Guidance

Civil Service People Survey privacy notice

Published 7 August 2018

This guidance was withdrawn on 27 October 2020

This privacy notice has been replaced by a newer version - People Survey: privacy information notice

This notice sets out how Cabinet Office and ORC International will use your personal data, collected during the Civil Service People Survey (CSPS), and your rights. It is made under Articles 13 and/or 14 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The CSPS is an annual staff survey, which runs in October each year and invites all civil servants to share their views on working for their organisations.

The Cabinet Office and ORC International (the external contractor who conduct the Civil Service People Survey on behalf and instruction of HMG) are joint-controllers of the personal data collected and processed in the CSPS.

Participation in the survey is entirely voluntary.

NB: information about pulse surveys, run by some organisations to support the main CSPS, also in conjunction with ORC International, is included in the ‘Further Information’ section at the end of this privacy notice.

Your data

The data

ORC International and Cabinet Office will process the following personal data:

• Your responses to the questions asked in the Civil Service People Survey.

This includes any responses given to:

1. Attitudinal questions that ask about your experiences of working in the Civil Service.

2. Demographic questions that ask about your personal and job characteristics (these include age, heath status, sexual orientation, religion, gender and ethnicity).

3. Any free-text comment you leave in the survey.

You do not have to answer all questions in the survey. You may skip any question you do not feel comfortable answering.

Only a small number of analysts in HMG, and in ORC International will have access to individual-level data collected during the CSPS. Individual-level data are analysed in order to produce aggregate survey results: ORC International and Cabinet Office will only report and publish aggregate results for groups of ten or more survey respondents.

Purpose

The purposes for which Cabinet Office and ORC International are processing your personal data are:

• To help leaders at all levels of the Civil Service identify where there are problems in their organisations, who they affect, and to help them to take action to improve staff experiences and wellbeing.

• Comparable data provides a means for senior leaders to be held accountable for people management in a consistent way: aggregate results are used for the purposes of Permanent Secretary and senior official performance and talent management.

• Common data across the Civil Service creates a common currency and language to share experiences. In previous years, the team who commission and oversee the People Survey have delivered workshops on employee engagement at Civil Service Live and published case studies of good practices in high performing teams.

Legal basis of processing

The legal basis for processing your personal data is:

1. Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest. Personal data are processed in the public interest because understanding civil servant experiences and feelings about working in the civil service can inform decision taken to improve these experiences, and ultimately organisation performance. This function is carried out by the analytical unit in Cabinet Office (in partnership with ORC International) on behalf of the whole Civil Service.

Sensitive personal data is personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

The legal basis for processing your sensitive personal data is:

1. Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest for the exercise of a function of the Crown, a Minister of the Crown, or a government department: it is important to know if groups of staff with specific demographic characteristics have a better or worse experience of working for the Civil Service, so that appropriate action can be taken to level this experience.

2. Processing is of a specific category of personal data and it is necessary for the purposes of identifying or keeping under review the existence or absence of equality of opportunity or treatment between groups of people with a view to enabling such equality to be promoted or maintained.

Recipients

Although survey responses collected in the main CSPS are anonymised, Cabinet Office and ORC International have taken the decision to class individual-level responses as personal data under the legislation. This is because it may be possible to identify an individual at the point that an individual survey response is reviewed.

Your individual level survey responses, collected by ORC International in the CSPS, will be shared with the Cabinet Office by ORC International. Cabinet Office may then also share your individual level survey response with:

• Your department (but only if that department has a qualified analyst who has signed a data sharing agreement, which outlines how they may store and use these data).

• Qualified Civil Service analysts who are responsible for analysing data from respondents working in specific analytical professions (i.e. analysts in the Government Economic Service, the Government Statistical Service, the Government Operational Research Service or the Government Social Research Profession). These data analysts would also be required to sign the data sharing agreement, before data are shared.

