A government department was designing a new program to provide a service to the public. It was agreed that to provide the service the department would need to collect name, address, age, income and family composition (e.g. partner, number of dependents, etc.) from applicants. One manager thought it would also be useful to collect information about the applicants' personal shopping habits and opinions on key issues of the day. This additional information was not necessary for the program, but might be used later on by the department for research purposes or to develop other programs. The information could simply be collected as part of the application for the program.
It was decided that authority existed in the legislation supporting the new program for collection of the information needed for the program itself. It was then decided that to collect the additional information about shopping habits and opinions of the applicants, the program should do so only after informing the applicants of the purpose for this additional collection and then only with the consent of the individual. There were some in the room who were still not certain this was proper.
In either case, it was agreed that the department would describe the purposes for collection on the application form, so the applicants would be fully informed about how their personal information would be used and disclosed by the program.
Select Agree or Disagree.
| 1. | Since the applicant was completing a form anyway, the department should be able to collect any information it wants. |
| 2. | Getting consent for collection should allow the government department to collect any additional information it wants. |
| 3. | Including a statement on an application form describing the purposes for collection is a valid way to inform the applicant about how we will use and disclose personal information. |