Privacy notice and cookies
Introduction
When we provide services, we want to make them easy, useful and reliable. Where services are delivered on the internet, this sometimes involves placing small amounts of information on your device, for example, computer or mobile phone. These include small files known as cookies. They cannot be used to identify you personally.
These pieces of information are used to improve services for you through, for example:
- enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
- recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
- measuring how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast
- analysing anonymised data to help us understand how people interact with govt services so we can make them better
You can manage these small files and learn more about them from the article, Internet Browser cookies- what they are and how to manage them.
If you'd like to learn how to remove cookies set on your device, visit: https://www.aboutcookies.org.
Our use of cookies
Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This is to ensure that the Data Portal is available when you want it, and to help us improve functionality. Google Analytics uses the following cookies:
Name: _utma
Purpose: to understand the number of visits, and the time of the first visit, the previous visit, and the current visit
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 2 years
Name: _utmb
Purpose: to understand approximately how long visitors stay on a site, when a visit starts, and approximately ends
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 30 minutes
Name: _utmc
Purpose: to understand approximately how long visitors stay on a site, when a visit starts, and approximately ends
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: when user exits browser
Name: _utmd
Purpose: to understand how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Typical content: randomly generated number
Expires: 6 months
Name: _utmv
Purpose: to understand which organisations have accessed the site
Typical content: N/A
Expires: when user exits browser
Name: _utmz degradation
Purpose: to understand the search engine and / or keyword followed to access the site
Typical content: randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search)
Expires: 6 months
For further details on the cookies set by Google Analytics, please refer to the Google Code website.
How to control and delete cookies
We will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you.
However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.
Alternatively, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your machine as well as more general information about cookies.
Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of our website.
If you wish to view your cookie code, just click on a cookie to open it. You'll see a short string of text and numbers. The numbers are your identification card, which can only be seen by the server that gave you the cookie.
For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.
To opt-out of third-parties collecting any data regarding your interaction on our website, please refer to their websites for further information.