What happens after I make a complaint to the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner (OVIC)?

Once OVIC gets your complaint, they follow a process:

1. OVIC will call you to do an intake
2. OVIC will tell Corrections Victoria or your prison about your complaint
3. Corrections Victoria or the prison will respond
4. OVIC will do a conciliation (dispute resolution to see if they can come up with an answer that both sides agree with – see Step 4 for more information)

Step 1: OVIC will call you to do an intake

During the intake, they will:

• Let you know if they can help with your complaint
• Tell you about their complaint process
• Ask you questions to help them understand what has happened
• Explain the law and privacy principles that apply to your complaint
• Talk through the strengths and weakness of your complaint
• Help you to choose realistic outcomes that might sort out your complaint
• Discuss options to help sort out your complaint

If OVIC can’t help, they will close your complaint. If this happens, you can ask OVIC to send your case to VCAT for a tribunal member to decide. For more information, use the link on the left side of this page.

Step 2: OVIC will tell Corrections Victoria or your prison about the complaint

OVIC will tell Corrections Victoria or your prison either by sending a copy of your complaint to them or their own summary of your complaint.

OVIC will also usually ask Corrections Victoria or the prison for their side of the story and get their views on the outcomes you have asked for. See Step 3 for what happens next in that situation.

Sometimes OVIC will not ask Corrections Victoria or the prison for their side of the story, and will go straight to conciliation (go straight to Step 4 in this situation).

Step 3: Corrections Victoria or your prison will respond to your complaint

If OVIC has asked for Corrections Victoria or the prison’s side of the story, they have 4 weeks to respond.

OVIC will look at the response when they get it and share the information with you.

Sometimes the issue is sorted out by the prison’s response. Other times OVIC will ask for more information from you and the prison to see if the issue can be sorted out at this early stage.

If the issue cannot be sorted out at this stage, OVIC will decide whether there should be conciliation (see Step 4).

OVIC might decide your complaint is not suitable for conciliation because:

1. OVIC doesn’t agree there was a breach of your privacy; or
2. You and the prison’s points of view are so different that conciliation would not be useful.

If OVIC decides your complaint is not suitable for conciliation, they will let you know and close your complaint. For more information on what you can do if you want to continue your complaint at VCAT, click here.

Step 4: Conciliation

Conciliation is a process to try and sort out the issue between you and Corrections Victoria or the prison.The process is done with a ‘conciliator’. A conciliator isan impartial person (meaning they don’t take sides) from OVIC who listens to both sides and tries to help come up with answers that work for everyone.

Conciliation with OVIC can be direct or indirect.

Indirect conciliation

• You and Corrections Victoria or the prison don’t speak to each other directly.
• Instead you each speak with the conciliator by phone or email about what you want, and the conciliator passes that information on.
• For example, the prison might make an offer through the conciliator to give you something. You might accept that offer, or reject it and ask for something more (this is called a counter-offer). It might take a few offers and counter-offers to get an agreement.

Direct conciliation

• You and Corrections Victoria or the prison actually meet (with the conciliator) either face to face or over a video-conference.
• The conciliator will help both sides talk about what happened and try to look for options to sort out the issue.
• These meetings usually take about 2 or 3 hours.
• Sometimes you can reach an agreement on the day, or there may be some more negotiations afterwards.

If you go with direct conciliation, the conciliator will meet with you before the meeting to explain how it will work and what you need to do to prepare.

Important: you can have a support person with you at conciliation.

What happens after conciliation?

If you come to an agreement with Corrections Victoria or the prison you may want to have it written down, but you don’t have to. If there is an agreement, OVIC will close your file.

If you cannot come to an agreement in conciliation, OVIC will close your complaint. When OVIC closes your file, you can ask for the case to go to VCAT so a tribunal member can decide. See the next page for more information on going to VCAT.

Possible outcomes

Some of the outcomes from OVIC’s involvement in your complaint could be:

• The prison acknowledging your experience
• The prison giving answers or explanations about what happened
• The prison apologising to you
• The prison taking action about the issue – this could be action related to your individual case, or changes to their service in general to make it better for everyone
• The prison educating staff on privacy issues
• The prison paying you compensation for loss or damage you suffered because of the information breach

Source: OVIC website