Inform Hamilton

 

Terms of Use/Privacy Policy (Interim)

 

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The collaborating partners of Inform Hamilton:

 

§         Community Information Hamilton

§         Ancaster Community Services

§         Dundas Community Services

§         Flamborough Information & Community Services

 

are committed to compliance with Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), Canada’s private-sector privacy law in connection with the information contained in the Inform Hamilton database. Information about this legislation can be obtained from the website:

 

http://www.privcom.gc.ca/legislation/02_06_01_e.asp

 

In connection with the community information available in the database, we are committed to collecting, using, and disclosing personal information responsibly and only to the extent such information is provided to us by the organizations, programs, services and groups whose information we publish and disseminate through electronic and other means.

 

What is personal information?


Personal information is information about an identifiable individual and includes information that relates to:

  • personal characteristics (e.g. gender, age, income, home address or phone number, ethnic background, and/or family status)
  • health (e.g. health history, health conditions, and/or health services received by them),
  • or activities and views (e.g. religion, politics, opinions expressed by an individual, and/or an opinion or evaluation of an individual).

 

Business information, (e.g. an individual’s business address and telephone number) in contrast to personal information, is not protected  by privacy legislation.

 

When information about an individual is voluntarily provided as contact information for an organization, program, service or group record in the community database, Inform Hamilton interprets this information to be business information for the purposes of the database unless explicitly requested in writing to treat the information as personal and/or private. If an individual does not wish to provide his/her information for this business purpose – that is, as a contact for an organization, program, service or group – there is no requirement to do so. Upon request, contact information can be maintained in a non public area of the database and used for updating purposes only.

 

If at least one item of contact information (ie phone number, address and/or email) cannot be provided, the record will not be included in the public view of the database. However, if requested, the information can be made available internally to staff to provide information to the public one-to-one through the information and referral services of the Inform Hamilton partner agencies.

 

Purpose of and use of information in the database:


The primary purpose of the Inform Hamilton database is to collect, organize maintain and disseminate information about human services and community/voluntary sector programs and organizations.

 

Information provided by an organization, program, group or service or related information about individuals in connection with records in the Inform Hamilton  database might be used for any or all of the following purposes either as a free services or through a fee-for-service arrangement:

 

  • display online in the Inform Hamilton database (www.inform.hamilton.ca)
  • communicate to members of the public, who request information by telephone, in person, fax or email or conventional mail, through any of the Inform Hamilton partners
  • publish and disseminate in paper and electronic lists and directories
  • display online in specialized sub-sets of data created for a special purposes e.g. Dementia Care Network, Ontario Early Years,  Diverse Hamilton, 211 Ontario.ca and others
  • provide to service planners and/or social planning organizations for the purpose of creating service inventories or identifying service gaps

 

Organizations, programs, groups or services whose records form part of the Inform Hamilton database can request in writing that their information not be included in any/all of these database uses. Permission must be given for at least one of these purposes or the record cannot be included in the database.

 

 

Email harvesting

 

Inform Hamilton makes every reasonable effort to prevent the automated harvesting of email addresses through the online database. This is accomplished by encoding the email address in the details page display. However Inform Hamilton cannot guarantee that email addresses are fully secure from automated harvesting.

 

 

Users of the Inform Hamilton Website

 

Session cookies are stored while a user is visiting the online database to support the dynamic functionality of the web site. Cookies allow the website to store information on the user's computer and later retrieve it. No personally identifying information about the user is contained in these cookies. If the user's browser is set to reject cookies, the database will still be usable, but some of the functionality will be reduced.

 

Contact Information
Questions, concerns or suggestions should be sent in writing to:     

Lesley Russell
President and designated contact for information and privacy matters

Inform Hamilton
Email: lrussell@hpl.ca

Phone: 905 546-3200, Ext 4582
Fax:    905 528-7764

 

 

For additional information you may contact:

 

Privacy Commissioner of Canada
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 1H3

Website: www.privcom.gc.ca
Phone: 613-995-8210, 1-800-282-1376
Fax: 613-947-685

Last Reviewed: February 28, 2008

 

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