PROTECTION OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

This privacy statement provides information about the processing and the protection of your personal data.

Processing operation: Digital Public Buyers Community

Data Controller: European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Unit D.2- Public Procurement (hereinafter “DG GROW Unit D.2” or the “Data Controller”)

Record reference: DPR-EC-12511.1

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Why and how do we process your personal data?
3. On what legal ground(s) do we process your personal data?
4. Which personal data do we collect and further process?
5. How long do we keep your personal data?
6. How do we protect and safeguard your personal data?
7. Who has access to your personal data and to whom is it disclosed?
8. What are your rights and how can you exercise them?
9. Contact information
10. Where to find more detailed information?

1. Introduction

The European Commission (hereafter ‘the Commission’) is committed to protect your personal data and to respect your privacy. The Commission collects and further processes personal data pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data (repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001).

This privacy statement explains the reason for the processing of your personal data, the way we collect, handle and ensure protection of all personal data provided, how that information is used and what rights you have in relation to your personal data. It also specifies the contact details of the responsible Data Controller with whom you may exercise your rights, the Data Protection Officer and the European Data Protection Supervisor.

The information in relation to processing operation “Digital Public Buyers Community” undertaken by the Data Controller is presented below.

2. Why and how do we process your personal data?

The data controller and processor (Netcompany) process your personal data in the public interest (implementation of COSME and Single Market Programme).

Public buyers and other interested stakeholders can use the Platform to find and share useful information in relation to public procurement and join a community of practice that best fits their procurement interests and work in close collaboration with their fellow members to pool their resources, tools and expertise, and maximise their purchasing power and impact. The Platform encompasses the General Community and several Communities of Practice (CoP) which the users can join.

The general purpose of the data processing activities is:
- to allow for general management and maintenance of the Platform.
- to allow for general moderation of the content and communities
- to authorize and manage access rights of the general community and open and closed communities on- boarded on the platform.
- to manage memberships or to contact members of the platform/communities for activities of interest
- to collect data for reporting and business intelligence, process automation, management dashboards

General community is the platform level which you can access following your registration and becoming a member:

To do so, all users of the Platform are required to sign up for EU login (EU Login is the European Commission's Authentication Service) credentials. The EU login service has its own privacy statement, in which you can find any information concerning the processing of your personal data in the context of EU login service (EU Login Privacy Statement). For more information,

In order to get full access to the closed functionalities of the general community of the Platform, your membership needs to get approved. For this, you need to fill in the requested data in your member’s profile.

Furthermore, if you join one or several of the Communities of Practice (CoP), community moderators and community leaders may process your personal data. Respective privacy statements for these processing activities can be found in the relevant Communities of Practice.

Community of Practice is a subset of stakeholders who wish to communicate amongst themselves and/or with the service provider or European Commission on a specific topic. The moderators manage content of each community and will authenticate the community members. In case of closed communities, the moderators will also process your applications to authenticate your eligibility and subsequently grant access.

To this end, the verification of your membership request, following your registration to the Platform, can take the following forms:

1) verification of membership to the general community which enables access to different functionalities of the platform, such as discussion, posting news, getting access to other members, send messages to other members, etc.

1) verification of identity of the users which will allow for the access to the specific community. Membership of these communities is in majority of cases closed for the participants of different initiatives ran by European Commission or EISMEA.

In order to carry out the processing operation of verification so to grant you access to the closed communities, the community leaders/community moderators may need to authenticate your data in which case this will be done via EU survey or other external medium, such as email.

The data processors have access to the public and private content uploaded by you on the platform, for the sheer reason of ensuring appropriate use of the platform. No other processing of your private or public content will be performed without your consent.

Your data will not be used for an automated decision-making, including profiling.

To carry out the processing operation of approving your membership, the following of your mandatory personal data are collected:

- Authentication data from your EU Login: surname, given name, EU Login ID, email address, organisation and department you work for (this data is accessed by the Technical Administrator of the platform and DG GROW and Netcompany staff who may also act as moderators),

- Data which is required for gaining full access to the closed Platform functionalities: your role in the organization you work for.

If you have consented to provide your personal non-mandatory data for the present processing operation, you can withdraw your consent at any time by notifying the Data Controller. The withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of the processing carried out before you have withdrawn the consent.

The following non-mandatory data are processed based on your explicit prior consent:
• your image
• a short descriptive text of yourself
• type of organisation you work for
• your organisation’s address
• the department in which you work for
• communities you have joined
• your social media link (refers only to LinkedIn)
• groups to which you have been added
• your individual procurement interests
• postings, content or comments on the platform.

The Platform may contain personal data in the form of contact details and photos. This platform may collect personal data via cookies based on consent. The restricted Platform sections contain information uploaded by users, common actions, useful information related to the community topic and contact information.

As per the personal data collected from each member of the Communities of Practice (CoP), please see the annexes of the present privacy notice.

3. On what legal ground(s) do we process your personal data?

We process your personal data, because processing is necessary

- for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the Union institution or body (Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725), in particular Regulation (EU) No 1287/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2013 establishing a Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (COSME) (2014 - 2020) and repealing Decision No 1639/2006/EC Text with EEA relevance.

