Figure B1
Assessment of council arrangements with Victoria Police for public safety CCTV systems

We have consulted with Melbourne, Whitehorse, Hume, East Gippsland and Horsham, and we considered their views when reaching our audit conclusions. As required by section 16(3) of the Audit Act 1994, we gave a draft copy of this report, or relevant extracts, to those agencies and asked for their submissions and comments. We also provided a copy of the report to the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Responsibility for the accuracy, fairness and balance of those comments rests solely with the agency head.

Responses were received as follows:

Councils should maintain adequate security over personal information recorded using surveillance technologies by complying with relevant data security and records management requirements. Under Information Privacy Principle 4 on data security, councils must take reasonable steps to protect the personal information they hold from misuse and loss and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Effective data security involves:

Local councils should be able to demonstrate to their communities that they are managing surveillance systems in public places well. They can achieve this by establishing and implementing robust policies, procedures, management and oversight frameworks and practices.

This part of the report focuses on whether the audited councils can demonstrate this. We examined council policies and procedures, approval of surveillance devices, resourcing, management, governance, assurance and accountability processes and arrangements with Victoria Police.

1.1 Surveillance in public places

Recent advances have made surveillance technology—ranging from familiar tools such as CCTV to more sophisticated technologies such as drones and facial recognition, a form of biometric technology—more readily available, affordable and sophisticated. CCTV cameras, the focus of this audit, are increasingly used in public spaces like streets, shopping centres, shops, banks, public transport and car parks as a crime prevention measure and as a tool to detect and identify offenders.

Across the public and private sectors, organisations use a range of technologies to observe or monitor individuals or groups, such as closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance systems. Some Victorian local councils, use CCTV for public safety and protecting council staff and assets.

Councils' CCTV surveillance systems fall into two main categories: