About this site

Unless otherwise stated, the information available on or through this website is protected by copyright and subject to the copyright laws of New Zealand. Such information may be reproduced for personal use without permission, as long as you attribute the work to Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, and abide by the licence terms under the Creative Commons licence.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence(external link)

The permission to reproduce copyright protected material does not extend to any material on this site such as logos, emblems, trademarks, photography and imagery, and material identified as being the copyright of a third party. This includes material on websites you access via links from this site. To get permission to reproduce such material, contact the copyright holders concerned.

For permission to reproduce information on this website for any purpose other than personal use, you can write to us at:

Information Team
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
Private Bag 6995
Wellington 6141
New Zealand

Alternatively you can send an email to informationteam@nzta.govt.nz

Disclaimer

  1. The information available on or through this website is intended to provide general information to the public and all reasonable measures have been taken to ensure the quality and accuracy of that information. However, Waka Kotahi:
    • may change, delete, add to or otherwise amend information contained on this website without notice
    • is not responsible for the content of other websites linked to or referenced from this website. (Waka Kotahi neither endorses the information, content, presentation or accuracy of such other websites, nor makes any warranty, express or implied, regarding these other websites).
  2. The contents of this website should not be construed as legal advice and, before acting on any information, you should take specific advice from qualified professional people.
  3. Reference to any specific commercial product, process or service, whether by trade name, trademark, manufacture or otherwise, does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Waka Kotahi.
  4. This site may also contain the advice, opinions and statements of various information providers. Waka Kotahi does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement or other information provided by any information provider, any user of this site or any other person or entity. Reliance upon any such advice, opinion, statement or other information, shall be at the user's own risk.
  5. Waka Kotahi does not accept any responsibility or liability whatsoever, whether in contract, tort, equity or otherwise, for any action taken as a result of reading, or reliance placed on Waka Kotahi because of having read, any part, or all, of the information in this website or for any error, inadequacy, deficiency, flaw in or omission from the information provided in this site.
  6. Each page on this website must be read in conjunction with this disclaimer and any other disclaimer that forms part of the page or website.

Full website terms of use

Privacy statement

Introduction

This privacy statement explains how Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (we, us) collect, store, use and share your personal information. 

We’re working to deliver our customer promise – a land transport system that connects people, products and places for a thriving Aotearoa New Zealand. 

To do this, we sometimes need to collect and use different types of personal information such as driver licensing, vehicle registration and licensing and traffic cameras. Whatever the situation, we’re committed to protecting your personal information. 

Our general privacy statement applies to most interactions with you.

General privacy statement

Specific privacy statements

Some situations have their own privacy statements, but if none of them cover your situation, then the general privacy statement will apply.

You can find out more about the laws we work under and how we collect, use and share information in our transparency statement.

Transparency Statement

General privacy statement

Why we collect your personal information 

We take privacy seriously. We only collect personal information from you when we need it to help us provide services to you and perform our everyday functions.

What personal information we collect 

That depends on what service we are providing, but personal information we may collect includes: 

  • your name 
  • date of birth 
  • address 
  • email address 
  • telephone number 
  • vehicle and driver licence details 
  • New Zealand business number (NZBN) 
  • information about your communications with us and use of our services. 

We usually collect personal information from you directly, but we may collect personal information from other agencies or other sources if allowed by law. 

When we collect personal information 

Whenever you interact with us, provided we need it to help you or to carry out our functions. For example, when you contact us with an enquiry or a complaint, when you use our website, if you complete a survey or when you visit one of our driver licence or motor vehicle registration and licensing agents. 

Who we share your information with 

We will not share your personal information with any third parties, except where disclosure is authorised by law. For example, we may share your personal information: 

  • where you give us permission to share your personal information with another agency or person 
  • with our agents, professional advisors or others who have a reasonable need to access your information for any of the purposes described below. 
  • with our service providers such as contractors who help us provide website services or engagement and research activities (who may be based in New Zealand or overseas). 
  • with others if disclosure is required or authorised by the law, including for law enforcement purposes, to facilitate court proceedings, to enforce or apply our terms and conditions, or to protect our business, our users, or others. 

