What is our commitment?

The WRDSB is committed to protecting the anonymity and confidentiality of all the information gathered through the Strategic Plan Community Consultations for the current WRDSB Strategic Plan.

How will we protect anonymity and confidentiality of data?

All feedback in the Community Consultation Survey is being collected anonymously. The survey does not collect any personally identifying information. The survey does not ask respondents to provide a name, contact information, or any other personal identifying information that would allow us to connect the survey responses back to the person who completed the survey. The survey does not collect IP addresses, which means it will not record information about the device nor the location of the device that was used to complete the survey.

During the public Town Hall sessions, all the information provided by participants will be gathered by Overlap Associates, a local strategy firm. They will not share individual response data from the Town Hall sessions with WRDSB staff.

In our public reporting, WRDSB staff and Overlap Associates, will combine individual responses with the responses of all other survey participants so that no individual responses will be shared in any of our reports or documents. Text-based or written responses will be analysed and key themes will be identified. Only information about key themes will be shared, individual responses will not be included in any reports.

To ensure that survey respondents have full control of what information they choose to share. The entire consultation process is voluntary. This means that students, staff, parents, caregivers, and families can decide if and how they wish to engage and which questions they choose to answer.

How will we maintain data security?

The survey is being collected using the Qualtrics survey platform. For more details on how Qualtrics protects privacy and data security, please visit WRDSB’s Qualtrics Privacy and Data Security Information Page.

Only staff members of the WRDSB Research Department can access individual responses directly in the Qualtrics platform.

The WRDSB Research Department will export responses from the Qualtrics platform and securely share survey responses with Overlap Associates using encrypted and password protected folders. Overlap Associates will also collect the information from the Town Hall sessions directly, so this information will not be accessed by WRDSB staff.

Overlap Associates has signed a non-disclosure agreement with the WRDSB ensuring that they will follow all appropriate privacy regulations and WRDSB board policies and procedures related to protecting privacy and data security. Overlap Associates will use the data only for the purposes of conducting analyses and preparing reports. At the end of the project, Overlap Associates will securely return all appropriate data to the WRDSB Research Department and/or securely dispose of all the information they collected during the Strategic Plan Community Consultations process.

For any questions related to our data security and privacy protocols for the Strategic Plan Community Consultations, please contact WRDSB Research Department at research@wrdsb.ca.