National Department of Basic Education and UNICEF South Africa (“the Partners”) as Partners of the Early Childhood Development Information Hub are committed to protecting your privacy and developing technology that gives you the most powerful and safe online experience. This Statement of Privacy applies to the Early Childhood Development Information Hub and governs data collection and usage. By using the Early Childhood Development Information Hub, you consent to the data practices described in this statement.

Collection of your personal information

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub collects personally identifiable information, such as your email address, name, home or work address or telephone number. The Early Childhood Development Information Hub also collects anonymous demographic information, which is not unique to you, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites.

There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by the Early Childhood Development Information Hub. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses. This information is used by the Partners for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Early Childhood Development Information Hub.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through the Early Childhood Development Information Hub public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: The Partners do not read any of your private online communications.

The Partners encourages you to review the privacy statements of websites you choose to link to from the Early Childhood Development Information Hub so that you can understand how those websites collect, use and share your information. The Partners are not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on websites outside of the Early Childhood Development Information Hub.

Use of your personal information

The Partners collect and use your personal information to operate the Early Childhood Development Information Hub and deliver the services you have requested. The Partners also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from the Early Childhood Development Information Hub and its affiliates. You may also be contacted by the administrators and/or Partners to the Early Childhood Development Information Hub via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.

The Partners do not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. The Partners may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, the Partners may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to the Partners, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

The Partners not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub keeps track of the websites and pages our customers visit within National Department of Basic Education, in order to determine what National Department of Basic Education services are the most popular. This data is used to deliver customized content and advertising within the Early Childhood Development Information Hub to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on the Early Childhood Development Information Hub; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of the Early Childhood Development Information Hub; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Early Childhood Development Information Hub, or the public.

Use of cookies

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub use “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a webpage server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize the Early Childhood Development Information Hub pages, or register with the Early Childhood Development Information Hub or services, a cookie helps the Early Childhood Development Information Hub to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same Early Childhood Development Information Hub, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Early Childhood Development Information Hub features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of Early Childhood Development Information Hub or websites you visit.

Security of your personal information

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. The Early Childhood Development Information Hub secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

Changes to this statement

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect company and customer feedback. The Early Childhood Development Information Hub encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how the Early Childhood Development Information Hub is protecting your information.

Contact Information

The Early Childhood Development Information Hub welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that the Early Childhood Development Information Hub has not adhered to this Statement, please contact us at webmaster@dbe.gov.za We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.