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EAP Policy Manual FFY24 Chapter 15 Energy Vendors Page 22 EAP only requests information necessary to provide services. This is as required by the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U.S.C. § 552a and the MGDPA. Under the Privacy Acts, energy vendor, Service Provider, and Commerce staff must only be provided the private data necessary to perform their duties for the purposes listed in the Privacy Notice. The MGDPA, under Minn. Stat. §13.055, subd.1. (d) states: “’Unauthorized person’ means any person who accesses government data without a work assignment that reasonably requires access, or regardless of the person's work assignment, for a purpose not described in the procedures required by section 13.05, subdivision 5.” EAP data provided to energy vendors are limited to information necessary to obtain energy vendor account and consumption information and to allow energy vendors to apply EAP benefits to customer accounts. The household data required are available to energy vendors through the energy vendor’s access to eHEAT. The information is needed to verify the household’s EAP eligibility and the amount to apply to the household’s or the household landlord’s account. To illustrate, EAP collects data on household income and household size, but these data are not required to apply EAP payments to customer accounts. Therefore, these data are not be provided to the energy vendor, with the exception that EAP allows energy vendor employees working with affordability programs to request additional EAP private data if the household has agreed to participate in an affordability program. The energy vendor must obtain an Informed Consent for Release of Data signed by the household before requesting EAP household data for any other use or program. See additional information in Chapter 11 - Data Practices and Records of the EAP Policy Manual. Safe at Home Program EAP follows the guidelines of the Safe at Home (SAH) program, which helps survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, or others who fear for their safety to establish a confidential address. SAH allows its participants to go about their lives without leaving traces of where they live to keep their abuser from locating them. Participants use an SAH assigned address and their correspondence is forwarded to their actual mailing address by the Secretary of State’s office. SAH participants cannot be required to disclose their physical address. The SAH Program may be contacted at 1-866-723-3035 with questions or to confirm a SAH applicant’s participation in SAH. Energy vendors must work with Service Providers to safeguard the identity and address of SAH participants if the address is known. Additional information about SAH is found in Chapter 2 - Applications & Application Processing of the EAP Policy Manual. SAH is governed by Minn. Stat. § 5B and Minn. Rules § 8290.