Government Analysis Function > Privacy and Cookies > Privacy notice for Government Statistician Group (GSG) membership

Privacy notice for Government Statistician Group (GSG) membership

This notice refers to information held within the GSG membership data. This is held by the GSS Careers Team in the UK Statistics Authority.

Records within this data are only intended to reflect those of individuals who have been professionally-accredited (i.e. ‘badged’) as statisticians in the Civil Service.

The personal data we collect

The personal data we process about you includes:

  • name
  • email address
  • department
  • grade
  • start date to current substantive grade and role
  • region of workplace
  • working pattern
  • number of hours worked
  • leaving destination from current role

The special category data we process about you includes:

  • ethnicity
  • sexual orientation
  • disability
  • religion
  • sex
  • gender
  • socio-economic background

The special category data is collected via the GSG membership form returns. Consent for collecting this special category data is gathered within these forms. No GSG member has to provide consent for processing special category data when returning a GSG membership form, and consent for processing this special category data may be withdrawn at any time (to do this, please contact GSS.Careers@ons.gov.uk).

How we collect your data

We collect your data when:

  • professionally-accredited members of the GSG return the completed membership form following a successful badging board, or statistical recruitment campaign managed by the GSS Recruitment Team
  • existing members of the GSG complete our Change of Circumstances Form to update their membership details
  • a commission process takes place three times a year whereby the statistical Heads of Profession update a core subset of the data and notify us if any GSG members have left their department

The purposes for which your personal data is processed

Your personal data is collected and maintained for the purpose of providing services to GSG members, delivering the benefits of GSG membership and understanding the GSG membership.

Specifically, this data allows the GSS and GSG support teams to:

  • understand the number of professionally-accredited GSG members across government
  • verify that individuals are GSG members
  • understand and analyse the composition, demographics and movement of GSG members across government
  • conduct workforce planning to support the policies of the GSG through, for example, providing projections of the future expected number of GSG members
  • provide GSG members with GSS learning interventions and events

The legal basis for processing

Data protection legislation requires that all processing of personal data is undertaken under one or more of a set list of conditions. Unless stated otherwise the processing of personal data for GSG membership is conducted under the following reasons:

Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.  For the processing of special category data we are relying on explicit consent.

How long we keep your data for

Your personal data will only be held for so long as it is required by us to carry out our role as part of the statistical authority.

This means that each record will only be held for five years after the individual has left a role within the profession, or any role within the Civil Service. After this time, and in accordance with GSG Badging Policy, any data about an individual will be deleted and the individual would be required to be professionally-accredited again if re-entering a statistical role within government.

Who we share your personal data with

The GSG Membership Database is used to inform the policies of the GSG and will be shared with relevant boards and working groups to support this work.

Where data is shared in these groups, it will be anonymised and aggregated, and any headcount of less than five individuals will be excluded from the analysis to prevent the potential identification of any individual, or the association of an individual with any characteristic.

Furthermore, a core subset of the data is shared with statistical Heads of Profession and their teams to ensure the data is accurate and up-to-date. Heads of Profession are welcome to add other comments to this return where it benefits the objectives of this ensuring that the GSG membership data is accurate and up-to-date.

This core subset of data includes:

  • name
  • email address
  • grade – including substantive grade, temporary promotion grade (where relevant) and the grade the member is badged at (where different to their substantive grade)
  • whether the individual is a fast-streamer
  • department
  • leaving destination

This data may be shared with GSG members across the Civil Service who facilitate learning or events on behalf of the GSS.

Your rights as a data subject

As a data subject (i.e. someone whose personal data we hold) you have rights available to you under data protection legislation.

The use of a “public task” legal basis does not impact your rights as a data subject. If you want us to stop processing your personal data (for example removal from a contact list), please let the respective database owner know, or remove yourself if possible.

If you wish to exercise any other rights or cannot get hold of a database owner, then please contact our Data Protection Officer at DPO@statistics.gov.uk.

You have the right to:

  • be informed about the personal data we hold about you
  • request access to the data we hold about you
  • amend any wrong or inaccurate data we may hold about you
  • object to your personal data being processed
  • request that we erase any personal data we may hold about you, in some circumstances
  • request that we process your data on a restricted basis, in some circumstances
  • not be subject to an automated decision-making process

Further information on the rights available to you, and the circumstances under which you can exercise them, is available from the Information Commissioner.

The UK Statistics Authority

The UK Statistics Authority is a statutory body, meaning that it is created by legislation, specifically the Statistics and Registration Service Act (SRSA) 2007, with the objective of promoting and safeguarding the production and publication of official statistics that serve the public good. As producers of official statistics, the GSS and its members, overseen by the UK Statistics Authority, must adhere to the Code of Practice for Statistics as per section 13 of the SRSA.

Contact details

The data controller for your personal data is the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The contact details for the data controller are:

Office for National Statistics
Government Buildings
Cardiff Road
Newport
NP10 8XG

Telephone +44 (0) 1633 456633

The contact details for the ONS Data Protection Officer (DPO) are:

DPO
Office for National Statistics
Government Buildings
Cardiff Road
Newport
NP10 8XG

Email: DPO@statistics.gov.uk

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 will not affect your right to seek compensation through the courts.