Privacy and security

This privacy statement applies to the health.govt.nz website, which is owned and administered by the Ministry of Health New Zealand.

No need to disclose personal information

You may browse and access information contained within this website without providing personal information.

Information provided when you contact us

Where you voluntarily provide personal information (eg, through online forms, newsletter subscriptions or email requests), we will only use your personal information for the purposes for which you gave it to us. This information will be held by the Ministry of Health.

We will hold your personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020. The Privacy Act 2020 regulates us through the Information Privacy Principles as to how we collect, use, hold, disclose, access, correct, manage and dispose of your personal information. For more information visit the Office of the Privacy Commissioner website.

Call recording privacy statement

For continuous improvement we record most of the calls made to our contact centre, and some of the outbound calls we make.

We record inbound and outbound calls:

  • to protect our people from abusive or threatening behaviour
  • for staff training purposes, helping us to improve the quality of our customer service and to ensure the information we provide is consistent and accurate
  • for reporting on the types and numbers of enquiries we receive
  • for an accurate record of your call, which may be needed to support any dispute or complaint

We store the recordings securely for a minimum of two years after the date of the call and destroy them after this time.

Viewing or changing your information

To view any personal information held by us, or if you have any concerns about personal information that we hold and wish to request its correction, please write to:

The Privacy Officer
Ministry of Health
PO Box 5013
Wellington

Statistical information and cookies

We collect statistical information about your visit to our website to help us improve it.

This information does not identify individuals.

To collect this statistical information the site makes use of cookies. 

Cookies

This website uses cookies for the purpose of monitoring website usage. A cookie is a piece of code that creates a file on your computer to track the pages that you view on our website. The cookies do not collect personal information. You can disable them or clear them out of your web browser without affecting your ability to use the website.

Google Analytics

We use Google Universal Analytics to collect and analyse details about the use of our website.

The information Google Analytics collects includes:

  • your IP address
  • the search terms you used
  • the pages you accessed on the website and the links you clicked on
  • the date and time you visited the website
  • the referring website (if any) through which you clicked through to this website
  • your operating system (eg, Windows XP, Mac OSX)
  • the type of web browser you use (eg, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox)
  • other incidental matters such as screen resolution and the language setting of your browser.

No effort is made to identify individual visitors.

You may opt-out from having Google Analytics collect your information by disabling cookies in your browser, or by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out browser add-on.

Google Analytics privacy policy.

Monsido

We use Monsido's analysis tools, including heatmaps, to better understand our site visitors. 

The information Monsido collects includes:

  • time and duration of visit
  • geographical location
  • type of browser
  • operating system
  • screen size
  • IP addresses (anonymised).

You may opt-out from having Monsido collect your information by disabling cookies in your browser.

Monsido's privacy policy and cookie policy.

Hotjar

We use Hotjar's analysis tools, including polls, to better understand our site visitors and collect user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on users’ behaviour and their devices, including:

  • device IP address
  • device screen size and type
  • browser information
  • geographic location (country only)
  • preferred language used to display our website.

You may opt-out from having Hotjar collect your information by enabling Do Not Track (DNT) in your browser.

Hotjar – Do Not Track information.

Hotjar's privacy policy

Use of statistical information

The statistical information referred to above will be viewable by website administrators and certain other Ministry staff. It may also be shared with other Government agencies.

Disclosure of your information to third parties

We will not disclose any of your personal information for purposes that you did not give it to us for.  Your information may be shared with, and held by, third-party contractors to the extent necessary for those contractors to provide web services, such as website hosting and maintenance.

We will not disclose your personal information to other government agencies or other organisations without your consent, unless required by law.

Newsletter subscriptions

When you subscribe to our newsletters, we will only use your personal information for managing your subscription and assessing newsletter effectiveness. You can unsubscribe from any newsletter at any time.

Some of our newsletters are managed using a third-party tool called Campaign Monitor. 

Campaign Monitor provides analytics to the Ministry on how people interact with our newsletters (eg, how many subscribers have opened emails or clicked on links). This means that the Ministry and Campaign Monitor will be able to see your name, email and details about which links in Ministry newsletters you have clicked on.

The Ministry only uses this information to assess newsletter effectiveness.

For more information, see the Campaign Monitor privacy policy.

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