Defining personal information

Personal information means information about an identifiable human being.

A person can be most obviously identified by information such as:

• name
• SWN
• date of birth
• address

The information does not need to name the person directly. If it's possible to tell who the person is from what is said about them, then it is personal information.

For example if we say an unnamed person with green hair in a small town is getting Sole Parent Support, that's quite possibly enough to identify them.

Common examples of personal information that we hold about clients or staff include:

• information about benefits
• employment information
• medical information
• financial information
• a person's ethnicity or iwi affiliation

Information about one person can sometimes also be information about another person - the same information may tell us something about both of them. For example, an opinion may be just as much about the person who holds the opinion as the person they are talking about.