this is the template for a transparency report. Reports should be publicly available and release annually in a consistent manner.
This transparency report details the types, frequency, scale and nature of information that we share with Government agencies in order to comply with the law and maintain public safety. It covers the requests we received between insert your reporting timeframe here.
We recommend that you report each year, either according to your financial year or by calendar year. (you could choose to report every 6 months but we think annually is the minimum reporting speed). What is important is that you decide on a reporting timeframe and stick to it. You should also be seeking to release the report as soon as is practicable after the reporting timeframe. It is not a good look to publish your 2016/17 transparency report in June 2018.
You have entrusted your personal information with us. We respect that trust and we will only use personal information, including any metadata, in line with our privacy policy link. We will share information with government agencies when we are required to (through court orders or statutory powers) or as guided by our transparency policy.
You can read more about our transparency policy here [provide a link to your transparency policy (or your privacy policy if you've incorporated it there) on your site]
One of the key concepts here is that we consider metadata to be personal information. It doesn't matter whether its explicitly mentioned in law as personal information or not. Metadata is a hugely powerful source of information and can be used to identify individuals easily. If you collect and/or record metadata about your customers then you should be treating that metadata the same as personal information.
this section sets out the high level, totalled, numbers of requests that you receive and is designed to give a picture of the overall amount of requests that you get, and provides you with an opportunity to communicate how often you say no or “push back” as Trade Me call it
This year we received [total number] of court orders, statutory power requests and information requests.
- Court orders
- Statutory power requests
- Information requests (voluntarily released)
a graph or chart may be a useful way to help convey this information. Pie or donut charts will help you show the proportion of requests under each category, while bar graphs will make it easier for your readers to see trends once you’ve published these reports after two-to-three years. We have also released a spreadsheet which should automatically generate some useful charts for you.
We think you should be making it clear how often you say no, or push back on agencies. Remember, Requests for information from government agencies that rely on Privacy Principle exemptions require you to make your own judgement and assessment
Sometimes we say no to a request from a government agency for personal information. This usually happens when we are asked to voluntarily release personal information in a situation that does not meet our transparency policy, or we are given insufficient information by the agency to make a reasonable assessment of whether we should release personal information. We record the number of times we say no to provide you context on the processes we use to assess requests for your information and to assure you that we can, and do, say no.
- Number requests for voluntary disclosure we declined:
Sometimes when we say no to a request, the government agency will come back with a warrant. We record these as warrants or court orders.
this section summarises the total number of requests that you received from each agency
As well as recording the total requests we receive, we record them against the agency that makes the request.
*Each agency should have its own breakdown of information. You should repeat this section for each agency that contacts you . Delete the sections that don't have any data before you publish your report. You may also wish to consider using a chart to illustrate an agency's data if there is a high volume of requests to convey.
Outcome of requests for information: We do not automatically release information when we receive a request from a government agency. As per our transparency policy we assess it to make sure the request meets our criteria and that the release is needed. If we are not satisfied we do reject requests, or ask for further clarification.
We received a total of X enquiries from the ACC. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent.
We received a total of X enquiries from the Commerce Commission. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the Department of Conservation. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Department of Corrections. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the Department of Culture and Heritage. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Department of Internal Affairs. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the Disputes Tribunal. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from EECA. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the Environment Protection Authority. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the FMA. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the GCSB. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Housing New Zealand. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the Human Rights Commmission. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Inland Revenue. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from MoBIE. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Ministry of Health. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from Ministry of Justice. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below. Note that we have separated out the Disputes Tribunal .
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from MPI. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from MSD. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the NZ Customs Service. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from NZTA. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from NZ Police. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from the REAA. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X requests for voluntary disclosure. We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent.
Because warrants from the NZSIS are highly classified we do not report on them.
Note - orders from the NZSIS are highly classified and cannot be disclosed by anyone without the Director's permission. You should not include interception warrants from the NZSIS in this report without seeking permission from the NZSIS and talking to your lawyers. However, you are not under any secrecy obligations in relation to requests from the NZSIS for voluntary disclosure. You can, and should, report on these just like requests from any other government agency.
We received a total of X enquiries from the SFO. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from SPCA. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B` percent. |
We received a total of X enquiries from other government agencies combined. This is broken down into court orders, statutory powers and requests for voluntary disclosure below.
| Court orders | Statutory powers | Voluntary disclosure |
|---|---|---|
| X | Y | Z |
| We accepted A percent of the requests for voluntary disclosure received and declined the remaining B percent. |
we think you should make the data points sitting behind this report available in .csv or .xml so that they can independently combine or reuse statistics.
You can download the data sitting behind this report here (link).
insert some contact details for anyone who wants to contact you.
The transparency reporting set out is a great start. It's the "101" version of transparency reporting. We think there are other, really important parts of transparency reporting that New Zealand organisations should be working towards. We've set these out below. You don't need to start doing these from day one, but we think you should be planning to incorporate them in out-years.
this section helps give visibility on what types of information government agencies are asking for. Do they just want contact details or are they seeking transaction records, metadata or communication content? This does require a slightly more developed approach to records.
Not all orders or information requests are the same. Some ask for different types of information while other requests will be for information about more than one person.
- Content: (transaction stuff - how the customer interacts with the service you provide them)
- Customer information (account information & contact details)
- Meta-data (including location or tracking data)
- Everything
Sometimes agencies will ask for a lot of information about a lot of people in a single request. That can get lost in basic transparency reporting. This section helps give visibility to those cases where you get a single request (often a statutory power) for information about multiple customers.
Sometimes government agencies will ask for information about a number of different customers in a single request. This usually happens when they have a court order, or are using a statutory power. We record the number of customers in each request and report on it so that you can see how many times we have been asked for lots of information. Number of enquiries by how many customers they were about by agency:
- Enquiries about one customer
- 2-49
- 50-99
- 100-499
- 500-999
- 1000+