How the College processes personal data
Introduction
Imperial wishes to make it clear to all students, prospective students, staff, prospective staff and other workers how their personal data, including certain sensitive data, will be processed by the university. In essence, in order to function normally, the university needs to process 'ordinary' and 'sensitive' personal data. Processing of certain data will for many activities continue after individuals have left the university.
University privacy notices usually explain to data subjects how their personal data will be used by Imperial. Accordingly:
- the Privacy Notice for Students and Prospective Students explains how the personal data of students and prospective students will be used by the College;
- the Privacy Notice for Staff and Prospective Staff explains how the personal data of staff and prospective staff will be used by the College;
- the Advancement Privacy Notice explains how Imperial’s Advancement Division uses the personal data of the Imperial’s alumni, friends and supporters;
- the Library Services Privacy Notice explains how the Imperial Library uses the personal data of users of the Library;
- other dedicated privacy notices may apply and will be displayed at the time of collection of data or shortly thereafter where the College uses the personal data of other categories of data subjects (i.e. those not within the scope of the above notices) or where the College is proposing to use personal data for a purpose not covered by one of the above notices.
In practice, the day-to-day processing of data will continue as before. An exception to this is research data: researchers will need to consider for each research project what the legal basis for processing any personal data used in the research will be and are responsible for providing the appropriate privacy notice to the relevant research subjects to explain how their data will be used. In the case of health-related research this will always include obtaining appropriate approval from the local Ethics Committee (and in some instances approval from the Patient Information Advisory Group). Imperial has a Joint Research Compliance Office which oversees ethical issues of clinical research by Imperial.
Provision of personal data to a third party
Except as otherwise provided for as set out below, or unless written authorisation has been provided by the member of staff or the student concerned, Imperial does not normally release information that could constitute personal data to any third party (including parents, relatives and friends). Please see guidance on Guide 8 - Disclosure of student data or Guide 9 - Disclosure of staff data.