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EUSurvey - Data Processing Agreement

Between the European Commission, and the EU Survey owner (user)

    Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 23 October 2018, on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (hereafter, Regulation (EU) 2018/1725) and

    Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (hereafter, Regulation (EU) 2016/679)

    Whereas:

    (1) Article 29 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 establishes that where processing is to be carried out on behalf of a controller, the controller shall use only processors providing sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of this Regulation and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject; Processing by a processor shall be governed by a contract or other legal act under Union or Member State law, that is binding on the processor with regard to the controller and that sets out the subject matter and duration of the processing, the nature and purpose of the processing, the type of personal data and categories of data subjects and the obligations and rights of the controller.

    (2) Article 28 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 establishes that where processing is to be carried out on behalf of a controller, the controller shall use only processors providing sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures in such a manner that processing will meet the requirements of this Regulation and ensure the protection of the rights of the data subject. Processing by a processor shall be governed by a contract or other legal act under Union or Member State law, that is binding on the processor with regard to the controller and that sets out the subject-matter and duration of the processing, the nature and purpose of the processing, the type of personal data and categories of data subjects and the obligations and rights of the controller.


    Have agreed as follows:

    Article 1 - Parties

    This Data Processing Agreement (DPA) is established between the following parties:

    1. the European Commission (EC) and its Directorate General for Informatics (DIGIT) (hereby “Service Provider“ or “Processor“) and

    2. the natural person or a legal entity creating a survey in EU Survey or on behalf of which a Survey is created (hereafter “Survey Owner“ or “User“ or “Controller“), whether the survey is made available to third parties or not.

    Together and hereinafter each referred to solely as a 'Party' and together 'the Parties'.


    Article 2 - Scope of this Agreement

    2.1 This Agreement sets out the allocation of respective roles, responsibilities and practical arrangements between the controller and the processor, for compliance with their data protection obligations under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 and Regulation (EU) 2016/679, respectively, when carrying out the processing operation of EU Survey, by creating, using, promoting, or otherwise making available to third parties a survey by using the EU Survey tool and includes a standard common set of instructions provided to the processor (Service Provider) by the controller (Survey Owner).

    2.2 The applicability of either Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 or Regulation (EU) 2016/679 will depend on which Regulation the Survey Owner is subject to. In case the Survey Owner is a Union institution, body, office or agency, Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 will apply; otherwise, it will be Regulation (EU) 2016/679. In any case, the Service Provider is subject to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725. In case the Survey Owner is subject neither to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 or to Regulation (EU) 2016/679, the Survey Owner hereby commits to be compliant with the laws or rules that are applicable in its jurisdiction.

    2.3 For the purpose of this Agreement, the definitions set out in Article 3 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 and Article 4 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, respectively shall apply.

    2.4 Description of the service: EU Survey is a free web application for online survey creation and publication that is developed, operated and maintained by DIGIT. Personal information needs to be processed by the Processor in order for the service to be provided to the Survey Owner. All data, personal and non-personal, that are collected via the EU Survey tool are hosted in the datacentres of the Service Provider (hereafter, 'Processing Operation').


    Article 3 - Nature and Purpose of processing

    3.1. For the following processing activities as described in this paragraph, the Survey Owner will act as a data controller once a survey is created and the Service Provider as a data processor. The main Processing Operation consists of the following processing activities:

    • The Service Provider, through EU Survey, collects and uses the personal information of the Survey Owner for the purpose of the user to connect to the EU Survey application and use the provided service for creating, managing, sharing and publishing online questionnaires and surveys. Full name (first and last name) and email address are retrieved by an automatic identity verification process via EU-Login and the European Commission's Central User Database, which is stored at the Data Centre of the European Commission. The contact details of the Survey Owner (first name and last name, email address) may also be used for contacting the user or provide support and for other quality management purposes.
    • EU Survey is using Europa Analytics for traffic statistics and analytics. Europa Analytics is the corporate service that monitors and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the European Commission's websites on Europa. Europa Analytics is based on the open source analytics platform “Matomo“ and is installed on a webserver. Both the infrastructure and software are under the full control of the European Commission and comply with the current EU data protection legislation.
    • All data related to EUSurvey, i.e. personal data that might be collected in a survey, are stored on the servers of the Service Provider. This information is under the responsibility and direct control of the Survey Owner (user).

    3.2. EU Survey specific content data that constitutes personal data, and may be collected in a survey falls out of the scope of this Agreement. This processing activity is under the exclusive responsibility of each Survey Owner when creating and sharing a survey with any third parties, acting as a data controller to ensure that personal data is collected in line with Regulation 2018/1725 (EUDPR) or Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR).

    3.3 EU Survey is protected by EU-Login that is covered by Record DPR-EC-03187 and falls out of the scope of this Agreement. DG DIGIT processes personal data of the Survey Owner (user) during the user-authentication process in order to securely verify the identity of the user and provide access to the application that the user intends to use. The data entered by the user is compared to the stored account information that the user holds when creating his/her EU-Login profile, thus successfully authenticating the user. For EU-Login, DIGIT, Unit D3, is the sole controller.