How we use your information

We use the personal information that we collect to provide services to you and perform our everyday functions. We keep records of your enquiries and complaints, along with information you provide to us as part of those communications.

We may use your personal information for purposes including:

  • confirming your identity 
  • providing you with our services and improving those services 
  • responding to correspondence or providing you with information you have requested 
  • processing payments received or made by us 
  • complying with legal obligations 
  • statistical analysis 
  • general administrative and business purposes. 

If we receive a complaint or enquiry that relates to you, we may use information we hold about you to investigate it, which may involve raising the complaint with third parties. If we intend to use your information for any specific purpose not covered above, we will inform you of this purpose at the time we collect the information. 

Use of non-personal information

Waka Kotahi releases a wide range of anonymised data covering many topics in many formats. We may use the personal information you provide to create anonymised data sets and make these available through our Open Data Portal. This is our public platform for exploring and downloading open data, discovering and building apps and engaging to solve important issues. Open data doesn’t contain personal information or any information that can be linked to you or identify you. You can read our Open Data Portal privacy statement and our Open Data Policy below:

Open Data Portal privacy statement(external link)

Open Data Policy(external link)

How we keep your information secure

Our systems have security measures in place to stop the loss, misuse and alteration of information under our control, and our systems are monitored, analysed and audited. Our staff receive training to ensure that your information remains secure and is not disclosed or misused.

We use third-party providers to store and process information. We store some information with Microsoft Azure and Google servers in Australia. We also use Microsoft Office 365 for our email and other office productivity applications. This means that information we hold about you may be transferred to, or accessed from, outside New Zealand.

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that information about you which is stored or processed by our third-party service providers or agents is protected from loss, unauthorised access and disclosure, or any other misuse. We satisfy ourselves that our providers meet high data security standards.

We only keep your information for as long as we need it for the purposes we collect it for, or as required by law.

Land Transport Registers

We are legally required under the Land Transport Act 1998, Land Transport Management Act 2003, Land Transport Management (Regional Fuel Tax) Regulations 2018 and Railways Act 2005, to maintain registers including the Motor Vehicle Register, the Driver License Register and the Transport Service Licence Register.

To maintain these registers accurately we also collect and store information when you complete a transaction relating to one of these registers, such as licensing your vehicle (rego) or obtaining a driver licence. The personal information we collect depends on the transaction you are completing but it includes things like your contact details, signature, gender, driver licence photo, organ donor status, whether you wear glasses or contact lenses for driving, disqualifications, suspensions, demerit points and operator safety rating. Where the specific law establishing the register has requirements which override normal privacy principles, we must follow the specific law. 

Drive Licence Register

Motor Vehicle Register

Website analytics

We collect the following information about your use of our website (but we make no efforts to associate this with your identity except in rare situations where we need to respond to a security or safety issue): 

  • the internet (IP) address you used to access our website 
  • any search terms you used 
  • the pages you accessed, the links you clicked on and any documents you downloaded 
  • the date and time you visited our site 
  • any referring site through which you clicked to our website 
  • the screen resolution of your computer or device 
  • the type of web browser or operating system you used (such as Windows 10 or Google Chrome). 

We use Google Analytics Double Click Cookie and demographic interests reporting features, to analyse the web traffic data for us in accordance with Google’s privacy policy.

We also use online tools Campaign Manager and Search Ads 360 by Google to understand whether you complete certain activities on this website, the content with which you have interacted with and to display relevant content to you.

Campaign Manager uses Google Floodlight tags to recognise users by a cookie ID or device ID which becomes a user ID.  User IDs are associated with browsers, not people. If you use multiple devices such as a phone, a tablet and two different browsers on a laptop, each device or browser is identified separately. Similarly, if people share a computer or device, a single user ID might represent multiple people.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are stored in your browser by websites you visit to save certain information. The next time you visit this website on the same device, the information saved in the cookies will subsequently be accessed on your device so that the website can recognise that you have already accessed and visited it with the browser you use on that device. We use this information to design and display the website in an optimum way in line with your preferences.

Most browsers allow you to adjust the settings to tell you when you are offered a cookie so you can decide to accept it or not. You may disable or block all cookies but that may cause some features of our website to not work correctly. 

