The ICO exists to empower you through information.

Purpose and lawful basis for processing

If you’d like to be involved in further website user research, we’ll add you to our list of volunteers and invite you to participate in future research when the opportunity arises. We’ll use the output from the research to help us understand how users interact with our website and to improve user experiences.

The lawful basis we rely on for processing personal data is your consent under article 6(1)(a) of the UK GDPR.

If you tell us that you have a website accessibility requirement, we treat this information as special category data and the lawful basis we rely on to process it is article 9(1)(a) of the UK GDPR.

What we need

We’ll need your name and email address so that we can contact you and add you to our list of volunteers. .

We’ll also collect the following information about you:

Demographic information such as gender, age and website accessibility requirements, and information about your employment.

Behavioural and attitudinal information such as use of computers, use of the ICO website, level of concern and knowledge of data protection issues.

We ask you for this information so that when we conduct research we can ensure we have a good cross-section of participants, including those with a variety of behaviours and attitudes that might influence their experiences with the ICO’s work and its website.

What we do with it

We’ll use your name and email address to communicate with you about ICO user research.

We’ll use the demographic, behavioural and attitudinal information you provide to make selections for user research groups. This will involve using the data to ensure a varied cross section of participants. It might also involve segmenting audiences where we require a specific group of people, for example, people working in a particular sector.

How long we keep it

For information about how long we hold personal data, see our retention schedule.

What are your rights?

We rely on your consent to process your personal data which means you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. To withdraw your consent please email or call us 0303 123 1113 and we’ll update our records immediately.

For more information on your rights, please see 'Your data protection rights'.

Do we use any data processors?

Yes. We use Invuse to carry out user research. When necessary, we share your information with Invuse for the purpose of conducting user research on our behalf.

Invuse undertake our annual website user survey and use the SmartSurvey platform.

You can read Invuse’s privacy notice here.

You can read the SmartSurvey privacy notice here.

Data controller contact information

For data controller contact information, please see our 'Controller’s contact details' page.