Effective 2nd July 2024
Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand

The WATIS Online Booking Account provides an online interpreting services booking service operated by Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora - Waitemata. This statement explains how we handle the personal information we collect to provide this service.
Registering as an approved user of WATIS online booking account
We only accept personnel from government agencies, Health New Zealand, Primary health care givers, and registered businesses as requesters. You must create an account as an Approved Requester to access the system. When you create an Approved Requester account, we collect your name, your contact details, and information about the organisation you work for to create and validate your account.
Registering as a WATIS online booking Interpreter
When you register as an interpreter, we collect your name and information about your qualifications and the languages you are qualified to interpret; your business, contact details, availability, and work status information; and your COVID19 vaccination status. We collect your vaccination status because vaccination for COVID may be required to work in health settings.
Making a booking through WATIS online booking
Only Approved Users may make a booking. Individual clients/patients are not able to register as users of WATIS online account. Information about the client/patient who requires the service will be directly provided by the requester, and WATIS only collects personal information about clients that is relevant to the interpreter service they require.
It is not mandatory to disclose any information about the client other than the language they need an interpreter for. Further information can be provided (eg gender, date of birth) if it is relevant to the needs of the client/patient (eg an interpreter of the same gender would be appropriate in the circumstances). Individual requesters can only review bookings made through their individual account, and cannot access any other information within the system.
You can read more about this in our Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA).
What information is collected
We collect the minimum amount of information necessary to make the booking, such as appointment time and location, language required etc, and to ensure the interpreting and any social or cultural needs of client/patient are met.
How we use your information
Information about Requesters, Interpreters, and Clients/Patients is used to:

• connect the client, requester and interpreter together at the date and time of the booking
• comply with and enforce applicable legal requirements, relevant standards, and our policies, including this Privacy statement
• enable us to prepare reports of statistical information about how services are used (you will not be identified in the reports produced) so that we can monitor and improve the performance of WATIS online Account

How we protect your privacy
Your personal information is held and managed in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020, and will be handled in accordance with this privacy statement. We will not share your information with anyone else without your permission or where required by law.
How we secure your information
Information you choose to share with us will be held securely in compliance with Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand standards. Security measures are in place to protect your information from unauthorised access.
The WATIS online system uses the HTTPS protocol to encrypt communications between the web browser and the website server in both directions, ensuring that malicious parties can't observe the data being sent. Furthermore, the key information about the client is encrypted in the database tables hosted on the secured DB server.
WATIS users will receive a notification email containing a special token to verify their identity at the login stage. Users can view bookings they have made, but cannot access any other information in the system.
How long we keep your information
All the data in WATIS Online Account will be retained for seven years. Where an account has been inactive for more than seven years, all information in it will be deleted.
Viewing or changing your information
Approved Users and Interpreters can view and update their personal information by logging into their WATIS account.
Alternatively, or if you are a client/patient, you can contact us to request access to, or correction of, your information by emailing WATIS@waitematadhb.govt.nz
We may require proof of your identity before being able to provide you with any personal information.
Statistical information
WATIS may collect statistical information to help us improve the Service and understand how it is being used. In summary, this includes the event type and session, timestamps, and the type of device being used. This information is aggregated and doesn't identify you personally. Full details about the statistical information collected is addressed in our Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA).
Your WATIS Online Account details (including NHI number and related attributes such as age, address (suburb, town, postcode, and relevant Health New Zealand district), ethnicity, gender, and New Zealand citizenship/residency status) may be used for statistical reporting on the performance of WATIS Online Account to enable performance monitoring and service improvement. Your personal information will remain securely contained in our systems, and only aggregated information (without your name, NHI number, or contact details) will be used in reports to preserve individual privacy for reporting purposes.
WATIS Online Account uses temporary session cookies, which are limited to the lifetime of the session and support features such as single sign-on (SSO). These cookies also enhance the user experience within the WATIS Online Account self-service portal, such as allowing users to log in and retrieve their previous viewing page after a session has expired.
If you have a privacy concern
Please contact us by email: watis@waitematadhb.govt.nz
If you are not satisfied with the response to any privacy concern, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
Updates to this privacy statement
This Privacy statement may be updated to let you know about changes in how we collect and process your information in the Services or changes in related laws. The date when the document was last updated is shown at the top of this Privacy statement.