How Google uses information from sites or apps that use their services(external link)

Our web analytics respect any ‘do not track’ setting you might have set on your browser, but you can opt out of these Google Analytics features through ‘Google Ad settings’ or by downloading the ‘Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on’.

Google Analytics - types of cookies used(external link)

Google Ad settings(external link)

Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on(external link)

Your privacy rights

Requesting access to or correction of your information

You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. You also have the right to ask us to correct your information if you think it is wrong. You should let us know when personal information about you changes, such as your address so we can update our records.

When you make a request, we will process it as soon as we can, but no later than 20 working days after we receive it. There are some circumstances when we cannot give you access to or correct your information if the way that you ask. We will always let you know this, be as open as we can, and tell you what law we are following.

You can request access to your personal information through any of the following channels:

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
Private Bag 6995
Wellington 6141 

You may also make a request using the Request My Info Tool provided by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on its website.

Request My Info Tool – Office of the Privacy Commissioner(external link)

Before we give you your information we may ask for ID so that we can confirm your identity with you.

Privacy complaints

If you have a complaint about how we handled your personal information contact us via:

Privacy Complaints
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency
Private Bag 6995
Wellington 6141 

If you raise a complaint with us and are unsatisfied about the way we’ve handled it, you may raise it with the Privacy Commissioner. The contact details are: 

Office of the Privacy Commissioner
PO Box 10094
The Terrace
Wellington 6143
New Zealand

0800 803 909
www.privacy.org.nz(external link)

Email use

Giving Waka Kotahi your email address is optional.

We recommend using an email address that’s unique to you, so only you can see information we send you.

If you give us an email address we may use it for a range of things, including:

  • send you information and reminders about your application
  • send you information and reminders about your driver licence or motor vehicles in your name
  • contact you about driver licensing, motor vehicle registration and licensing, or other Waka Kotahi services
  • send you a transcript of your theory test
  • ask for feedback on our services and the transport system
  • send you a temporary driver licence
  • send you approval for an exemption 
  • send you a heavy vehicle permit
  • send you a revocation notice
  • impose conditions
  • send you a demerit point warning notice or suspension notice
  • send you a disqualification notice
  • serve you formal notices, including:
    • warning notices
    • suspension notices
    • safety notices - including warrant of fitness (WoF) and certificate of fitness (CoF) revocations
    • infringement notices.

Updating your email address

If you give us your email address for your driver licence, it will only be updated on the Driver Licence Register.

Update the email address for your driver licence(external link)

If you give us an email address for a vehicle, it will be updated in the Motor Vehicle Register. If your driver licence is linked to your vehicle, we may also update your email address in the Driver Licence Register.

Update the email address for your vehicle(external link)

Email address for tolling

If you give us an email address for your toll account, we may use it to:

  • send you a toll payment notice,
  • let you know if a top-up fails,
  • let you know if we change your account type,
  • let you know when you reach your low balance threshold,
  • let you know we’ve stopped toll charges for a vehicle on a certain account,
  • let you know when your monthly tax invoice/statement is ready in your toll account,
  • tell you we’ve suspended or reactivated your account,
  • send you a monthly tax invoice/statement.

If you give us an email address for a toll account, it will only be used for that toll account. It will NOT update your email address in the Motor Vehicle Register.

Log in to your toll account to manage your details(external link)

Privacy expectations for suppliers and service providers

Waka Kotahi deals with the personal information of a large number of people and engages with a wide range of people and organisations who may handle personal information on its behalf. Managing personal information appropriately is important to us and to the people whose personal information we hold. Organisations who handle personal information on our behalf, are expected to also manage personal information appropriately.

Privacy expectations for suppliers and service providers

Transparency

Our Transparency Statement summarises how Waka Kotahi complies with the State Services Commission’s Model Standards on Information Gathering and Public Trust. It describes the environment we operate in and how we gather, use and share information.

Transparency statement

Responsible disclosure guidelines

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency takes the security and privacy of our information seriously. If you identify a security issue with our systems, please tell us so that we can get it fixed.

Responsible disclosure guidelines