Whether disclosure of results of Teaching Evaluation to students is a contravention of the Ordinance.
Q: I should be very grateful if the Privacy Commissioner would advise on the following situation which has arisen in our institution. Each semester, our students complete a course and teaching evaluation questionnaire for each of the courses they are studying. This requires them to rate both the course and its content and organisation and the teacher and his/her performance. The results are used by the Head of Department as part of the staff appraisal and development process and the "magic score" (an overall assessment of the teacher¡¦s performance) for each teacher is made available for inspection by the students on that course in the departmental office. The students are pressing for greater access to the results for all courses. We are concerned to as whether such results constitute personal data of the staff concerned under the terms of the Ordinance, and if so, what steps the College would have to take to obtain their consent to publication of the results within the College. In addition, the students have asked that the teaching evaluation results be posted on a notice board. Is this allowed under the Ordinance?
A: Your enquiry concerns the disclosure of the results of your Course and Teaching Evaluation ("CTE") to students. As the results appear to relate to individual staff members who are identified, they appear to constitute personal data. Under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance disclosure of personal data is a use of personal data and is subject to the requirements of data protection principle ("DPP") 3 in Schedule 1 to the Ordinance. DPP3 provides that personal data may not be used for a purpose other than the purpose for which the data where to be used when they were collected, or a directly related purpose, unless the subject of the data gives prior express consent voluntarily.
According to the facts as stated in your enquiry, it appears that one purpose of collecting the data that makes up the CTE is to produce an overall assessment mark that is accessible to students of the relevant department as part of your staff appraisal and development process. If so, disclosure of the overall assessment mark for this purpose accords with the requirements of DPP3. You further indicate that students have requested greater access to the results. This may include the publication of the results of replies to individual questions in the CTE, instead of only an overall mark as done currently. It also involves the accessibility of such results to all students who may wish to consider taking a particular course, rather than only to the students who have completed that course as at present. Regarding CTE data already collected before your adoption of the new policy, the above amounts to a new purpose for which such data are to be used. It therefore follows from the requirements of DPP3 that the disclosure should not be given without the prior express consent given voluntarily of the staff members concerned. If a new policy is adopted that includes such disclosure, however, the new purposes can be included in the purposes for which the data concerned are collected. No consent for the new purposes from the individuals concerned will be required by DPP3 in relation to the data collected subsequent to the adoption of this policy, although as a matter of good practice you should consider prior notification to those individuals.
