The ICO exists to empower you through information.

Purpose and lawful basis for processing

The ICO seeks feedback from public authorities to help us develop and assess new guidance and tools intended to help them comply with the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). This is to ensure the guidance meets the needs of the organisations we regulate. The feedback group comprises public authorities from across the UK who provide feedback to the ICO on a voluntary basis.

The lawful basis we rely on for processing your personal data is article 6(1)(e) of the GDPR, which allows us to process personal data when this is necessary for the performance of our public tasks in our capacity as a regulator.

What we need

We’ll need your name and email address. We’ll also ask you some questions about your organisation, like the size of your organisation and where it is located.

We’ll process any responses you provide to our feedback questions, along with any additional personal data you choose to provide to us as part of this response. This information is processed by us for the purpose of informing our work. You’ll never be asked to disclose special category data.

What we do with it

We’ll use your name and email address to send you requests for feedback via email or an online survey. If you provide us with your phone number we may use it to contact you to discuss your comments, or other matters related to the feedback group.

We may occasionally publish your responses on our website, on social media, in printed materials or in event publications to explain the purpose of our work and the rationale behind it. We may also use examples you provide us to showcase good practice and help others improve their compliance.

Responses are anonymised before publication. If we do want to publish your personal data we’ll always seek your agreement beforehand. If you don’t agree we won’t publish it and this won’t affect your membership of the group.

How long we keep it

We’ll contact you on a rolling basis and keep the personal data you provide for two years from the date of your last response.

What are your rights?

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

If you no longer want to be part of our Upstream feedback group please email us or call us: 0303 123 1113. We’ll update our records immediately to reflect your wishes.

Do we use any data processors?

No.