    3.4 Detailed information about the processing operations and its processing activities described in paragraph 3.1. is provided in Annex I to this Agreement that constitutes the Record of processing activities that needs to be maintained by the data processor in line with Article 31(2) of Regulation 2018/1725 and Article 30 (2) of Regulation 2016/679 respectively.

    3.5. By creating an account in EU Survey and prior to creating a survey as a survey owner, the user has to provide a minimum set of personal data in order to use the tool. At this stage and before creating a survey, the European Commission is considered to be the sole controller (DPR-EC-01488). Once a survey is created paragraphs 3.1. to 3.4 are applicable.


    Article 4 - Processing of personal data by the service provider as data processor

    4.1. The European Commission as the service provider, collects and uses the Survey Owner's personal data through EU Survey for the purpose of enabling the survey Owner to connect to the EU Survey application and use the service for creating and publishing online questionnaires.

    4.2 The European Commission however, is not responsible for the privacy and data protection policies or practices undertaken by the Survey Owner using the EU Survey application to create, communicate and publish an EU survey to a wider audience (other survey users). All personal data collected within such a survey will be processed by and under the responsibility of the Survey Owner including in particular a lawful collection of personal data in line with Article 5(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 and/or Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 respectively.

    4.3 It is strongly recommended to the Survey Owner to create, adopt and communicate a separate privacy statement (notice) and a record of processing operations when processing personal data using this tool to all survey contributors.

    4.4. The service provider shall process on behalf of the EU Survey owner (user) any personal data included in or relating to this DPA in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 and solely for the purposes set out herein. The subject matter, duration, nature and purpose of the processing, types of personal data and categories of data subjects concerning the processing by the service provider on the user's behalf are as follows:

    For the provision, operation and management of EUSurvey tool:

    Subject matter of the processing activity: Processing of personal data in relation to the services provided to the Survey Owner according to the Terms and Conditions of Service and this Data Processing Agreement
    Duration of the processing: The Commission only keeps user personal data for the time necessary to fulfil its obligations stemming from the provision of the service to the EUSurvey owners (Users).
    More specifically, data will be processed:
    • For as long as a user account remains active
    Data related to a user's account and all associated data (EU Survey related information etc) will be permanently deleted:
    • once the user account is terminated
    • upon request of the account owner
    • after 2 years of account inactivity
    Logs will be stored for a maximum period of 6 months.
    Back-up policy: backups are taken on a daily basis and sent to a centralised backup infrastructure, managed by the service to ensure a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 24 hours. Retention time depends on the service class. EU Survey benefit from a 'Gold' service class that implies daily, weekly and monthly backups that are kept respectively for 35 days, 35 days and 1 year. Residual copies of deleted data may also continue to exist in our backups for disaster recovery purposes up to 1 year after the deletion has occurred, at which point it will be overwritten.
    Types of personal data undergoing processing: Identification data: Full name (first and last name) and email addresss, user-login ID (for access authentication via EU-Login).
    EU Survey uses the Europa Analytics service for traffic statistics and analytics. For further information see the Europa Analytics website
    All content data collected from EU Surveys are hosted in the servers of the EC.
    Logs: EU Survey technical log files store data about user actions. The log files contain data about user access (timestamp), email address each time an email is sent to someone or the EU-Login username when a user's login has changed. In some cases, there may be user-related data, such as IP addresses, when an exception has been raised.
    Cookies: EU Survey uses three different cookies. Two of them come from the EC official CCK1 (Cookie Consent Kit) and the _pk_id# and the third one is a session cookie (JSESSIONID) used to identify the user and make sure he is always forwarded to the same server. Full list of cookies used by the European Commission here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/cookies_en

    DIGIT does NOT process special categories of personal data within the context of EU-Survey and for the provision of the service. Nevertheless, Survey Owners might use EU Survey to collect special categories of personal data that might be hosted in the servers of the EC. The processing of such types of data by the Survey Owner should be in line with the obligation set out in Regulation 2018/1725 and Regulation 2016/679
    Categories of data subjects: Survey Owners (users), Survey participants and the Staff of the European Commission that is involved in the operation, management and maintenance of EU Survey platform on a “need to know“ basis.

    4.5 The localisation of and access to the personal data processed by the processor, is limited to the territory of the European Union and the European Economic Area and will not leave that territory.


    Article 5 - General obligations of the Service Provider

    The service provider shall assist the survey owner (user) for the fulfilment of the Survey owner's obligations pursuant to Articles 33-41 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 or Articles 32-43 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 respectively to:

    1. ensure compliance with its data protection obligations regarding the security of the processing and the confidentiality of electronic communications and directories of users;
    2. notify a personal data breach to the European Data Protection Supervisor or the relevant Data Protection Authority to which the survey owner may be subject;
    3. communicate a personal data breach without undue delay to the data subject where applicable;
    4. carry out data protection impact assessments and prior consultations as necessary.

    The service provider may act only on documented written instructions and under the supervision of the Survey Owner (user), in particular with regard to the purposes of the processing, the categories of data that may be processed, the recipients of the data and the means by which the data subjects may exercise their rights.

