Valid from 11 July 2018 to 19 June 2020
Who are we?
The Welsh Parliament (the Senedd Commission) is the data controller of the information you provide, and will ensure it is protected and used in line with data protection legislation.
Any queries regarding our use of your information should be sent to the Information Governance Manager at data.protection@assembly.wales or 0300 200 6565.
What information are we collecting?
We will collect your name, contact details, details about your professional role(s), employer and/or groups you are associated with and the content of any materials you provide (such as written evidence or correspondence). We may take photographs and record videos or audio at committee events, and seek your feedback on your experience of participating in committee work.
Any correspondence or material shared with a committee chair, in their role as chair, will be considered to be correspondence with a committee and may be published, and shared with other committee members and relevant officials.
Working with your information
The Senedd Commission may publish the material you provide, such as correspondence or written evidence, on our website.
The Senedd Commission is not obliged to accept any materials you provide, nor to publish all or any part of it even if it has been accepted.
If it is published, the material will be available via Internet search engines.
A digital version of your material will be kept indefinitely on our secure ICT network and by The National Archives (TNA).
This includes third party cloud services provided by Microsoft. Any transfer of data by Microsoft outside of the European Economic Area is covered by contractual clauses under which Microsoft ensure that personal data is treated in line with European legislation
The Senedd Commission may also make physical and digital copies of the materials you provide. These copies may be used by Members of the Senedd and their support staff, and Senedd Commission staff.
All digital copies will be stored securely on our ICT network. All physical copies will be stored securely.
We may use all or part(s) of the published version of your material in other publications or material relating to committee work. For example, we may quote from your evidence:
- in relevant committee reports and other publicly available papers, which are published on our website and distributed in physical copy to interested parties (with the digital version being retained on our ICT network and by TNA);
- in committee briefing papers, which are not routinely published, but are held indefinitely on our secure internal ICT network;
- on our website (which is archived indefinitely by TNA);
- on other online channels (such as Twitter and YouTube) where information is retained and processed in line with the privacy policies of those individual processors. Privacy policies of those processors can be viewed on their websites.
Publication and retention of the materials you provide
If you provide any information that you feel is not suitable for public disclosure, please indicate which parts should not be published and give your reasons for this.
We will consider this when publishing evidence or when dealing with any requests for information. If you have any questions about the kind of information that is suitable to be provided as evidence, please contact the relevant committee clerk directly.
We may remove personal data from the published version of your evidence if we consider that it could be used to identify you or a third party personally; and/or we agree to do so in response to a request by you.
Before accepting material from those aged 13 or under, we require authorisation from the young person's parent or guardian. This may be provided in the form of an email from the young person's parent or guardian.
All physical and digital copies of your evidence held by the Senedd Commission, apart from the published digital version, will not be retained beyond the end of the Fifth Senedd (i.e. after April 2021).
Retention and use of your contact details
You should state within the material you are providing whether you are doing so in a personal capacity or in a professional capacity, for example, as part of a job or other position you hold.
If you have provided material to a committee, we will retain your contact details on our secure internal ICT network so that we can:
- keep you up to date about committee consideration of the subject of your material;
- ask you any necessary follow-up questions about your material;
- discuss (if appropriate) whether you could provide additional material;
- send you a copy of a committee's report at the end of an inquiry; and/or
- contact you about any follow-up work a Committee might undertake, for example, in relation to a Committee inquiry.
If we have asked you to complete a survey to provide feedback on your experience of participating in a committee's work, we will retain your contact details for no longer than six months after the survey has closed.
Subject to the paragraphs below, we will not share your contact details with a third party without first seeking your consent.
Participating in a professional capacity
For material submitted in a professional capacity, the published version will include your name, your job title/role, if relevant, and the name of your organisation. These details may also be used in other publications or publicity material, unless you inform us that you wish them to be removed.
If you have provided material in an official capacity, we may retain your professional contact details and may contact you or your organisation to invite you to provide evidence for other Senedd committee inquiries in future (i.e. after April 2021.)
Participating in a personal capacity
For material submitted in a personal capacity, the published version will be anonymised i.e. it will not include your name or your contact details. However, in exceptional circumstances, and only in response to a request from you, we may agree not to anonymise your material.
If you have provided materials in a personal capacity, we will not contact you about other Senedd business beyond the inquiry or specific matter about which you have submitted material, unless we have your consent to do so. Your contact details will not be retained beyond the end of the Fifth Senedd (i.e. after April 2021).
Committee events
From time to time, a committee may organise an event as part of an inquiry or to promote its work. We often take photographs and record videos or audio at these events. If you do not want to appear in such media, please notify us of this when accepting your invitation.
Photographic, video or audio recordings made at committee events may be published on our social media platforms, our website or in printed and digital material.
Photographic, video or audio recordings made at committee events could potentially be used without reference to the context of the event to promote the work of the Welsh Parliament and engage with the people of Wales.
Any photographic, video or audio recordings made at committee events that are not published by the Senedd Commission will not be retained beyond the end of the Fifth Senedd (i.e. until April 2021).
Use of digital tools
From time to time, a committee may use digital tools to collect the views of organisations and members of the public.
Smart Survey
The Senedd Commission is licenced to use Smart Survey, which is a third party online survey system enabling committees to collect information, such as customer feedback. Smart Survey is based in the UK and is subject to the requirements of data protection legislation. The privacy policy for Smart Survey is available here:
Other digital tools
Assembly committees may use other digital tools in the course of their work. You will be notified of the appropriate privacy notice when you are invited to participate using these tools.
Your rights
Data protection law states that we must have a legal basis for handling your personal data. The legal basis for collecting, holding, sharing and publishing your personal data is that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or substantial public interest. The task is to facilitate the work of a parliamentary committee to undertake its democratic function of scrutinising the Welsh Government and representing the people of Wales.
You have certain rights over the information we hold. These include:
- the right to request access to your information;
- to ask that we update, complete or correct your information, if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
- the right to object to our using your information in certain circumstances; and
- the right to limit our use of it in certain circumstances.
If you would like to: engage any of the rights that you have under data protection legislation; ask a question; or make a complaint about how your information is used; please contact data.protection@senedd.wales.
You can also make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe we have not used your information in line with the law. The ICO's contact details can be found on their website.
Requests for information made to the Senedd Commission
In the event of a request for information being made under access to information legislation, it may be necessary to disclose all or part of the information that you provide. This may include information which has previously been removed by the Senedd Commission for publication purposes. We will only do this if we are required to do so by law.