EA Privacy Notice (Surveys)

The Education Authority (EA) is the Data Controller of any personal data collected and used via its Surveys. This means that the Education Authority determines the purposes and the means by which any personal data collected via our Surveys are processed and are responsible for looking after it in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

We are required under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 to notify you certain information including how we collect, store and use your personal data and also your rights under the UK GDPR.

This privacy notice provides information on how EA collects and processes your personal data when you take part in our Surveys. This Privacy Notice applies to all EA Surveys, whether internal or external, unless you have been directed to a different Privacy Notice.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide to you on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) who monitors EA’s data protection procedures to ensure they meet the standards and requirements of the GDPR. EA’s DPO can be contacted at:

Address:              Data Protection Officer, Education Authority, 40 Academy Street, Belfast, BT1 2NQ

Telephone:         028 8241 1300

Email:                    dpo@eani.org.uk

EA processes data supplied in response to its Surveys for the purpose of informing the development of our policy, guidance or other work in the subject area to which the Survey relates. The feedback received via survey responses is used to help inform our ongoing work to improve the services we provide and the experience of all those who use them, or to improve the experience and performance of EA staff delivering those services. Further information as to the specific purpose of the particular EA Survey which you are considering participating in will be provided within or accompany the particular Survey.

EA will manage and process your responses to survey questions. While the majority of our Surveys are intended to be anonymous and we specifically ask that you do not include information that may identify you (or anyone else), we are mindful that it may still be possible, in a small number of cases, for identifying information to be submitted, for example where a Survey includes via free text boxes or where an individual may be identifiable from a combination of their responses. For this reason, EA will treat all survey response data as if it is personal data.

If you have been asked and have indicated in your Survey that you would be interested in contributing to further EA work on the subject matter covered by the Survey, then we may process your contact details to get in touch with you.

EA may publish a summary of Survey responses and, in some cases, the responses themselves but these will not contain any personal data. We will not publish the names or contact details of respondents but will include the names of organisations responding.

Unless stated otherwise in the Survey, the legal basis for processing your personal data is Public Task (the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the data controller).

Should the Survey include collection of special category personal data (i.e. information relating to an identifiable individual’s racial or ethnic origin; political opinions; religious or philosophical beliefs; trade union membership; genetic data; biometric data (where used for identification purposes); health; sex life; and sexual orientation), unless stated otherwise in the Survey, the additional legal basis for processing this data is that there is a Substantial Public Interest in doing so.

Information collected via EA Surveys will only be used for the purposes as stated above.

EA will usually conduct its online Surveys using Citizen Space or Microsoft Forms. Both Citizen Space and Microsoft Forms store data on secure servers in the United Kingdom.

From time to time we may share consultation responses with external consultants who we have engaged to assist us to analyse the results. Such consultants shall be obliged to keep your information secure and use it only to deliver the services for which we have engaged them.

Any specific requests from a third party for us to share your personal data with them will be dealt with in accordance the provisions of data protection legislation.

We will not transfer the personal information we collect about you to any country outside the

UK without telling you in advance that we intend to do so and only if the country in question is covered by UK adequacy regulations or an appropriate safeguard is in place to ensure adequate protection for your personal information in those circumstances, or the transfer is covered by one of the exceptions set out in UK GDPR.

Information provided in Survey Responses will be held and used by EA until our work on the subject matter of the Survey has concluded and in line with the relevant minimum retention period set out in our Retention and Disposal of Records Schedule (which can be confirmed on request).

If you wish to request access, object or raise a complaint about how we have handled your personal information, you can contact EA’s Data Protection Officer using the details above. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113.

ICO - Make a complaint

Full details of the EA’s role as a data controller and your rights in relation to information we hold about you can be found in our main Privacy Notices which can be read here.