    The service provider shall immediately inform the survey owner if, in its opinion, an instruction of the client infringes Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 or other Union data protection provisions.

    The service provider shall notify the controller without undue delay of any legally binding request for disclosure of the personal data processed on behalf of the controller made by any national public authority, including an authority from a third country. The service provider may not give such access without the prior written authorisation of the controller, unless required by EU or Member State law.

    The service provider shall grant its personnel access to the personal data to the extent strictly necessary for the implementation, management and monitoring of the Agreement. The service provider must ensure that the personnel authorised to process personal data has committed itself to confidentiality or is under an appropriate statutory obligation of confidentiality in accordance with the provisions of Article 28.3.b of Regulation 2016/679 or Article 29.3.b. of Regulation 2018/1725.


    Article 6 - Responsibility for the security of processing

    The service provider has adopted appropriate technical and organisational security measures relating to the provided services1. Both types of measures shall give due regard to the risks inherent in the processing and to the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing, in order to:

    1. ensure the ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability and resilience of processing systems and services;
    2. restore the availability and access to personal data in a timely manner in the event of a physical or technical incident;
    3. ensure a process for regularly testing, assessing and evaluating the effectiveness of technical and organisational measures for ensuring the security of the processing;
    4. ensure measures to protect personal data from accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.

    Article 7 - Management of security incidents, including personal data breaches

    The service provider shall communicate relevant personal data breaches to the survey owner without undue delay after the service provider becomes aware of the breach taking into account the nature of the processing and the information available to the service provider at that time. In such cases, the service provider shall provide the survey owner with at least the following information:

    1. nature of the personal data breach including, where possible, the categories and approximate number of data subjects concerned and the categories and approximate number of personal data concerned;
    2. likely consequences of the breach;
    3. measures taken or proposed to be taken to address the breach, including, where appropriate, measures to mitigate its possible adverse effects.

    Article 8 - Data Subjects' Requests

    A data subject whose personal data is processed by the data controller in relation to the creation of Surveys by the Survey Owner (user) has specific rights under Chapter III (Articles 14-25) of Regulation (EU) No 2018/1725 or Chapter III (Articles 13-23) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, in particular the right to access, rectify or erase their personal data and the right to restrict or, where applicable, the right to object to processing or the right to data portability. Should data subjects have any queries concerning the processing of their personal data, they shall address themselves to the data controller. They may also address themselves to the Data Protection Officer of the data controller, in case there is one. They have the right to lodge a complaint at any time to the European Data Protection Supervisor.
    The processor shall assist the survey owner (user) for the fulfilment of the Survey Owner's obligation to respond to requests for exercising rights of data subjects in relation to the Agreement. The processor shall inform the Survey Owner without undue delay about such requests addressed to it.
    The duration of processing of personal data by the service provider per type of processing activity will not exceed the period referred to in the beginning of this Agreement. Upon expiry of this period, the service provider shall, upon request and at the choice of the survey owner, fully or partially delete all personal data (including all copies) processed on behalf of the Survey owner, without any undue delay unless Union law requires a longer storage of those personal data. All data included in each Survey or Questionnaire can be permanently deleted by the Survey Owner itself. In addition to this each Survey Owner can permanently delete the account it holds on EU Survey by clicking on the “delete the account“ button.

    Please note that the deletion of back-up data is subject to the EC's specific retention policy.

    The service provider shall keep the personal data in a form that permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed.

    Subcontracting of the service or performance of the contract by third parties requires prior written authorisation from the client. If part or all of the processing of personal data is subcontracted to a third party, the service provider shall pass on its obligations referred to in the Appendix in writing to those parties, including subcontractors. At the request of the client, the service provider shall provide a document providing evidence of this commitment.


    ANNEX 1: Record of Processing activities

    Points a, b, c, d of article 31 par. 2 EUDPR – GDPR art. 30 par. 2

    Name and contact details of the data processor: European Commission, DG for Informatics (DIGIT), Unit D1, contact form
    Subject matter of the processing activity: Processing of personal data in relation to the services provided to the Survey Owner:
    • Development, provision, operation and maintenance of EU Survey as a managed service, including all future developments
    • Second level support to the EU Survey User
    • End-user technical assistance and support
    • Secure hosting of all personal data stored in the EC datacentre
    International data transfers: N/A, all personal data are stored in the servers of the European Commission
    Technical and organisational measures: EUSurvey stores the EU-Login username as well as e-mail addresses of the survey owners at the Datacentres of the European Commission.
    The European Commission has implemented security measures to protect server hardware, software and the network from accidental or malicious manipulations and loss of data. All data is stored on European Commission servers managed by DG DIGIT in line with the technical security provisions laid down in the Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January 2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the European Commission, its subsequent versions, its implementing rules (as adapted from time to time) and the corresponding security standards and guidelines, as well as the Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2015/443 of 13 March 2015 on the security in the Commission, its implementing rules and the corresponding security notices. These documents (as adapted from time to time) are available for consultation at the following address: https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/security-standards-applying-all-european-commission-information-systems_en

    1 These organisational measures include the appropriate use of the service and its functionalities.