Privacy Policy

Privacy

January 2008

Introduction

We at DAMA International (alias 'DAMA-I') and our affiliated chapters worldwide are committed to respecting your online privacy and recognize your need for appropriate protection and management of any personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") you share with us.

DAMA-I has established this Online Privacy Policy so that you can understand the care with which we intend to treat your personal information.

“Personal Information” means any information that may be used to identify an individual, including, but not limited to, a first and last name, a home or other physical address and an email address or other contact information, whether at work or at home. In general, you can visit DAMA-I's Web pages (http://www.dama.org ) without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself.

If you choose to provide us with your personal information on the Web, we may transfer that information within DAMA-I or to DAMA-I's affiliated vendors or partners, across borders, and from your country or jurisdiction to other countries or jurisdictions around the world.

DAMA-I strives to comply with all applicable laws around the globe that are designed to protect your privacy. Although legal requirements may vary from country to country, DAMA-I intends to adhere to the principles set forth in this Online Privacy Policy even if, in connection with the above, we transfer your personal information from your country to countries that may not require a level of protection for your personal information that would be considered normal in other jurisdictions. In other words, our goal is to provide protection for your personal information no matter where that personal information is collected, transferred, or retained.

Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies

Some companies’ Web pages utilize 'cookies' and other tracking technologies. (A 'cookie' is a small text file that may be used, for example, to collect information about a user’s Web site activity.) At the moment, DAMA-I chooses not to use cookies for tracking Internet domain and host names or IP addresses as some organizations do. We prefer to assess our audience’s interests in a more direct way—through surveys both on-line and at conferences.

To protect your privacy, we have adopted the following principles:

Notice
Choice
Security
Access/Accuracy

Notice

Where DAMA-I collects personal information on the Web, we intend to post a purpose statement that explains why personal information will be collected and whether we plan to share such personal information outside of DAMA-I or with those working on DAMA-I's behalf. DAMA-I does not intend to transfer personal information without your consent to third parties who are not bound to act on DAMA-I's behalf unless such transfer is legally required.

Choice

You may choose whether or not to provide personal information to DAMA-I. The notice we intend to provide where DAMA-I collects personal information on the Web should help you to make this choice. If you choose not to provide the personal information we request, you can still visit most of DAMA-I's Web sites, but you may be unable to access certain options, offers, and services that involve our interaction with you.

If you chose to have a relationship with DAMA-I, such as signing up for training with one of our partners through a training collaboration or by attending one of our sponsored events (conferences, seminars, etc.), we will continue to contact you in connection with that business relationship.

Security

Wherever your personal information may be held within DAMA-I or on its behalf, we intend to take reasonable and appropriate steps to protect the personal information that you share with us from unauthorized access or disclosure. Password refreshes will be provided through a private email of the password to its owner. The password owner will be encourage to change the password frequently.

Access and Accuracy

To the extent that you do provide us with personal information, DAMA-I wishes to maintain the accuracy and currency of that information. Where we collect personal information from you on the Web and through other formats, our goal is to provide a means of contacting DAMA-I should you need to update or correct that information. If for any reason those means are unavailable or inaccessible, you may send updates and corrections about your personal information to privacy@dama.org and we will make reasonable efforts to incorporate the changes in your personal information that we hold as soon as practicable.

Sharing of Information

DAMA-I works with third party service (such as data management service companies, agencies or training groups) with whom we have a partner relationship. Periodically, such organizations suggest the sharing of email, addresses, names, postal addresses, etc. through some exchange mechanism. It is the policy of DAMA-I to share our contacts’ and members’ personal information only with confirmed partners of DAMA-I and only for the purposes that each contact or member has agreed to allow us to share that information. Otherwise, DAMA-I will not share your personal information, and if you have not given us your consent to share your personal information even with our confirmed partners we will abide by your request. Thus, in lieu of exchanging this information, we might offer that third party some space on our website to protect our partnership with that third party.

DAMA-I does not intend to transfer personal information without your consent. This includes any information we record in our on-line membership database or obtained through registration to our conferences and other programs. DAMA-I does not sell or rent its membership lists or other records to any third party. All communication with you that may be requested by our partners is controlled through DAMA-I, as protection of our members’ and contacts’ personal information is very important to us.

Discussion Groups

To leverage the intelligence and creativity our DAMA-I members, we encourage the use of discussion groups to facilitate idea sharing in a free environment We wish to encourage frank and open opinions, so each topic group is secured to limit expressed opinions and ideas to that specific group Each group has a moderator who has the responsibility and authority: (1) to allow individuals to enroll or cancel their group membership, and (2). to notify any group member about the DAMA-I security policy when it appears the member’s activities are not conforming to the DAMA-I information security and content policies.

Group Emails

DAMA website and mail engine both offer the facility to establish email groups for broadcasting messages of common interest to a group of people. For example, a group of email addresses can be built to address people interested in data warehousing. Also, the marketing function DAMA-I creates mass electronic mailings to survey people’s interests. In all such group mail situations, DAMA-I will assure its constituents that these groups and lists will not be sold, traded, or given away to other business entities.

Your Consent

By using this Web site, you consent to the terms of our Online Privacy Policy and to DAMA-I's processing of personal information for the purposes given above as well as those explained in other formats where DAMA-I collects personal information. Should the Online Privacy Policy change, we intend to take every reasonable step to ensure that these changes are brought to your attention by posting all changes prominently on our web site for a practical period of time.

SUMMARY

We are committed to privacy and, through our membership in the Online Privacy Alliance, we are actively involved in and support current industry initiatives to preserve individual privacy rights on the Internet. Protecting your privacy online is an evolving area, and DAMA-I's Web sites are constantly evolving to meet these demands.

If you have any comments or questions regarding our Online Privacy Policy, please contact us at privacy@dama.org . We cannot guarantee 100% perfect privacy; no organization can. But we will address any issue to the best of our abilities as soon as possible.