The Board members of the Australian Privacy Foundation invest most of their efforts in the policy area. We research and write a lot of formal submissions, form policy pro-actively where we can, and are continually providing background briefings to the media, on a vast array of privacy topics.

We’re conscious of the fact that we do far too little to inform and involve members.

So we’re intending to produce an Occasional Newsletter, which we’ll aim to email quarterly (and hope to actually deliver at least 2 or 3 times each year).

It seems appropriate that the first of the series briefly explains how the Board works.

The profiles of current Board members are at https://www.privacy.org.au/About/Contacts.html.

A list of all officers past and present is at https://www.privacy.org.au/About/Officers.html.

The considerable amount of housekeeping involved in an organisation like this is performed by the Secretary, Treasurer and Public Officer.

A small cadre of members maintain and expand the web-site, especially the substantial set of papers at https://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/, and the research and advisory materials at https://www.privacy.org.au/Resources/.

But most of the effort goes into policy. And for that we need calm, patient advocates, who base their arguments on evidence, and who seek balanced solutions. It’s a strongly professional organisation, with a substantial reputation that must not be frittered away through excessive claims.

We work hard on finding new talent, and helping people develop their advocacy skills. We once again have a full complement of Board members, with Usman Iqbal, Holly Tootell and Juanita Fernando joining over the last 18 months.

At the AGM in November, we’ll be submitting a proposal to you that the size of the Board be increased, in order to enable us to focus more energy on proactive policy activities.

The Board is accordingly looking to APF’s Members for assistance.

We provide an outline of what Members can do, at: https://www.privacy.org.au/WhatToDo.html.

We have a couple of specific areas in which assistance would be valuable. We currently have three active SubCommittees focussing on particular topic-areas, and will be shortly re-constituting a fourth. See https://www.privacy.org.au/About/Contacts.html#SC.

If you have, or can develop, some expertise in these areas, please contact the relevant person to offer assistance.

We also get a lot of value from people with specialist expertise who are prepared to provide quiet assistance in the background. If you know people who may be prepared to assist in key areas (especially ones that involve complex technologies like biometrics, DNA and CCTV), please think about arranging introductions to the relevant SubCommittee Chair or myself.

Of course, one concrete contribution you can make is to ensure that your membership subscription is up-to-date. And you may like to consider a Life Membership or a Donation.