Privacy Policy
Principles
We value all personal information for which we are
responsible, and are grateful for all personal information that is voluntarily
supplied to us. We will not ask you for it unless we are legally entitled to do
so and it is absolutely necessary, we will not use it for purposes other than
those for which it was originally collected, and we will dispose of it securely
when we are done. We will be open with you about the information we are
collecting and why.
We respect your privacy, and will ensure any information you
may provide is held securely and in confidence, and in full compliance with all
relevant legislation. We may contact you occasionally in order to verify
information that you have supplied remains valid.
How we use your information
This Policy, also called a Privacy Notice, tells you what to
expect when we collect personal information. It applies to information we
collect about:
- visitors to our websites
- people who use our services, e.g. who subscribe
to our newsletter or request a publication from us
- people who book and/or attend our conferences, events
or training courses
- job applicants, our current and former
employees, students, research associates and visitors
- personal data supplied as part of ongoing
research initiatives across ISER
Application-specific
Privacy Notices will be published for key studies and projects, and these will
comply with the requirements for GDPR-compliant Privacy Notices. For example,
the Understanding Society Survey Participants Privacy Notice may be found at https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/participants/gdpr.
Our websites
We are responsible for a number of public web sites:
Most pages on our public web sites are open to any visitor,
but some are restricted to registered individuals who must login in order to
access them.
Where a visitor subscribes to specific services (
newsletters, publications, events etc. ) we will only use their contact information
to distribute the information that the visitor has asked to receive. Visitors may
of course subscribe to multiple services, and all visitors have the absolute
right to opt in to such contacts at the point of subscription, and to opt out
of any service at any point in the future. Contact information will be managed
as described in the Disclosing personal information section below.
We also own and manage websites that may only be accessed by
ISER members and members of partner organisations (the ISER ‘extranet’), and
others that may only be accessed by ISER members (the ISER ‘intranet’)
When someone visits one of our websites, we will give them
the option of opting out of analytical cookies. Should they choose to accept
all cookies we will collect standard internet log information and details of
visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of
visitors to the various parts of the site to improve the quality and content of
the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone.
We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting any of our
websites. We will not associate any data gathered from the site with any
personally identifying information from any source. If we do want to collect
personally identifiable information through our website, this is asked for
explicitly. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will
explain what we intend to do with it.
How we use cookies
Cookies are small text files stored on your computer. They
relate to a specific site, and can be used to enhance that site’s functionality
and your interaction with it; they may also be used for usage tracking,
research, targeting, etc.
For the most part, we only use cookies to help you to navigate
our web pages or to collect anonymous statistics to help us improve it. We give
you the option to opt out of analytic cookies on our website landing pages, but
not the core cookies that enable our sites to function properly. You can
disable all cookies within your internet browser’s preference selection, but
this may adversely affect the way the site works.
Our websites do not use cookies for advertising or
commercial purposes.
Some ISER pages may, with your consent, offer the ability to
support us by ‘liking’ us on Facebook or ‘tweeting’ about us using Twitter. If
you do support us in this way, a Twitter or Facebook cookie will also be saved
on your computer.
For more information about cookies and how we use them,
please see ISER cookies.
To change your preferences regarding Facebook or Twitter,
please see My
Facebook and Twitter Preferences.
Links to other websites
This Privacy Policy does not cover other web sites that may
be linked from any of our pages. We encourage you to read the privacy
statements on the other websites you visit.
Job applicants, current and former ISER employees
Individuals who apply to work at ISER do so through the
University of Essex Human Resources (HR) section (http://www.essex.ac.uk/hr/), which
manages all aspects of the process on our behalf. Information about candidates
for interviewing purposes is supplied by the HR section and includes:
- Application form
- Covering letter
- CV
- A shortlisting grid for equal opportunities purposes.
