Privacy notice

Careers Wales needs personal data to carry out its “public task” (and this is usually the legal basis for our processing personal data), which can be broadly described as helping individuals to develop the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to make career decisions and to be able to manage their career and progression plans independently. To do this we need to know personal information such as:

• Your name, address, date of birth, telephone number and email address so that we can keep in contact with you
• Details of your skills, talents, qualifications, interests, work and life experience. This may include sensitive information such as information on health conditions and/or ethnic origins. This information helps us to provide you with careers information, advice and guidance that will meet your needs

Sensitive information

In addition to the uses identified above, sensitive personal data (referred to under data protection law as “special category” data) helps us check that we are treating our customers appropriately and fairly, for example, information on people’s ethnic origin and disability can help us check that we are meeting our obligations as a public body under equality law.

You are under no obligation to provide us with sensitive information, nor do you need to provide us with this information in order to access our services, but if you do not let us have relevant information, it may mean that we are unable to provide you with support that meets your specific needs. We will discuss this with you if we think this is the case.

Careers Wales gathers customers personal information in the following ways:

• We collect your personal data mainly from you, through the contact you have with Careers Wales staff including the registration process and/or information you input on the Careers Wales websites.
• We also collect data about you from third parties. For example, schools are legally required to provide Careers Wales with information to help us provide careers information, advice and guidance to young people. Colleges and training organisations also provide us with similar information on their learners that access Careers Wales services. Local Authorities also provide us with personal information so that we can provide people in Wales with careers information, advice and guidance services and help reduce the numbers of people who are “not employed, in education or in training” (NEET). We also receive data from the Department of Work and Pensions detailing claimants aged 16-24 who receive universal credit.
• Our websites may also use analytical services which may record information about the way you use our websites, for example the pages that you visit and any form fields that you complete. Data collected by these services is used to improve our websites’ usability as well as being used for aggregated and statistical reporting and information campaigns. See our cookie policies for more information.

In addition to using your personal data to help you with your career and progression plans and meet our equality and diversity obligations, we may also use customer information to:

• Help you access the various services offered by other organisations
• Support our internal record keeping
• Assist us in improving our face to face, telephone and website services
• Create a user registration for you on our websites (for example to improve your ease of access within school/college Careers Wales induction sessions)
• Enable us to periodically contact you to inform you about our service provision or other information which we think you may find useful in making career decisions and plans
• Provide information to Welsh Government about how Careers Wales services are used by customers (see below)
• Make decisions about funding, planning and policy development
• Help young adults to engage and progress in education and training and help prevent you from becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training)
• Manage our business (for example to meet our audit, reporting and evaluation requirements; and to ensure our systems remain secure)
• Monitor / evaluate your use of our services (both online and offline)
• Carry out research that is of public interest

Much of the Careers Wales service is delivered online and by email, text, web chat and telephone. This means that as well as working with you face to face, you can expect for us to get in touch with you by digital means.

Occasionally, Careers Wales may carry out marketing activity (which is different to sending you information as part of our delivery of services to you). Where we send marketing communications to you by email or text we will only do so where we have your consent. You can ask us to stop sending you marketing communications at any time.

The information provided by you through your contacts with Careers Wales, or information provided by our partners about you is held on our customer information database (called “Atlas”). The information you provide via careerswales.gov.wales and/or workingwales.gov.wales is held separately on the websites’ own databases. To improve our service to our customers we may merge some of the data fields from the website databases with the Atlas database. Atlas and our websites are housed on secure servers located in the United Kingdom and/or European Economic Area (EEA). It is not our policy to transfer your data outside the UK/EEA, but there are circumstances where we may do so (for example where this is allowed by data protection legislation because there are adequate measures in place to keep your personal data safe or there is a legal “exemption” which we can rely on).

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and organisational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. We have our systems' security tested regularly.

For Careers Wales to be able to provide its services, it will sometimes be necessary for Careers Wales to share your personal data with other organisations.

Where it is appropriate we will share your personal data with organisations that can help you make progress with your education and career plans, as well as with bodies who have responsibility for the social and economic wellbeing of people in Wales. We will also share your data with organisations that help ensure that Careers Wales meets its contractual requirements and standards for the quality of its services. These include:

• Schools (including their managers and staff)
• Further and higher educational establishments
• Training providers
• Local Authorities
• The Welsh Government
• Estyn (the inspectors of organisations providing education and skills in Wales)

Careers Wales will also share your personal data with other organisations that provide services to us (for example businesses that provide IT, business support or business administration services, our professional advisers and auditors etc). Please see our cookie policy for more information on data collected and shared through our use of data analytics.

If Careers Wales or a substantial part of its assets are acquired by a third party your personal data will be transferred to that party as part of any such transfer.

We will keep your personal data whilst we are working with you and for a reasonable period of time thereafter. Your personal data will be held in accordance with the Careers Wales data retention policy, a copy of which is available on request. For details of the things we take into consideration when deciding how long to keep data for, please see our full privacy notice.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have the right to:

• Access the personal data Careers Wales holds on you
• Require Careers Wales to rectify inaccuracies in that data
• Object to processing on grounds relating to your particular situation (in some circumstances)
• Restrict processing (in some circumstances)
• Have your data erased (in certain circumstances)
• Request that we give you your personal information in a commonly used and structured format that can be used electronically (in certain circumstances)
• Withdraw your consent where consent is the legal basis of our processing of your personal data
• Lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s office (ICO) who is the independent regulator for data protection

If you wish to take action on any of these matters please either:

• Write to our Data Protection Officer at the postal or email address provided at the end of this Privacy Statement, providing details of your name, date of birth and address to ensure that we can accurately identify your record

or:

Contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (to make a complaint) using the following details:

• ICO, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
• Telephone: 029 2067 8400 (Wales helpline) or 0303 123 1113 (UK helpline)

Some important points to consider that affect your privacy

Disclosure and safeguarding

Careers Wales has a duty of care to you and to the public generally, which we must legally take account of each time you contact us. This may include, for example, instances where we become concerned and have a reasonable belief that:

• You may be in danger of harm from others
• You may be in danger of causing harm to yourself, or to others
• Withholding information you have provided may prejudice the prevention or detection of crime or an unlawful act, or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders

In such instances, Careers Wales must refer the matter to an appropriate agency e.g. Social Services and/or Police and (where we can) we will inform customers affected that contact with a referral agency has been made.

Privacy and our websites

Whilst some information on careerswales.gov.wales and workingwales.gov.wales can be accessed by all users, other sections of the website require you to go through a simple registration process where we ask you to provide a basic level of personal information. The information that you provide to us is subject to the requirements and conditions of this Privacy Statement. The Terms and Conditions of Use for the Careers Wales websites may be accessed on our Terms and Conditions page.

Cookies

Careers Wales uses cookie technology to collect information about the use of our websites and to distinguish you from other users of our websites in order to improve your experience when browsing the websites. For further information please see our cookie policies.

careerswales.gov.wales and workingwales.gov.wales may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest easily. However, once you have used these links to leave our websites we do not have any control over the new website you visit. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such websites and such websites are not governed by this Privacy Statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Third Party Privacy Notices

As mentioned in this Privacy Statement, we receive personal data from and give personal data to other organisations. Most organisations put their privacy notices on their website. Careers Wales is not responsible for the content of third party privacy notices.