GDPR and Privacy Rules

The National Alumni Survey (NAE) collects data by asking questions to alumni of universities and with that comes privacy regulations. Perhaps the most important is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Research institute Centerdata, which is responsible for administering the NAE, conducts the research in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR on behalf of the Universities of The Netherlands (UNL). See Centerdata’s privacy statement for more information and/or the privacy statement of the university you studied at. Centerdata collaborates with IVA Onderwijs to carry out this research.

Universities of The Netherlands

The NAE is a joint project of all Dutch universities affiliated to UNL. In addition to Centerdata processing your personal data, this data is also processed by the universities affiliated with UNL. If you would like to obtain more information about this, you can consult the privacy statement on your university’s website: the universities are the controllers according to the GDPR.

Purpose National Alumni Survey

The purpose of the NAE is, through scientific research, to gain national insight into the transition to and connection of university master’s programmes with the labour market. In addition, the NAE aims to provide universities with information on or insight into:

• Whether the knowledge and skills acquired during the programme lead to a good fit with the labour market;
• How alumni perceive the quality of the programme afterwards;
• The extent to which the individual study programme, faculty or university performs compared to similar study programmes, faculties and/or universities (benchmark information).

The survey is conducted once every two years nationwide among all universities. A university may choose to conduct an additional measurement in an intermediate year.

Personal data

In order to invite alumni to the NAE, universities make contact details of their alumni available to Centerdata. This data consists of name, e-mail address and if the university uses the telephone reminder method: telephone number. If no (valid) e-mail address of alumni is known to the university, residential address details can be used to send invitations by post. Your (former) university is responsible for supplying these contact details and for having informed you of this in a correct manner: for example, via the online login environment you use as a student.

Centerdata only uses this contact data to invite alumni to complete the survey. This data is kept separately from the survey responses and is never linked to the survey data. All contact data will be destroyed by Centerdata one month after completion of the survey.

Consent

Centerdata collects and processes the data on behalf of UNL. As participation in the NAE survey is entirely voluntary, we process your data for the following enrichments only at the NAE with your consent:

1. The processing, storage and analysis of the answers in the survey by Centerdata for the research. Due to the scientific nature of the research, the collected data will be deleted by Centerdata 5 years after completion of the research. PLEASE NOTE: Centerdata will delete your contact details earlier: within one month after completing a measurement.
2. Sharing of answers by Centerdata with the university where you studied. The university is responsible for the retention period of this data and will therefore not retain it any longer than is necessary for the stated purposes of the NAE.
3. Linking the survey answers by the university to data held by the university for in-depth research. This helps the university, for example, to better understand the labour market position of specific groups of alumni. The university is also responsible for the retention period of this data and will therefore not keep it longer than necessary for the stated purposes of the NAE.

If you have consented to the processing of your data but wish to withdraw this consent, you can do so at any time. You can do so by sending an e-mail to the appropriate contact address below under the heading “Contact and/or make a complaint”. You can withdraw without giving a reason.

What happens to the data we process?

Implementer Centerdata and co-executor IVA Onderwijs create two types of data files based on the NAE: 1) a national data file and 2) institution data files.

1) The national database contains anonymised data, based on questions taken from alumni of all universities. This data file is made available to all universities in an online data dashboard and is made available to third parties via the national expertise centre and repository for research data DANS under strict conditions. Users of DANS can only access these data with the permission of UNL. Also, the data may only be used for scientific research. The database made available to third parties does not contain institution-specific data.

2) An institution database contains the data of one university and is shared only with the university in question. The institution database may contain more data than the national database if the university has included additional questions in the NAE.

Research data from the NAE are stored at Centerdata on secure servers that are only accessible to Centerdata researchers and designated IVA Onderwijs researchers.

Publications

Based on the data collected in the survey, Centerdata and IVA Onderwijs will produce a national-level report, which will include tables. In all reports, results can never be traced back to individuals, as all data will be aggregated. To further protect the anonymity of participants, cells with fewer than five participants are not included in reports.

Data traffic

Data traffic between the universities and Centerdata takes place exclusively in the secure file-sharing environment File Share, developed by Centerdata.

Rights of data subjects

Under the GDPR, as the alumnus participating in the study, you have the following rights:

• the right to be informed
• the right of access
• the right to rectification
• the right to erasure
• the right to object
• the right to data portability
• the right to restrict processing
• the right to withdraw consent

If a request is submitted, you may be asked to identify yourself using the (not yet destroyed) personal data that is processed for the NAE.

Contact and/or submit a complaint

You can contact us about the processing of your personal data by sending an email to your former university. Below you will find the correct email address for each university. You can also submit a request to use one of the rights mentioned above.

It is also possible to file a complaint about the use of your personal data for the NAE. If you feel that we are not helping you in the right way, you have the right to file a complaint via the above-mentioned email addresses (with the Data Protection Officer of your (former) university) or with the Dutch Privacy Supervisory Authority, the Dutch Data Protection Authority.