IT Services Survey: privacy statement
Who carries out the IT Services Survey and why?
The IT Services Survey is conducted in order to improve the quality of the IT service at the University of York and report upon its effectiveness.
The IT Services Survey is being carried out by the University of York Information Services Directorate using the TechQUAL+ survey tool. The University of York is registered under the terms of the Data Protection Act and has a legal obligation to ensure that confidentiality of your personal information is maintained.
The TechQUAL+ survey tool is a service provided to higher education institutions internationally to allow them to assess, analyze, and report on the effectiveness of their IT services. Further information about the TechQUAL+ tool is available on their website: www.techqual.org.
What is the purpose of the IT Services Survey?
Information Services receives some feedback on its services through comments and other national surveys such as the National Student Survey. The IT Services Survey is conducted in order to gain comprehensive feedback on the IT service at the University to allow targeted improvements to these services.
Opting out of the survey
Participation in this survey is voluntary.
Protecting your data
We take very seriously our responsibilities to keep your personal information secure. As such we take every reasonable precaution to ensure your information is protected from loss, theft or misuse. These precautions include appropriate physical security of our offices, controlled access to computer systems, and use of secure, encrypted internet connections when collecting personal information.
The data submitted to the IT Services survey is held on a cloud hosting provider managed by the Higher Education TechQUAL+ project. Since this data is stored outside of the EU, we do not ask for your personal details (such as name, phone number or email address) as part of the survey so that your responses are kept anonymous.
Comments made on the survey will not be attributed to individuals, though respondents are advised to avoid making comments that could enable them to be individually identified, name individuals or make references that could identify an individual.
As part of the survey prize draw, we ask for your email address in order to contact you if you have won a prize. The email addresses are collected using a separate survey tool created using the University of York Google Apps for Education service and will NOT be associated with the responses to the survey.
If you have any questions or require further information about our privacy policy, our compliance with data protection laws or information we hold about you, please contact us: itsupport@york.ac.uk.
How will the information provided be used?
Your responses to this survey will be used to improve the quality of the IT service and other related services at the University of York. Your participation in the survey, together with your individual responses to the questions, will be kept strictly confidential. The results of the survey will be anonymous, statistical information only, and we can assure you that you will NOT be identifiable in any published results.
If you decide to enter the survey prize draw, we will use your email address to contact you ONLY if you win a prize.
Results of the survey
Information Services will use the results of the survey for the following purposes:
- For analysis and improvement of services
- To publish aggregated and anonymised results of the survey on the Information Services website
- To present aggregated and anonymised results of the survey to University committees
- To publish anonymised quotations to highlight particular issues
- To publish anonymised quotations for marketing purposes (for example, in an IT Services brochure)
Data from the survey, including comments, will also be passed on to relevant services within the University for analysis, to allow improvements to these services (for example, comments about the VLE may be passed to the E-learning Development Team).
Aggregated results of the survey will also be shared with other institutions participating in the survey to allow benchmarking of results and with higher education researchers studying service quality effectiveness. This summary feedback will be aggregated and anonymised, ensuring no individual respondent can be identified, and will not include the comments made in response to the survey.
We can assure you that any comments or personal information you provide on the survey will NOT be sold or passed on to any third party other than for the purposes stated above.
Contacts
- If you have any questions about the survey, please contact itsupport@york.ac.uk
- If you have any questions or require further information about our privacy policy, our compliance with data protection laws or information we hold about you, please contact the University's Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@york.ac.uk