- because you have given consent to the processing of your personal data for verification of your identity, publication of contact details and photos, subscription to a newsletter managed by the Data Controller, via a clear affirmative act by ticking a box on the online registration form. Your consent for this/these purpose(s) can be withdrawn at any time by writing to the administrator of the platform or the respective community, with the following email addresses in the CC: [email protected] and [email protected]

4. Which personal data do we collect and further process?

In order to carry out this processing operation, the Data Controller processes the following categories of personal data:

• Authentication data from your EU Login: surname, given name, EU Login ID, email address, organisation and department you work for (this data is accessed by the Technical Administrator of the platform and DG GROW and Netcompany staff who may also act as moderators),

• Data which is required for gaining full access to the closed Platform functionalities: your role in the organization you work for

Non-mandatory personal data we process:
• your image
• a short descriptive text of yourself
• type of organisation you work for
• your organisation’s address
• the department in which you work for
• communities you have joined
• your social media link (refers only to LinkedIn)
• groups to which you have been added
• your individual procurement interests
• postings, content or comments on the platform.

Access to the platform’s data is controlled by the role(s) of the user accessing the content. This section details access to your personal data depending on the user role of the user viewing the data.

• Anonymous users can view only the public content you have created. When viewing a content item you have uploaded, they can also see your first and last name.
• Platform members can access the public data of your profile and the public content uploaded by you.
• Members of the same communities as you can access the public data of your profile, the public content uploaded by you, as well as the private content uploaded by you in the communities you both belong to.
• Users with administrative roles (community moderator, general platform moderator, general user moderator, technical administrator) can access all your profile data and all public and private content uploaded by you.

5. How long do we keep your personal data?

The Data Controller only keeps your personal data for the time necessary to fulfil the abovementioned purpose. For each of the categories of personal data that is processed, please find below the retention details:

• Authentication data will be kept in the IT system for the duration of your participation
• The optional data mentioned above can be deleted at any moment upon your request, as it is not necessary for getting access to the platform itself.
• In case the IT tool are permanently discontinued, all data will be pseudonymised and kept for a maximum of 5 years.

No personal data are stored permanently within the Platform. The only exception is the contributor's name, which remains attached to content or comments provided through the web. The contributor gives consent prior to posting a content or comments on the platform. These posts can be deleted at any time by the site administrator upon request of the contributor. Personal data entered into the EU login are covered by the data protection policy of that system. Names are kept with the posts and comments and are visible for logged-in members of the same community until the consent of author of the article or comment is withdrawn. In that case the related content is deleted. In any case, any data subject delete themselves and their member profile. The moderator will actively delete inactive member profile (inactive for 3 years). The data collected within the documents not related to member profiles, such as documents in the repository (videos of trainings for example), the retention period is 5 years after the project has ended. For the purpose of this document, project means the Digital Community and not the current contract in place. Digital Community can remain after the contract has ended through the subsequent contract with external operator or a takeover – in this case EU services would take over the management of the Platform.

6. How do we protect and safeguard your personal data?

All personal data in electronic format (e-mails, documents, databases, uploaded batches of data, etc.) are stored on the servers of the European Commission or of its contractors. All processing operations are carried out pursuant to the Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January 2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the European Commission.

The contractors are bound by a specific contractual clause for any processing operations of your data on behalf of the Commission, and by the confidentiality obligations deriving from the transposition of the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU Member States (‘GDPR’ Regulation (EU) 2016/679).

In order to protect your personal data, the Commission has put in place a number of technical and organisational measures. Technical measures include appropriate actions to address online security, risk of data loss, alteration of data or unauthorised access, taking into consideration the risk presented by the processing and the nature of the personal data being processed. Organisational measures include restricting access to the personal data solely to authorised persons with a legitimate need to know for the purposes of this processing operation.

7. Who has access to your personal data and to whom is it disclosed?

Access to your personal data is provided to the Commission staff responsible for carrying out this processing operation and to authorised staff according to the “need to know” principle. Such staff abide by statutory, and when required, additional confidentiality agreements.

Netcompany S.A. (rue Nicolas Bové 2b L-1253 Luxembourg, Luxembourg) acts as processor.

Other potential recipients of your personal data might be moderators of the communities, other members of the Platform or the public and bodies in charge of monitoring or inspection tasks in application of Union or national law (e.g. internal audits, Court of Auditors, European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF), European Ombudsman, law enforcement bodies, etc.).

The data processors have access to the public and private content uploaded by you on the platform, for the sheer reason of ensuring appropriate use of the platform.

Other members of the platform to which your member’ s profile in the General Platform (Members Area) may be visible, following your consent, as mentioned above.

Your personal data will not be transferred to third countries or international organisations.

The Commission will not share your personal data with third parties unless for the you have given your consent to do so.

