Privacy statement
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Audit Scotland collects personal information and explains how we protect your privacy. It applies to information we collect about:
This privacy notice was written with brevity and clarity in mind. Therefore, it does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of our collection and use of personal information. If you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal information or this notice, please contact us at dataprotection@audit-scotland.gov.uk
The information you provide as part of the application process will be treated in confidence and will be shared only with members of the selection panel, Human Resources and our third party candidate management specialists for the purposes of the recruitment process. Where we want to disclose information about you to other third parties, for example where we want to take up a reference, we will not do so without informing you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law.
Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held for a maximum period of 15 months after the recruitment campaign has been completed, it will then be destroyed or deleted. This information is used solely for monitoring purposes to form statistical reports on our recruitment activities.
Once a successful candidate has taken up employment with Audit Scotland, they should refer to the Human Resources staff data handling notice in the staff handbook. Once employment with Audit Scotland has ended, we will retain your file in accordance with the requirements of our retention schedule and then delete it.
When Audit Scotland undertakes audit work under our statutory powers, we may collect information from Scottish public bodies that contain some personal data.
Personal data may be used in audit tests (such as when testing payrolls or housing benefit systems) and to help form judgments and report on financial, Best Value and Value for Money audits and to promote economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the use of public money. We will only use this information for the purpose it was collected. We will hold it securely and when it is no longer needed it will be disposed of in accordance with our retention schedule.
Please note that a separate fair processing notice is available for our National Fraud Initiative (NFI) work and is available within the NFI section of our website here.
When we receive a complaint, correspondence or concerns about a public body we audit, data subject access or complex freedom of information request, we hold the correspondence in a file.
We will only use the personal information we collect to process the complaint, correspondence or request. However, we may have to disclose your details when investigating it. If you do not want your personal information disclosed we will try to respect this. However, it may not be possible to investigate your request on an anonymous basis. We compile and publish statistics showing information such as the number of complaints and correspondence we receive, but not in a form which identifies anyone.
We will keep information provided to us in complaints, correspondence, data subject access or complex freedom of information requests in line with our retention policy.
There may be instances where it may be necessary for us to communicate with you for administrative or operational reasons. We collect information about you for the above purposes only and will not pass this information to other organisations. We also monitor anonymous customer traffic patterns and site use which enables us to improve the service we provide.
If you choose to use the text size controls on our website, we send a ‘cookie’ to your computer. Whenever you visit our website, it should maintain the setting that you have chosen.
Our website may contain links to other websites which are outside our control and are not covered by this policy. If you access other sites using the links provided, the operators of these sites may collect information from you which will be used by them in accordance with their privacy policy, which may differ from ours.
You have a right to access the personal data that we hold about you by making a ‘subject access request’ under the Data Protection Act 1998. There will be a £10 charge for this and you will be asked for proof of identity. Download a Data subject access request form (DOC | 49KB) here, or alternatively, you can write to the Data Protection Officer, Audit Scotland, 110 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4LH. .
If we do hold information about you we will:
We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy policy was last updated in September 2009.