’s website.

The confidential information also included details about the student’s medical conditions.

In four cases, the individual’s name, email address, street address and phone numbers were all published.

About 120 families who homeschool were affected by the blunder, which occurred when submissions were uploaded to the website without having personal details removed.

The submissions related to proposed changes which would make it more difficult for parents to immediately withdraw their children from school if they were experiencing serious issues.

The information was online for about 24 hours.

Susan Wight is the coordinator of the Home Education Network, which represents families who homeschool.

She said the families affected were very distressed by the privacy breach:

“A couple of the families involved actually have domestic violence issues in their past, which means that having their details online was extremely stressful and made them feel unsafe,” she said.

“It’s invaded their children’s privacy.

“In some cases this is about severe bullying, self-harming, anxiety, all quite personal things and there it was online with the parent’s name.”

“They were using the details of their very personal, in some cases harrowing stories, to illustrate why the new regulations won’t work.”

‘Unintentional privacy breach’

Education Minister James Merlino has ordered an independent investigation and Gill Callister, the secretary of the Department of Education and Training, apologised for the “unintentional breach of privacy”.

“We are taking it very seriously. We have commissioned an independent investigation to identify what went wrong and to identify steps to prevent it from happening again,” she said.

Ms Callister said they gave a commitment to publish those submissions of people who agreed for to do so.

“In going through the process, it would appear that some people who did not want their information published, some of that has been published,” she said.

“We will make sure that if any further information is published that we have cleared that with every single person.”

Ms Wight said an apology was not enough.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said.