In addition, any free text comments you leave during the survey may be shared with team leaders within your organisation. Cabinet Office and ORC International will not provide comments to your organisation or team leaders for any teams/groups where less than 30 people have left a comment. As a further data protection measure, our partner - ORC International - will proof-read the comments you provide and remove any names or job titles as far as possible.

Outside of these conditions, Cabinet Office and ORC International will only share aggregate summary data (for groups of 10 or more respondents) with internal and external stakeholders. These summary data will not allow any individuals to be identified.

Retention

• Survey responses collected in the CSPS will be held by the Cabinet Office for statistical purposes (there is regularly the requirement to do time series analysis) for 10 years after the date the survey is completed, at which point their retention will be reviewed. If the survey responses are no longer in use at this point, they will be deleted; if they are still in active use, they will be retained, but their retention will (from then on) be reviewed on an annual basis. The individual-level survey responses will never be used to make decisions about those individuals.

• Survey responses collected in the CSPS will be held by ORC International for up to 2 years after the survey has completed. Should the contract with ORC International come to an end, then they will delete personal data within 2 years of the date of collection, or pass it to a new contractor, if requested by the Cabinet Office.

• Any organisation that participates in the CSPS, which receives individual-level CSPS response data for their organisation from Cabinet Office will be the controller of those data, and therefore responsible for determining how long they will be retained by their organisation.

• Aggregate results from the CSPS (which do not count as personal data) will be kept indefinitely, or until they are no longer considered useful by the organisation.

• Email addresses for staff in departments using unique links to access the CSPS will be deleted from ORC’s systems in November (after the CSPS in October).

Your rights

Please note: Cabinet Office and ORC International treat all data received through the CSPS as personal data even though it is generally provided anonymously. That is because we gather sufficient information that in certain circumstances certain individuals may be identifiable if they have a set of characteristics that allows them to be picked out. Where you wish to exercise one of your rights Cabinet Office or ORC International will need to be able to identify your individual response to be able to comply.

Your rights are as follows:

You have the right to request information about how your personal data are processed, and to request a copy of that personal data.

You have the right to request that any inaccuracies in your personal data are rectified without delay.

You have the right to request that any incomplete personal data are completed, including by means of a supplementary statement.

You have the right to request that your personal data are erased if there is no longer a justification for them to be processed.

You have the right in certain circumstances (for example, where accuracy is contested) to request that the processing of your personal data is restricted.

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data where it is processed for direct marketing purposes.

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.

Complaints

If you consider that your personal data has been misused or mishandled, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, who is an independent regulator. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Any complaint to the Information Commissioner is without prejudice to your right to seek redress through the courts.

Contact details

The data controllers for your personal data are the Cabinet Office and ORC International. In some cases your employing organisation may also be a data controller: this is only in cases where Cabinet Office has shared individual level survey responses with an organisation (via a qualified analyst who has signed a data sharing agreement, as outlined above in the ‘Recipients’ section of this document). The contact details for the lead data controller are:

Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS

Telephone: 0207 276 1234

Email: eep@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

The contact details for the lead data controller’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) are:

Stephen Jones (DPO)
Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS

Email: dpo@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

The Data Protection Officer provides independent advice and monitoring of Cabinet Office’s use of personal information.

Further information: Pulse surveys

As well as the main CSPS, which runs in October each year, organisations participating in CSPS have the capability to collect data in additional ‘pulse surveys’ throughout the year. The platform for conducting pulse surveys is also provided by ORC International, as part of the contract with Cabinet Office.

Organisations can chose what they ask in pulse surveys, who in the organisation they send the survey to, and when they run the survey. ORC International analyse the individual response data from all pulse surveys and provide aggregate results only (for groups of 10 or more respondents) to the organisation who ran the survey (neither Cabinet Office or the organisation who ran the survey will receive individual-level survey responses). Other information in the following sections of this privacy notice for the main CSPS also apply to pulse surveys: ‘the data’, ‘purpose’, ‘legal basis for processing’, ‘retention’ and ‘your rights’.