• Anonymous users can view only the public content you have created. When viewing a content item you have uploaded, they can also see your first and last name.Platform members can access the public data of your profile and the public content uploaded by you.
• Members of the same communities as you can access the public data of your profile, the public content uploaded by you, as well as the private content uploaded by you in the communities you both belong to.
• Users with administrative roles (community moderator, general platform moderator, general user moderator, technical administrator) can access all your profile data and all public and private content uploaded by you.

Please note that pursuant to Article 3(13) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 public authorities (e.g. Court of Auditors, EU Court of Justice) which may receive personal data in the framework of a particular inquiry in accordance with Union or Member State law shall not be regarded as recipients. The further processing of those data by those public authorities shall be in compliance with the applicable data protection rules according to the purposes of the processing.

The information we collect will not be given to any third party, except to the extent and for the purpose we may be required to do so by law.

Cookies

Cookies are short text files stored on a user’s device (such as a computer, tablet or phone) by a website. Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website (functional cookies) or for gathering statistics (analytical cookies).

If Commission website: The cookies employed by the Commission on your device for that purpose will be covered by the cookie policy of the Commission, which is available here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/cookies_en.

When you visit the website, we will keep the browser history of your visit for a maximum of 5 years. This information will then be deleted. The collection, aggregation and anonymising operations are performed in the data centre of the European Commission under adequate security measures.

Cookies are stored by Europa Analytics, the corporate service which measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the European Commission's websites on EUROPA. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00685 (Europa Analytics).

Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you do that, some features of the website may not work as intended.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify data subjects personally and the pattern data is fully under the Commission’s control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.

Should you wish to opt your personal data out of our anonymised, aggregated statistics, you can do so on our cookies page. In particular, you can control and/or delete those cookies as you wish.

Third party IT tools, including Social Media

We use third party IT tools to inform about and promote the Digital Public Buyers Community through widely used communication channels, including the social media. For detailed information about the use of social media by the European Commission, see the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00073 (Social Media Use by the European Commission).

You can watch our videos, which we also upload to our YouTube channel and LinkedIn page:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmwl0nkG0dPEi_pnJ7Rlos_Z8EBoXaABY
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmwl0nkG0dPFL-dTEmLxFfxB2SITYJo-e
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/eu-business-showcase/posts/?feedView=all

In order to protect your privacy, our use of third party IT tools to connect to those services does not set cookies when our website pages are loaded on your computer (or other devices), nor are you immediately redirected to those social media or other websites. Only in the event that you click on a button or “play” on a video to watch it, a cookie of the social media company concerned will be installed on your device. If you do not click on any social media buttons or videos, no cookies will be installed on your device by third parties.

In order to view such third-party content on our websites, a message will alert you that you need to accept those third parties’ specific Terms and Conditions, including their cookie policies, over which the Commission has no control.

We recommend that users read the relevant privacy policies of the respective social media carefully before using them. These explain each company’s policy of personal data collection and further processing, their use of data, users' rights and the ways in which users can protect their privacy when using those services.

The use of a third party IT tool does not in any way imply that the European Commission endorses them or their privacy policies. In the event that one or more third party IT tools are occasionally unavailable, we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to their downtime.

8. What are your rights and how can you exercise them?

You have specific rights as a ‘data subject’ under Chapter III (Articles 14-25) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, in particular the right to access, rectify or erase your personal data and the right to restrict the processing of your personal data. Where applicable, you also have the right to object to the processing or the right to data portability.

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data, which is lawfully carried out pursuant to Article 5(1)(a), on grounds relating to your particular situation.

You have consented to provide your personal data to the data controller for the present processing operation. You can withdraw your consent at any time by notifying the data controller: [email protected]

The withdrawal of your consent will not affect the lawfulness of the processing carried out before you have withdrawn the consent.

You can exercise your rights by contacting the Data Controller, or in case of conflict the Data Protection Officer. If necessary, you can also address the European Data Protection Supervisor. Their contact information is given under Heading 9 below.

Where you wish to exercise your rights in the context of one or several specific processing operations, please provide their description (i.e. their Record reference(s) as specified under Heading 10 below) in your request.

Any request for access to personal data will be handled within one month. Any other request mentioned above will be addressed within 15 working days.

9. Contact information

- The Data Controller

If you would like to exercise your rights under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, or if you have comments, questions or concerns, or if you would like to submit a complaint regarding the collection and use of your personal data, please feel free to contact the Data Controller,

GROW D2 Public Procurement : [email protected]

- The Data Protection Officer (DPO) of the Commission

In case of disagreement with the Data Controller, you may contact the Data Protection Officer ([email protected]) with regard to issues related to the processing of your personal data under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.

- The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)

You have the right to have recourse (i.e. you can lodge a complaint) to the European Data Protection Supervisor ([email protected] or https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-role-supervisor/complaints_en) if you consider that your rights under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 have been infringed as a result of the processing of your personal data by the Data Controller.

10. Where to find more detailed information?

The Commission DPO publishes the register of all processing operations on personal data by the Commission, which have been documented and notified to him. You may access the register via the following link: https://ec.europa.eu/dpo-register.

This specific processing operation has been included in the DPO’s public register with the following record reference: DPR-EC-12511.1