Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy – PAL-Assist and other web based shared tools
# PAL-Assist Privacy Statement (also covers all AI apps available on whs.vic.edu.au/ai. These tools are all provided to demonstrate what is possible, to assist the workload of school leaders and staff and model the sharing of ideas, opportunities and tools amongst school leaders.
All apps are created, developed and maintained by Dave Armstrong who welcomes feedback, suggestions and bug reports
**Last updated: August 5th 2026· Next review: August 2027
## About this statement
The statement is designed to provide accurate and detailed information to satisfy concerns about privacy and how the app operates. Privacy and transparency about how the app operates and how information is processed are valued by the developer.
PAL-Assist is an AI-powered assistant that helps Victorian school staff find and understand guidance from the Department of Education’s Policy and Advisory Library (PAL). It is operated by Wangaratta High School and was developed by Dave Armstrong. It is not an official Department of Education system, and its answers do not replace departmental or legal advice — decisions remain the responsibility of the staff member and their school. In general the best advice and guidance is available on PAL and from relevant Department staff.
This statement explains what personal information PAL-Assist collects, why, where it is stored, who can see it, and your rights. We manage personal information in accordance with the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic) (including the Information Privacy Principles) and, to the extent any health information is ever involved, the Health Records Act 2001 (Vic). It should be read alongside the Department of Education’s Schools’ Privacy Policy and Generative AI policy.
## What we collect
**Account information.** When you sign in with your Google account or an email link, we record your email address, display name and sign-in method. Access is restricted to an approved list of school email addresses and domains. You may optionally tell us your role (for example, principal or teacher) when giving feedback.
**Your questions and conversations.** The questions you type, and the conversation context needed to answer follow-ups, are processed to generate answers and are stored in your search history so you can revisit them.
**Feedback.** If you rate an answer or leave a comment, we store the rating, any tags or comments you provide, and a short excerpt of the answer you were rating.
**Usage and technical information.** We keep operational logs of how the service is used — for example, when searches occur, how long answers take, whether answers included citations, and error events. Our security logs record technical details such as IP address and browser type. We also keep de-identified daily counters (for example, how many citations were clicked) that are not linked to any individual.
## What you must not enter
Consistent with the Department’s Generative AI policy and guidance from the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, **do not enter personal information into PAL-Assist**. This includes student or staff names, family details, health or wellbeing information about identifiable people, or anything that could identify a specific member of your school community. Ask about policies and situations in general terms. This rule exists to protect students and staff, and it is a condition of using the tool.
## How your questions are processed by AI
PAL-Assist sends your question (and relevant conversation context) to Google’s Gemini API, with search grounding restricted to Victorian Department of Education sources. Under Google’s paid API terms, this data is **not used to train or improve Google’s AI models**; Google may retain prompts for a limited period (currently up to 55 days) solely for abuse monitoring and safety. Every answer is checked by PAL-Assist before display so that cited links come only from authorised Department of Education domains.
**No automated decisions are made about you or anyone else.** PAL-Assist retrieves and summarises published policy for a human reader. It does not assess, score or make decisions about students, staff or families, and it must not be used to do so.
## Why we collect this information
We use the information above to: provide the service and your search history; verify that only authorised school staff can access it; monitor the accuracy, safety and citation quality of AI answers; investigate faults and security events; understand overall usage so the tool can be improved; and meet our obligations to varying policies. We do not sell personal information, and we do not permit it to be used for advertising or for training AI models.
## Who can see your information
Access to identifiable records is limited to the developer (the app administrator) for monitoring, troubleshooting and support. Viewing the text of individual questions requires a deliberate, separately-gated step by an administrator, and every such access is itself logged and auditable. A separate reporting view used to demonstrate the service’s value contains no names or email addresses: identities are replaced with irreversible pseudonyms, and question text is shown only where at least three different users asked the same question.
We do not disclose personal information to anyone else except: to our service providers listed below, so the service can function; or where the law requires or permits it (for example, to prevent a serious threat to safety).
## Service providers and overseas storage
PAL-Assist is built on enterprise-grade Google Cloud (Firebase Authentication, Firestore and Cloud Run) and the Google Gemini API, and uses Google Analytics to measure aggregate usage (analytics events describe actions, such as “a citation was clicked” — they do not include the text of your questions and are not used to identify you). If you choose “Save to Drive”, the document is created directly in **your own** Google Drive using a permission limited to files the app creates; the content does not pass through our servers.
**Your information is stored and processed on Google Cloud infrastructure located in the United States.** Google is contractually committed to safeguarding this data under its cloud and API terms, including the commitments about model training and limited retention described above. Because personal information should never be entered into prompts, the information leaving Australia is limited to account details, your questions about policy, and usage records.
## How long we keep information
– **Search history and usage logs:** deleted automatically after **90 days**. If you pin a search, it is kept until you unpin or delete it.
– **Feedback:** deleted automatically after **90 days**.
– **Account record** (email, sign-in details, optional role): kept while you remain an authorised user, and removed on request when access ends.
– **Security logs:** kept as long as needed for security monitoring and incident investigation.
You can delete individual searches, or your entire search history, from within the app at any time.
## How we protect information
We take reasonable steps to secure personal information, including: access restricted to an approved allowlist of school accounts; verification of every request using Google’s App Check and reCAPTCHA Enterprise; encryption in transit (HTTPS); credentials held in a secured secret store, never in code; rate limiting; server-side checks so users can only ever access their own history; and audited administrator access as described above.
## Access, correction and your choices
You can view and delete your own search history in the app. To access or correct other information we hold about you — or to have your account information removed — contact the developer using the details below. We will respond within a reasonable time and in accordance with Victorian privacy law. You can use PAL-Assist without providing feedback or a role; these are optional.
## Questions, concerns and complaints
If you have a question, concern or complaint about how your personal information has been handled:
1. **Contact the developer:** Dave Armstrong, dave.armstrong@education.vic.gov.au who will acknowledge your complaint promptly, investigate, and respond to you.
## Changes to this statement
We review this statement at least annually and whenever the service changes in a way that affects how personal information is handled. The “last updated” date above will always reflect the current version. Material changes will be communicated to users in the app.
Questions or concerns about this policy should be directed to:
Dave Armstrong
Wangaratta High School, dave.armstrong@education.vic.gov.au