Privacy and the EU General Data Protection Regulation

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), issued by the EU, came into force on April 2018. It protects privacy by preventing personal data being processed without the consent of the person in question. GDPR also has consequences for the SoilCare project, since in the project personal data is being collected and processed in SoilCare research.

Examples

Personal data collection takes place in more cases than is visible on first sight. Examples of collecting personal data are:

  • Farmers are participating in a stakeholder meeting and their opinion is recorded, together with their name;
  • Policy-makers are filling out a survey issued by SoilCare researchers; opinions are recorded together with names of policy-makers;
  • People (general public) that visit a demonstration site are being photographed and these photos are used for SoilCare promotional purposes; peoples faces are recognisably recorded and linked to the event, pictures are published on the SoilCare website;
  • Field data are being used and the GPS coordinates are recorded; GPS coordinates can be traced back to landowners. 

In all of the above cases personal data can be traced back to persons, in most of the above cases people need to give consent for their personal data to be used for the SoilCare project. In order for their personal data to be used and published in some way, they need to consent. Rules for how different cases must be treated and whether or not consent forms need to be filled out or not are described in the SoilCare GDPR document mentioned above.

Consent forms for personal use or group use are made available for download below. When filling out consent forms, there is a SoilCare copy and a personal copy for the person filling out the form. In the case of the group form, one representative of the group gets a copy of the consent form.

Downloads

SoilCare GDPR document v1.0
SoilCare consent form personal use
SoilCare consent form group use (up to 24 people)

Links

EU GDPR document (Regulation (EU) 2016/679)Regulation (EU) 2016/679) (link to EU website where different language versions can be downloaded)
Taking photos at community events (source: resourcecentre.org.uk)
GDPR: What researchers need to know? (source: Lancaster university UK)
Google search "GDPR in research projects" (source: google.com)