Privacy

The City of Ghent, lead partner of the Rewild the City project, processes your personal data with respect for your privacy. We observe the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. The purpose of this privacy policy is to explain the way we process your data.

What are personal data?

Personal data are any data by which the City of Ghent can identify you, either directly or indirectly, for example by your name or email address.

What is the General Data Protection Regulation?

The GDPR is the new European Privacy Act, which has been in effect since May 25, 2018. This legislation relates to the processing of personal data. The term processing is a very broad concept according to that legislation. Everything we do with your personal data falls within the scope of processing: we store, consult, forward, sort, distribute, update them, etc.

Who has access to your personal data?

The City of Ghent is the controller. This means that we determine which data we collect and for what purpose. In legal terms, we determine the purpose of the processing. But that doesn’t mean that all employees of the City of Ghent have access to everything. Your personal data are only accessible to the departments and employees who need them for their work.

For the processing of personal data, we cooperate with our IT partner District 09. They are responsible for the IT of the City of Ghent and as such provide support (in the capacity of processor) for the processing of your personal data.

District 09 is our main, but not our only data processor. Other companies and organisations can process data on our behalf as well. We have strict agreements with all these processors in order to ensure that they apply the same high privacy standards.

Sometimes the City of Ghent is not the only controller. This is for instance the case if projects are undertaken together with other organisations.

We will never forward your personal data or make them available to third parties without a valid reason. We only do that with your prior consent or if we are required by law to do so. In those cases we have clear legitimate grounds.

Legal basis to lawfully process personal data

The City of Ghent never uses your personal data without a valid reason. We only use them for purposes for which we have clear legitimate grounds, also called lawfulness. Our 4 main legitimate grounds are the following:

You give us your consent to use your personal data for a specific purpose. We will first give you details on what this consent means exactly, how you can easily revoke your consent, with whom we will share your data and how long we are planning to keep your data. This will enable you to give your consent with full knowledge of the facts.
We process your personal data because you entered into an agreement with the City of Ghent.
We process your personal data in order to meet a legal obligation or order pursuant to European legislation, federal laws or Flemish decrees and the corresponding implementing decrees. Sometimes the GDPR itself constitutes the legal basis, for instance for statistical or scientific research and for archiving in the general interest.
We use your data in order to perform a task of general interest or to exercise public authority.

What are your rights?

According to the General Data Protection Regulation, you have a number of rights with respect to the processing of personal data.

Right of access and data portability

You have the right to have access to your personal data and the purposes for which we process them. We will ask you to prove your identity, so as to be certain that we give the right person access to your personal data.

If you request access to your data, you can collect them at the counter in digital form. We will provide them to you in a commonly used format (e.g. pdf or Word). At your request we can provide them in a machine-readable format (e.g. Excel). We can also send a printed version of your data to your place of residence.

You are then entitled to transmit your personal data to another controller, but we are also prepared to take care of the transmission if you want us to and if it is technically possible.

Right to rectification

If you notice that personal data held by the City of Ghent are incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to have them rectified.

Right to be forgotten

In a number of cases you have the right to have your data erased. These cases include:

cases where we no longer need your personal data for the purposes for which we processed them originally
cases where we need your consent to process them and you decide to revoke your consent
cases where you object to the processing and there are no other justified reasons to continue the processing
cases where we process your personal data in an unlawful manner in spite of all our efforts
cases where we are required by law to erase your data

The right to restriction of processing, the right to object and the right not to be subject to automated decision-making.

You have the right to restrict the processing:

if you contest the accuracy of your personal data for a period that allows us to check the accuracy of your data
if we process your personal data in an unlawful manner in spite of all our efforts, but you prefer that we do not erase your personal data
if we no longer need your personal data, but you do need them for legal proceedings
if you object to the processing and there are no other justified reasons to continue the processing

You have the right to object if we process your personal data for the performance of our tasks in the general interest or to exercise public authority. If your interests, rights and liberties outweigh the legitimate grounds of the City of Ghent, we will stop processing your personal data.

You can exercise your rights in different ways:

You can submit a request through an email at privacy@stad.gent
You can also send us your request by post, to this address:

Data Protection Officer
Stad Gent
Botermarkt 1
9000 Gent

We will send you a reply as soon as possible: at the latest 30 days after receipt of your request and the proof of your identity. Exercising your rights is normally free of charge. If your request is excessive or if you often make the same request, the City is entitled to charge a fee or refuse your request.

Questions,remarks or complaints?

For anyquestions, remarks or complaints with respect to your privacy, you cancontact the Data Protection Officer of the City:

by email at: privacy@stad.gent
by mail to: