Privacy Policy

At the Scottish AI Alliance, we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

The Scottish AI Alliance is administered by The Data Lab (“we, us”). This website and the information gathered on it is controlled by The Data Lab. As a Scottish Innovation centre, The Data Lab is administered and hosted by the University of Edinburgh meaning that we are the same legal entity. The University of Edinburgh is a registered charity with registration number SC005336.

This Policy explains how we use personal data in connection with our work as the Scottish AI Alliance. This includes information collected via our website and when you get in touch with us in connection with Scotland’s AI Strategy. This privacy policy may be supplemented by additional privacy statements, terms or notices provided to you.

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or wish to exercise any of your rights under it, please contact us at info@thedatalab.com with the subject line “privacy policy”.

Information We Collect

Correspondence Information

What is collected
Information you provide to us when you contact us or meet us in a business context: this may include your name, job title, organisation or academic institution you are associated with, contact details and address.

Reasons for collecting it
If you contact us to enquire about any aspect of our work we will collect your personal information in order to respond to your query appropriately.

Legal Basis
On the basis of our and your legitimate interests. Our interests being that we would like to assist you with any queries you may have and inform you about our work.

Application Information

What is collected
Information you provide to us when you apply for a role with us, for example, where you apply to be part of our working group: this may include your contact details, job title, academic / working history and address.

Reasons for collecting it
In order to assess whether you are suitable for the role and meet our requirements.

Legal Basis
Contract / To take steps prior to entering a contract – we need to collect this information with you to fulfill our agreement to consider you for the role and if successful, to contact you in relation to the role

Consultation Information

What is collected
Information that we collect about you when you participate in consultations or working groups: this may include your views on certain subjects, your contact details, your job title and address.

Reasons for collecting it
We collect this data to be able to engage with you in relation to the consultation.

Legal Basis
On the basis of our and your legitimate interests – our legitimate interests being that we wish to gather a diverse range of views and experience in order to develop effective and workable strategies and services.

Cookies Information

What is collected
Information that we collect about you by way of cookies: this includes your IP address, browser type, operating system and activity on our websites.

Reasons for collecting it
We use these cookies to improve your experience of using our websites and to allow us to assess how visitors use our websites so we can improve these.

Legal Basis
Other than cookies which are strictly necessary for the functioning of our website, we will use cookies only on the basis of your consent. Please see the cookies section below for more information.

Newsletter Information

What is collected
Information that we collect about you when you sign up to our email newsletters, podcast series or to receive follow up information from events: this may include your name, organisation and contact details.

Reasons for collecting it
We collect this information in order to send you our newsletter. Our newsletter allows us to communicate the latest news about the Scottish AI Alliance.

Legal Basis
We only send you these emails where you have provided your consent and you may unsubscribe at any time by following the link in the email.

Contract Information

What is collected
Information you provide to us (or third parties that we work with e.g. ticketing platforms) when you enter (or wish to enter) a contract with us in relation to our services, for example, where you enter a competition or sign up to one of our events: this may include your name, address, contact details, payment details and where you sign up to an event, your dietary requirements.

Reasons for collecting it
We collect your personal information to enable us to provide the agreed services.

We may collect dietary requirements when you attend our events to allow you to request suitable catering. This information could contain special category data e.g. your religion.

Legal Basis
To fulfill our obligations under the contract. We will only collect dietary information on the basis of your consent.

Photographs and videos

What is collected
We may capture photographs or videos of you in the following circumstances:

  • where you have agreed to provide recordings or photographs as part of a contract with us e.g. to provide training content;

  • where you have participated in our webinars or virtual events; and

  • where you have attended our events or partner events.

Reasons for collecting it
We may use these photographs and videos to provide training/events and/or to promote our services and future events.

Legal Basis

Where you agree to provide recordings or photographs as part of a contract with us, e.g. where we engage you to deliver a presentation or training course which will be recorded, this is on the basis of our contract.

Outside of the above, where we take photos or videos of you at our events, this is on the basis of our legitimate interests, our legitimate interests being that we wish to advertise our events/services. We only use these images or videos where we (or our event partners) have informed you beforehand and given you the chance to request not to be included. If you change your mind at any time please let us know.

