School Board Elections

Privacy Information for Schools

Overview

CES provides a school board elections service to schools to help schools manage their elections, with the objective of getting great people onto school boards.

Elections are essentially about people choosing people, which requires the management of personal information.

This document explains what personal information is required, how it is used and provides links to the formal privacy policies of those involved in the process.

Read Full Document
Privacy image

What personal information is used?

There are two primary types of personal information used in the provision of the board elections service, the details of eligible voters on the electoral roll and the information relating to the candidates. The details that are used for each are:

Candidate

  • Given Name
  • Family Name
  • Postal Address
  • Mobile Phone
  • Email Address
  • Photo (optional)
  • Candidate Statement
  • Gender

Electoral Roll

  • Given Name
  • Family Name
  • Postal Address
  • Mobile Phone
  • Email Address

How is the personal information used?

  • Schools provide CES with an export of their school roll.
  • CES remove any unneeded personal information from the school roll.
  • CES use Epiq to format the school roll into the format required for an election roll.
  • CES provide the election roll to Electionz.
  • Electionz communicate the opening of the election to all those on the electoral roll.
  • Candidate nominations are provided to boardelections.nz by the individuals.
  • Electionz create a voting personal indentation number (PIN) and password for each eligiblevoter
  • After authenticating with the PIN and password voters express their selection preference using the iVote system, operated by Electionz

Where is the personal information sourced from?

  • The personal information that is required to create an electoral roll is provided by schools.
  • Candidates for board elections provide their personal information directly.
  • Eligible voters provide their votes directly.

Is the personal information shared with other organisations?

Yes, CES uses a number of companies to provide services as part of the board elections service.

  • Epiq provide data formatting services
  • Digital Journey operates boardelections.nz
  • Electionz operate the system that manages the voter roll.
  • Electionz operates the voting system.
  • Electionz use SendGrid as a service to send emails
  • Electionz use Marketing Impact to send postal mail.

How secure is the personal information?

CES and its service providers use a number of controls to help ensure the security of PI entrusted to them, including:

  • Encryption of personal information in transit and at rest
  • Access mechanisms to control which users may access the stored PI
  • Policies and procedures to define how PI should be managed
  • Security assurance activities, including reviews and penetration tests.

How long is the personal information held for?

The personal information is only stored for the period required by the election. 90 days after the election all personal information is securely deleted.

Can individuals access their personal information?

Yes. Individuals can access the personal information held by CES by contacting CES. If the personal information contains errors, then CES will amend the details.

Schools are authoritative source of the information for eligible voters, so if there is incorrect information it is more effective to have the information corrected at source.

Is the personal information stored in New Zealand?

CES and all the service providers that CES uses are all based in New Zealand. Some of the technology solutions that are used by the service providers may store the information in overseas locations (e.g. Microsoft One Drive).

Are individuals assigned a unique identifier?

Those people who are eligible to vote in a school board election are assigned a personal identification number (PIN) and a password. That PIN and password are used to identify the voter when logging into the iVote system to cast their vote(s). The PIN is only used for that school board election.