OAIC finds offshore staff accessed court recordings held by VIQ

OAIC finds offshore staff accessed court recordings held by VIQ

4 November 2026: The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has closed its preliminary inquiries into VIQ Solutions, which transcribed court hearings for Commonwealth agencies, after finding that three employees of an India-based subcontractor accessed a limited number of Australian court hearing recordings between September 2025 and February 2026. The OAIC says the access took place outside the arrangements VIQ had in place, and that the agencies were not told before VIQ went into voluntary administration in March 2026.

Not yet independently verified. We have read the OAIC's media release, not the attached report on VIQ Solutions and Commonwealth agency contracting, and no penalty was imposed. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

A vendor that no longer exists to sanction

VIQ is now in liquidation, and the OAIC has decided that further regulatory action would not be proportionate. The inquiry therefore ends without a determination or a penalty, but with a published report, titled "VIQ Solutions Pty Ltd and Commonwealth agency contracting", which the OAIC has attached to its release. Commissioner Elizabeth Tydd is quoted in the release.

The case is a reminder of how little leverage a buyer has once a supplier fails. A vendor in administration cannot be required to investigate, notify or fix anything, so the protections that matter are the ones written into the contract and checked while the supplier is still trading.

Where the contract chain broke

Transcription is a typical outsourced service: recordings go to a vendor, which may pass work to subcontractors in other countries to keep costs down. The OAIC's findings point to two gaps that apply to any such arrangement.

The first is offshore sub-processing. The agencies' recordings were reached by people at a subcontractor in India, in a way the arrangements did not permit. The second is notification: the agencies did not learn of the access from VIQ before it collapsed.

Checks for anyone buying transcription or records services

The lessons carry over to private buyers of transcription, legal support, call recording and document processing:

• require the supplier to name every subcontractor and the country where each one accesses data, and to seek approval before adding one;
• set an incident notification period in the contract that applies to subcontractors too;
• ask for access logs or audit rights covering offshore staff, not just the prime supplier;
• plan for the supplier's failure: where the data sits, how it is returned or destroyed, and who confirms it.

Our catalogue lists 129 transcription companies, many of which use subcontracted transcribers.

Sources

• OAIC: OAIC closes preliminary inquiries into VIQ Solutions, 4 November 2026