- Employment references for shortlisted academic
candidates and appointed professional services candidates
We destroy all information about unsuccessful candidates
after a post has been filled. We do not store any electronic copies of this
information, which we use only for the purposes of shortlisting and
interviewing candidates. We do not disclose this information to anyone other
than those involved in the recruitment process.
Once a person has taken up employment with ISER, we will
compile a file relating to their employment. The information contained in this
will be kept secure and will only be used for purposes directly relevant to
that person’s employment. Once their employment with ISER has ended, we will
retain the file in accordance with the requirements of the University retention
schedule and then delete it.
Students
Student applications are the responsibility of the ISER
Graduate Director and the University Graduate Office. All personal details remain confidential and
applications are only available for review by other authorised staff outside
ISER in the context of awarding funding scholarships. All unsuccessful applications
are destroyed after decisions have been made on funding awards and the award of
places at the University.
Research associates and visitors
Personal details of Research Associates and Visitors are
held by ISER for contact purposes only.
These associates and visitors have no formal link with the University
and no records about them are held by the University.
Survey participants
We hold personal details of ourSurvey participants only for the purposes of conducting the
survey. Participant information remains
strictly confidential at all times and may only be accessed by a small number
of authorised staff conducting the survey.
Complaints or queries
We try to meet the highest standards when collecting and
using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive
about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if
they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or
inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our
procedures.
This Privacy Notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in
mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection
and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any
additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be
sent to the address below.
We try to be as open as we can, in terms of giving people
access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any
personal information about them by making a ‘subject access request’ under the General
Data Protection Regulations. If we do hold information about you, we will:
Access to personal information
- give you a description of it;
- tell you why we are holding it;
- tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
- let you have a copy of the information in an
intelligible form.
To ask us for any personal information we may hold you need
to address the request in writing to the ISER Director.
If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally,
for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the
telephone.
If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to
correct any mistakes by writing to the ISER Director.
Disclosure of personal information
We do not disclose personal information to third parties
without consent unless legally obliged to do so. Information about our staff,
students and research associates or visitors may be shared with other sections
of the University of Essex as required for administrative purposes.
Where data is passed to third parties, it is done so in
compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations.
Anonymised usage data may be provided in publicly-available
web statistics; any such data cannot be traced to individual users.
GDPR-specific Information
The General Data Protection Regulations require us to
provide certain legal information as part of this Privacy Notice ;
The vast majority of our research will use Public Task as
the Lawful Basis for Processing. Ethically we will still obtain your consent
and you will still retain the absolute right to withdraw from our studies at
any time should you so wish. However, should you decide to withdraw from a
study it may be necessary to retain a basic level of information for administrative
purposes within our systems to ensure that you are not contacted in the future.
Additionally, any data that you have previously provided as part of the study
that has been aggregated, anonymised or pseudonymised may not be deleted.
Separate Privacy Notices will provide more detailed explanations either during
the consent process or through links to publicly available web pages.
For newsletters, event notifications, training courses and
other communications we will use Consent as the Lawful Basis for Processing,
and we will process personal data in accordance with the practices previously
described within this Privacy Notice.
Contact details for subscription services will be deleted as
soon as practicable after you notify us that you wish to be removed from that
service. Personal data relating to training courses, conferences and events
will be deleted six months after the activity has completed. Longer term
studies will have an indefinite data retention period, but we will review the
continued need to retain your personal data every five years and delete that
data if we no longer require it.
How to contact us
Please write to:
ISER Director
Institute for Social and Economic Research
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
United Kingdom C04 3SQ
If you wish to contact the University
of Essex’s Data Protection Officer, you should write to:
Data Protection Officer
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
United Kingdom
C04 3SQ
If you wish to lodge a complaint
regarding the handling of your personal data you should write to either of the
above in the first instance. However, you have the right to raise the complaint
directly with the regulatory authority. You can do this through the Information
Commissioners Office online service at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/
.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We keep our Privacy Policy under regular review. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 2022-11-30