Guidance

Privacy notice for ‘Quickfire Debates’ consultation

Updated 16 December 2024

This notice sets out how we will use your personal data, and your rights. It is made under Articles 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

1. Your Data

1.1 Purpose

The purpose for which we are processing your personal data is to obtain the opinions of civil servants about Government Reform and Civil Service Modernisation, in order to inform how we run communications and engagement about Modernisation and Reform.

1.2 The data

We will process the following personal data: name, email address, grade, department, profession, gender, time spent in the civil service, opinions. The response platform will also collect information about your ethnicity, disability status, and age which will be used to highlight any bias emerging in the research sample - this will only be shared in aggregate form with the Function.

1.3 Legal basis of processing

The legal basis for processing your personal data is that it 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. In this case that is consulting on policies or proposals, or obtaining opinion data, in order to develop good effective policies.

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.

Our legal basis for processing sensitive personal data is that it 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. The function is obtaining opinion data in order to develop good effective policies - this will only be used to check and control for sample bias.

Where we are using your personal data to inform you about future opportunities, we will only be doing so with your consent. In that case, our legal basis for processing will be consent.

1.4 Recipients

Responses will not be published. Aggregate information (which is not personal data) created from responses may be shared with other public bodies or published.

Your personal data is being obtained by our online consultation platform provider, and will therefore be shared with their hosting provider.

As your personal data (contact information) will be stored on our IT infrastructure it will also be shared with our data processors who provide email, and document management and storage services. This will only be processed with user consent.

1.5 Retention

Responses from individuals will be disposed of once analysis is completed and/or when no longer needed for the purpose of onward contact, which will be no later than 3 years following the end of any open survey or consultation exercise.

2. Your Rights

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. Where this data has been aggregated, we may not be able to remove inferences made from your personal data.

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.

3. International Transfers

Data submitted to our online consultation platform provider, and their hosting provider, will be stored in the UK.

As your personal data is stored on our IT infrastructure, and shared with our data processors, it may be transferred and stored securely outside the UK. Where that is the case it will be subject to equivalent legal protection through the use of Model Contract Clauses.

4. Contact details

The data controller for your personal data is the Cabinet Office. The contact details for the data controller are:

Cabinet Office
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS
0207 276 1234

Cabinet Office Public Enquiries: Contact Form

The contact details for the data controller’s Data Protection Officer are: dpo@cabinetoffice.gov.uk

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

5. 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
0303 123 1113
casework@ico.org.uk

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