How Groundswell handles personal information

Who we are

This policy is published by Groundswell, which operates the Groundswell service. Contact: [email protected]. In this policy "we" and "us" mean Groundswell.

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

What we collect

Information our customers and site visitors give us: a name, contact details and business details, survey answers, the firm profile, notes, corrections reported and instructions for research.

Usage information: which features and pages are used, how long pages take to load, and errors. These records are linked to the account by its user id and hold no names or email addresses.

Information about people that appears in publicly available records, such as a person’s name, role and organisation where a published document names them, and how many published notices named them.

How we use it

To provide, support and improve the service, to communicate with our customers, and to meet our legal obligations. Usage information is used to improve the service.

A business name or ABN typed into Groundswell is used to find that business’s published contract awards and, where the check is switched on, to check the business against the Australian Business Register.

Names from published records are used to show who buyers name as contacts for relevant work, inside the service and in the Market Map. Our collection statement explains this, and how to ask us to stop.

We do not sell personal information.

AI processing

Information given to us, such as survey answers, the firm profile, corrections and research instructions, and published records may be processed by an AI service provider, including outside Australia in the United States, to draft reports and to read text. The provider does not use this information to train its models.

Figures in a drafted report are counted by our own code. Images made by AI are labelled as AI-generated.

Integrations

When a firm connects Slack, Microsoft Teams, HubSpot or Salesforce, we send that service the project information and alerts the firm chooses, and a contact’s published details only where our contact rules allow it. The service holds what we send under its own terms.

Emails

We send account emails (such as a password reset or an address check), alerts, the weekly briefing and the first alerts after signup. Each email that is not a service message carries a way to unsubscribe.

Browser storage and the calendar feed

The sign-in session is kept in the browser’s local storage. Administrators get a sign-in cookie. We use no advertising or tracking cookies.

The calendar feed link is private to the person it was made for. It can be regenerated or switched off at any time, which ends the old link.

Who we share it with

Service providers who help us run Groundswell, under obligations to protect the information. Some of them store or process information outside Australia, including in the United States.

We may also disclose information where the law requires or allows it.

How we keep it

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, loss and unauthorised access, and to keep it accurate and up to date. We keep it only as long as we need it, or as the law requires.

Access, correction and removal

You can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it. If you are named in a public record shown on Groundswell, you can ask us to stop showing your details; our collection statement explains how.

Questions and complaints

Contact us at [email protected]. We aim to respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at www.oaic.gov.au.