Privacy

The intent of this notice is to provide guidance with respect to privacy issues within GCcollab. The Government of Canada is committed to protecting your privacy online. This privacy notice summarizes how we treat all personal information that you may provide to us.

What we mean by personal information

Personal information is defined in section 3 of the Privacy Act as “information about an identifiable individual that is recorded in any form.” It includes information related to age, ethnic origin, religion, marital status, home and email addresses, etc. All personal information that we obtain from you in relation to GCcollab will be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Policy on Privacy Protection and the Policy on Access to Information.

How GCcollab protects your privacy

• All personal information within GCcollab is considered to be voluntarily provided and any use or disclosure will be governed by the rights of access to, correction of, and protection of personal information under the Privacy Act.

• GCcollab users are advised that all information / content posted to a federal government collaborative site is subject to the provisions of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. This implies that information may be accessed and disclosed in response to a request under either of these Acts.

• For maximum privacy protection, it is recommended that users do not post personal information such as photographs, home addresses, etc., as this information would then be available to all users.

Usage

In order for individuals to contribute content, they are required to be logged in to a valid GCcollab account. The registration process requires the collection of certain personal information such as: real name and email address.

Disclosure

Your personal information is not shared, sold, rented, traded, or otherwise disclosed to any outside third party except with your consent or where authorized and/or required by law.

Retention

Personal information is retained by GCcollab only so long as required by law or as is reasonable to fulfill the purposes for which it has been collected.

Internet Protocol network addresses and other technical information

• Internet Protocol (IP) networking address information, and its connection to any usernames that share it, may be released only under certain circumstances.

• We do not expose IP address of Logged-in contributors to the public except in cases of abuse, including vandalism of the service. A user's IP address may be stored on the web servers for a period of time, during which it can be seen by network administrators who have network administration access.

Cookies

• Logging into GCcollab requires the use of cookies. You will not be able to log into GCcollab if you choose to refuse the use of cookies on your browser.

• Once logged in, GCcollab may use cookies to improve your navigation experience or to allow you to stay logged on across multiple sessions. Although GCcollab does not use cookies to determine sites previously visited, the web server log may store traffic information for debugging purposes.

• GCcollab uses analytics tracking software for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.

Browsing and reading pages

When a visitor browses or reads a page, minimal information is collected; similar to what is typically collected by web sites. The GCcollab service providers may keep raw logs of such transactions, but these will not be published or used to track legitimate users.

The GCcollab platform collects no more information with respect to which pages users read than is typically collected in server logs by web sites. Aside from the above-mentioned raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly. Sampled raw log data may include the IP address of any user, but it is not reproduced publicly.

Privacy and Analytics

In administering GCcollab, we use web-analytics programs such as Google Analytics, and Apache, to perform collection, analysis, measurement, and reporting of data about GCcollab traffic and visits for purposes of understanding and optimizing the use of the tool. This anonymized and aggregated user traffic information is used to produce metrics. For more information on how your privacy is safeguarded in relation to web analytics, see the Standard on Privacy and Web Analytics.

User Contributions

Contributions are identified with the username of the contributor. Such information will be available permanently. User contributions are aggregated and available to system administrators. User contributions are aggregated according to the user’s registration and login status.

Should you have any questions about this notice or wish to access your personal information under the Privacy Act, please contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.