Privacy and Security Policy

The Knowledge Hub (KH) is owned and managed by the National Department of Health (here after referred to as “NDoH”). The mandate of the Knowledge Hub is to function as the operational heart of NDoH strategies to develop effective management and practice in health, including both health and non-health positions. It is designed to facilitate an employer-led programme aimed at improving the critical skills of employees.

In line with the South African constitutional provision regarding the right to privacy, as well as other legislation pertaining to access to information and protection of personal information, this Privacy and Security Policy sets out the Terms and Conditions for Use of the Knowledge Hub, as well as how information collected on this website will be used and protected.

As a user of this site it is essential that you understand that by using the site you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Policy complies with the Protection of Personal Income Act 4 of 2013.

Definitions

Because everyone (not just lawyers) should be able to easily understand how and why their information is collected and used, we use common language instead of more formal terms throughout this Policy. To help ensure your understanding of some particular key terms, here is a table of translations:

Terms we use	What we mean
KH, Knowledge Hub	Refer to this website
NDoH	National Department of Health
Site, our services	The services that are offered on this KH website
You, your,	You, regardless of whether you are an individual, group, or organization, and regardless of whether you are using the Knowledge Hub or its services on behalf of yourself or someone else.
this Policy, this Privacy Policy	This document, entitled the "Knowledge Hub Privacy and Security Policy".
personal information	Information you provide us or information we collect from you that could be used to personally identify you. We consider at least the following to be “personal information” if it is otherwise non-public and can be used to identify you: your real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, PERSAL number, IP and address; when associated with one of the items in subsection (a) above, any sensitive data such as date of birth, gender, racial or ethnic origins, marital or familial status, professional information; and any of the items in subsections (a) or (b) when associated with your user account.
third party, third parties	Individuals, organisations, entities, websites, services, products, and applications that are not controlled, managed, or operated by the NDoH.

Exclusions

This policy does not apply to information that you have shared on open communication channels on the KH.

This policy does not apply to services offered by other companies or individuals, including products or sites that may be displayed to you in search results, or other sites linked from the KH. This Privacy Policy does not cover the information practices of other companies and organisations who advertise the KH.

The purpose of this policy is to inform users of this website about the specific privacy guidelines that have been adopted, as well as terms and conditions governing the use of the KH.

To whom the policy applies

The policy applies to all users of the KH.

Use of the Knowledge Hub

The KH is for use of lawful purposes, and should not be used for any unlawful purpose, including unlawful or unauthorised use of technology or application to search, collect or download information on the KH and unlawful downloading of information for purposes of committing criminal activities, transmitting of unauthorised information, and unauthorised access to restricted pages.

Should any user be found to be using the KH for unlawful purposes or using unlawful or unauthorised technology, the NDoH reserves the right to institute criminal proceedings against such user, the right to claim for damages from such user, and cannot be held liable for any loss, damage or liability that resulted from such unlawful activity. The website and its contents may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied or used for any commercial purpose without the prior written consent of the NDoH.

The KH includes links to third party service providers. The location of links on this website is by no means an endorsement or approval of their sites privacy policy. It would be in your best interest to review their policy before providing any personal information. Any personal information that you provide through a third party website/s will occur on that website and not on the KH.

We collect information to maintain all records regarding practitioners’ continuing professional development (CPD) and to provide better services to all users. Information is collected through information users give us, information we get from the use of our services, information from third party partners and information from service providers.

Information you give us

Personal and account information

For the Knowledge Hub to work efficiently we need to collect personal information about public sector health employees and to store relevant information in the system. The personal information that we require includes your name and surname, identity number, PERSAL number, date of birth, email address, telephone number, employer, qualifications, current position held.

Email policy

You will have provided your email address at the time of registration or we will have access to it as part of your personal information. Your email address is kept confidential except as provided in this policy. We do not sell, rent or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you, other than those associated with this KH.

We use your email address to let you know about things that are associated with the KH, CPD opportunities, or with NDoH, such as telling you important information about your account, letting you know if something is changing on the KH or with any of the policies. Please note that if you email us we might keep your message, email address, and any other information you provide us, so that we can process and respond to your request.

