Procedures for handling misdirected correspondence 104-04070040

Services Australia (including all officials employed by the Agency and staff engaged under contract) collects, uses, discloses and stores significant amounts of personal, sensitive and protected information. Inappropriate management of this information may be a breach of privacy law, secrecy provisions or duties of confidentiality, and could have serious consequences for the affected individual.

Staff members who realise correspondence has been sent to the incorrect person should immediately remove the mail from the outgoing post (if the documents have not already been sent).

If the correspondence is not in the outgoing post, but was sent in the last few days, the staff member can contact the Output Management team and request the correspondence be retrieved from the central printing facility. The Resources page includes a link to the Output Management Intranet page.

It is the policy of Services Australia to respond quickly to incidents of misdirected correspondence and to ensure the customer and unintended individual are advised Services Australia takes its responsibilities seriously.

It is important to retrieve any personal information received by an unintended individual in a timely manner.