Privacy Commissioner, Office of the Privacy Commissioner,
New Zealand
| M | arie Shroff was appointed to the independent statutory position of Privacy Commissioner in late 2003. Her responsibilities include independent |
comment on significant personal information policies and issues, providing opinions on privacy complaints made against government and business, monitoring government data matching and promoting good personal information handling practices in New Zealand. From 1987–2003 Marie Shroff held the position of Secretary of the Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council, and was responsible for the operation of Cabinet, the Executive Council, and Government House. She worked with four Governors-General, six Prime Ministers, and governments of various parties. Earlier in her career Marie Shroff worked in foreign affairs, teaching, journalism and the public service. From 1986 to 1987 she led an official group managing the corporatisation of nine major state agencies in New Zealand. From 1980 - 1982 she was seconded to the UK Cabinet Office.
The planned introduction of a single electronic identity verification service to the New Zealand public sector is one example of the application of privacy by design concepts in a large-scale development. Marie Shroff’s presentation will outline some of the key elements of that project and the contribution of privacy by design. Privacy by design in the New Zealand context commonly involves augmenting an existing system, or developments with very limited budgets. The challenges of these scenarios will be discussed, along with the realities of privacy by design for smaller businesses. The New Zealand Privacy Commissioner’s office is actively involved in developing guidance for the cloud-computing environment, primarily for small and medium sized business, and is also involved with an emerging industry-driven code of practice. Both of these present some scope for the incorporation of privacy by design.