You can choose to limit some of these kind of notifications. Others, such as those containing critical information that all users need to know to participate successfully in the KH, you may not be able to opt out of. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your settings when logged in to the KH.

We will never ask for your password by email (but may send you a temporary password via email if you have requested a password reset or forgot your password). If you ever receive an email requesting your password, please let us know by using the contact us form on the KH, so we can investigate the source of the email.

Direct communications between users, to the extent such communications are non-public and stored in or in transit through KH systems, are kept confidential by us, except as provided in this Policy.

How to manage your information

As you are registered as a user on the KH, you have access to your personal information. If that information is wrong, we give you ways to update it quickly or to delete it, unless we have to keep the information for business or legal purposes. When updating your personal information, we will ask you to verify your identity before we can act on your request.

We aim to maintain our services in a manner that protects information from accidental or malicious destruction. Because of this, after you delete information from our services, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems.

Surveys and feedback

Online surveys and feedback may also be undertaken by NDoH through the website. While the NDoH would appreciate your feedback, the undertaking of surveys by the user is totally voluntary. Reports from surveys may be made available, including with third party partners and service providers, however this in no way will compromise your privacy.

Information we get from our services

Cookies and other similar technologies

The KH may deploy cookies or similar technologies, which collects data from your browser, to record information for improving our services, as well as information about your preferences. The deployment of cookies will not cause damage to your device or files. Should you refuse the use of cookies, you may set your browser to refuse cookies, but if you do, some parts of our website or services may not work properly.

Other non-personal information

We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them.

• Local storage, devices, type and version of browser, operating systems, Internet Service Providers (ISP), mobile carriers, referral traffics, pages requested and visit and location.

We collect information about your device, such as your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers and mobile network information including the phone number.

We collect and store information locally on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage and application data caches.

• Log information (date, time of each visit, IP address and location)

The KH website may automatically gather and store information about your visit to the website, including but not limited to, date and time of access to site; pages or documents accessed; and IP address. The information is anonymised and is used for statistical purposes such as traffic trends and usage patterns, and not intended to contact you or be made available, unless legally obliged to do so.

Information from 3rd party and service providers

Some information we receive about you will be from 3rd Party Partners as well as from Service Providers, so that we can keep your profile up to date. This information will be treated in the same way as the personal information that we collect from you.

We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, protect and improve our service to you. We only collect, track and analyse Site Information in an aggregate manner that does not personally identify you. This aggregate data may be used to assist us in operating the KH and the Services and provided to other third parties to enable them to better understand the operation of the services and improve their course offerings, but such information will be in aggregate form only and it will not contain personally identifiable data.

Marketing and communication

The NDoH may use your personal information to send you marketing and promotional material through SMS or Email. These may be in the form of satisfaction surveys/feedback or brochures of programmes and services, and are intended to keep you abreast of opportunities as well as receiving your comments to improve our services. You may opt out of these services by updating your preferences in your profile.

Legal reasons

We may access, preserve, or disclose your personal information if we reasonably believe it necessary to satisfy a valid and legally enforceable warrant, subpoena, court order, law or regulation, or other judicial or administrative order. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your personal information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.

Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal objections or defences you may have to a third party's request (whether it be civil, criminal, or governmental) to disclose your information. We recommend seeking the advice of legal counsel immediately if such a request is made involving you.

Any information that you disclose in this social space, may be shared and therefore you should exercise discretion on the nature of discussions as well as disclosure of personal information. These discussions may also be logged.

The NDoH has put in place reasonable security measures to protect against the public access, loss, misuse and alteration of personal information stored on the website servers and databases. The security measures include user name and password access, and logging of access to databases. You are urged to assist in upholding security measures, by protecting the confidentiality of access to the KH.

The NDoH reserves the right to revise this Privacy and Security Policy at any time. The changes will take place immediately on posting. As a user, you are urged to check this Privacy and Security Policy from time to time to ensure that you take note of such changes.

If you have any questions or queries relating to the KH Privacy and Security Policy, kindly make use of the “contact us” facility on the KH website.