SELFIE: data protection and data use

This page serves to clarify data ownership, privacy and the use of data generated through SELFIE self-reflection tool for schools. When a school uses the SELFIE tool, the replies to the questions are collected and stored in the SELFIE platform which is hosted on a server owned and managed by the European Commission.

The responses to the SELFIE questions are made available in a SELFIE School Report, which is shared directly with the school and where no personal data is handled.

No other organisation, including the European Commission, can track the answers for an individual school. All answers provided through SELFIE are anonymous. Individual students, teachers, school leaders or any other staff members replying to SELFIE questions cannot be identified personally.

All data supplied in SELFIE questionnaires and during associated sign-up processes will be held automatically or computerised by the European Commission in compliance with the current data protection legislation. It will be used for the purpose of analysing responses overall to inform research and policy and not for marketing. The European Commission's policy on data protection and management can be found here.

The European Commission may use the aggregated and anonymised data (that presents the mean of percentages of responses by user group, namely school leaders, teachers and students) from SELFIE platform in the following ways:

- We may download aggregated and anonymised data into other European Commission systems for analysis.

- We may produce public reports and presentations based on aggregated and anonymised data and its analysis.

In both cases, institutional details will be safeguarded and will not be divulged to any other individuals or third party organisations for any other purpose whatsoever. Also, individual participants and participating institutions will never be identified in these reports and analyses. At no time will individual responses from the school ever be shared or made public, or any aggregated data shared that might allow individual students or staff members to be identified.

We recommend that in communicating with students and staff about SELFIE a data protection statement similar to following should be used:

SELFIE is being carried out by [school name] in conjunction with the European Commission [insert ministries or local authority name if relevant]. We will ask you questions about your experience of digital technologies at your school and your experiences of learning with digital technologies, but the questions will not identify you personally. We will use the data to help our school improve the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning. We will also share the data with the European Commission's SELFIE team, anonymously, as part of a wider research and studies.

Here you can read the full SELFIE privacy statement.