Demographics

What is collected

Additional information you provide to us (or third parties that we work with e.g. ticketing platforms or associated events) where you attend our events, hosted by us or our event partners or participate in other services we deliver, for example, our courses: this may include your gender, job title, occupation, organisation sector, industry you work in, area of residence or other information in relation to your demographics.

Reasons for collecting it

We collect this information to assist us in assessing who the market for our services are and to assess whether we are attracting a diverse audience. This is to allow us to ensure we meet our aims in terms of equality and diversity and ensure our events and services are relevant and helpful.

Legal Basis

On the basis of our and your legitimate interests, our interests being that we wish to attract a diverse audience and ensure our events are relevant and useful. Where any special category data is collected for these purposes this is on the basis of substantial public interest.

Retention

We will retain your personal information for as long as we reasonably require in light of the purpose(s) for which we are holding it and all relevant legal, commercial and operational considerations.

As a Scottish Innovation Centre, we may have to comply with statutory retention periods as required by our funders.

Disclosure of Your Information

We will never sell or trade your personal information to others.

We use third party service providers and suppliers to deliver certain services. We put contractual arrangements in place with these third parties to ensure they are obliged to protect your personal information.

We only share your personal information where it is reasonably necessary to properly administer our business and/or to comply with law / regulations.

The following third parties may have access to your personal information:

  • Scottish Government – the activities of the Scottish AI Alliance are overseen by The Data Lab in partnership with the Scottish Government, we may therefore share your personal data with the Scottish Government where necessary to administer the strategy development, for example, we may share views you submit to our consultations with the Scottish Government.

  • Software providers – we use various software providers to enable us to administer our business, these providers include the providers of our email system, automated email mailing list system and the host of our website.

  • Event organisers – where we hold events we may need to share some of your personal information with third party organisers of the event, for example to put in place a guest list of ticket holders.

  • Consultants and service providers – where we use third party providers to assist us in providing our services.

  • Regulators, government departments, law enforcement authorities, tax authorities, accountants, insurance companies, professional advisers, dispute resolution bodies or the courts – where necessary to comply with law or enforce or rights; and

  • Scottish Funding Council, Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and/or Highlands and Islands Enterprise – as a Scottish Innovation Centre we have certain reporting duties to our funders.

Some of these entities may also be data controllers but please contact us in the first instance if you have any questions.

European Economic Area

The information we collect from you may be stored inside the UK, the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or outside the EEA.

If you live or work outside of the EEA, we may need to transfer your personal information outside of the EEA to correspond with you. Where this applies, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice.

We may transfer personal information outside the EEA where our service providers host, process, or store personal information outside the EEA. Where this is the case we use contractual arrangements and safeguards to protect this personal information, these safeguards include:

  • The country to which the personal information will be transferred has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission.

  • Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give personal information the same protection it has in Europe.

Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal information out of the EEA.

Use of 'cookies'

A cookie is a small file which is placed on your device when you visit a website.

A cookie is normally used to store basic information about your visit, such as site preferences, profile status or past actions.

This site uses cookies to collect information about how visitors use a website, for instance which pages visitors go to most often. This information is used to help us improve our website. These cookies don't collect information that identifies a visitor.

The cookies used are:

  1. Scotland's AI Strategy_cookie_policy
    This cookie is used to remember the state of the cookie banner. Once you accept the cookie it will be stored and remind the site not to show the cookie banner again.

  2. _ga, _gat
    These are cookies for Google Analytics which help us track how visitors use our website.

Deleting cookies

For information on how to remove any cookies already placed on your computer, please select your browser below:

Alternatively, websites such as “All About Cookies” provide comprehensive guidance: http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.

Links to other websites

Our websites contains links to other websites.  Once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over other websites.  We cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any personal information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this policy.

CONTINUATION OF THE POLICY

Please find the second part of our Privacy Policy here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/data-protection/notice. This is the generic part of every University of Edinburgh privacy notice.