Privacy Policy

(Last Updated: June 27, 2023. See the bottom of this page for Update History.)

Introduction

govCDOiq.org (govCDOiq, the “site”, the “website”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a service for the federal Chief Data Officer (“CDO”) community created and managed by Citizant, Inc. (“Citizant”), with its headquarters office located at 5175 Parkstone Dr., Ste. 110, Chantilly, VA.

Please read this Privacy Policy (“Policy”) carefully to understand what information we collect from you or about you, how we collect it, and how we will treat it. By accessing or using govCDOiq, you agree to this Policy. This Policy may change from time to time. (See “Changes to Our Privacy Policy” below.) Your continued use of the website after we make changes signals your acceptance of those changes. You can review this Policy anytime at https://govcdoiq.org/privacy-policy/.

This Policy applies only to the website at govCDOiq.org and any subdomains (e.g., training.govCDOiq.org). This Policy applies to information collected when you visit our site, when we communicate via a govCDOiq.org email address, and any other online/digital interactions you have with services from govCDOiq.org.

It does not apply to any other websites or programs offered by Citizant or to any third-party sites including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on our site.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

We may revise this Policy occasionally at our sole discretion. Such changes will become effective on the date included in the updated Policy. We will post a visible notice on our site whenever we update this Policy. If you continue to use the site after we post such a notice, you signal your agreement to the updated Policy.

Children Under the Age of 18

Our site is designed and intended for adults and not intended for minors under 18 years of age. If you are under 18, do not provide any information on this site or on or through any of its features. Persons under 18 are not authorized to make any purchases through our site and must not provide any personally identifiable information (“PII”) to us (e.g., your name, address, telephone number, email address, or username). In compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”), we do not knowingly collect or store any PII about children under age 13. If we learn we have collected or received PII from a child under 13 with or without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information. If you believe we might have collected any information from a child under 18, please contact us at privacy@govcdoiq.org.

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

As we provide information and services intended for government CDOs and their teams, we may sometimes collect information in the process of providing the site’s content to our visitors, subscribers, and prospective subscribers.

We may collect, use, store, and transfer different kinds of information about you, which we have grouped together as follows:

Business Data includes company and title.
Identity or Contact Data includes name, photo, business address, email address, telephone number, or similar identifier.
Usage Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting, location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other information about how you use our website or technology on the devices you use to access the website.
Transaction Data includes details about products that we may send to you.
Profile Data includes your interests, preferences, feedback, and survey responses.
Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.

We may also collect, use, and share aggregated data such as anonymized statistical or demographic data for any purpose, which we do not treat as PII. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a feature on the site. However, if we combine or connect aggregated data with your PII so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as PII.

Information You Provide to Us

When using our site, you may provide your PII to us in the following ways:

Filling out forms on our website for any purpose, such as subscribing to an email newsletter, gaining access to non-public documents, or completing a survey.
Corresponding with us via email, online chat offered on our site, or other channels.
Registering on our site to access advanced features such as creating blog posts and commenting on information posted by others.
Responding to surveys that we host on our site or on any other site that sends your information back to us.
Purchasing products or services offered through our site.
Posting information on, or making contributions to, public-facing areas of our site such as our blog.

Information you post on public-facing areas of our site is posted at your own risk. We cannot control the actions of others (except through our site content moderation capabilities), so we cannot guarantee that the information you post will not be viewed, copied, or otherwise misappropriated by unauthorized individuals or computer programs.

Information We Collect Automatically When You Visit our Site

When you visit or use our site, various technical components of our site may data collect automatically about your usage of the site (Usage Data) including:

Details about your visits to our site, including traffic data, location data, logs such as browsing history of our site, and other data about how you access and use our site.
Data about your computer and Internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

The Usage Data we collect automatically may include personal information, or we may maintain it or associate it with PII we collect in other ways or receive from other parties. Such data enables us to:

Estimate the number of visitors to our site and their usage patterns.
Store your preferences so we can customize how our site appears and works for you.
Recognize you when you return to our site.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection may include:

Cookies or Browser Cookies. A cookie is a small file placed on your device. You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our site may use cookies.
Web Beacons. Certain sections of our site and our emails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit us, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of a certain section and verifying system and server integrity).

Our website uses third parties to assist us in analyzing data regarding visitors to our website. For example, we use Google Analytics to collect analytics about the use of our site. You can opt-out of Google Analytics by downloading Google’s Opt-Out Browser Add-on.

Some internet browsers have “Do Not Track” or “DNT” features which, when turned on, send a signal to the website that the individual visiting the website does not wish to be tracked. Our website does not honor DNT signals.

Cookies

Cookies can be “Persistent” or “Session” Cookies. Persistent Cookies remain on your personal computer or mobile device when you go offline, while Session Cookies are deleted as soon as you close your web browser. We use both Session and Persistent Cookies for the purposes set out below:

Necessary / Essential Cookies
Type: Session Cookies
Administered by: Us
Purpose: These cookies are essential to provide you with services available through the website and to enable you to use some of its features. They help to authenticate users and prevent fraudulent use of user accounts. Without these cookies, the services that you have asked for cannot be provided, and we only use these cookies to provide you with those services.
Cookies Policy / Notice Acceptance cookies
Type: Persistent Cookies
Administered by: Us
Purpose: These cookies identify if users have accepted the use of cookies on the website.
Functionality cookies
Type: Persistent Cookies
Administered by: Us
Purpose: These cookies allow us to remember choices you make when you use the website, such as remembering your login details or language preference. The purpose of these cookies is to provide you with a more personal experience and to avoid you having to re-enter your preferences every time you use the website.
Tracking and Performance cookies
Type: Persistent Cookies
Administered by: Third Parties
Purpose: These cookies are used to track information about traffic to our site and how users use our site. The information gathered via these cookies may directly or indirectly identify you as an individual visitor. This is because the information collected is typically linked to a pseudonymous identifier associated with the device you use to access our site. We may also use these cookies to test new pages, features, or new functionality of our site to see how our users react to them.

How We Share Data About You

We may share your information with third parties so that they can help us provide our services to you. For example, we may share your registration information with a vendor that manages an event for us, or share the information collected automatically through cookies or scripts about your anonymized usage of specific technical components of our site with the vendors that manage our site and analytics. Your PII also will be shared with any companies that process payments for services or products you buy from our site.

Under certain circumstances, we may also disclose your PII under the good faith belief that such action is necessary to:

Comply with a legal obligation
Respond to valid requests by public authorities (e.g., a court or a government agency)
Protect and defend our rights or property
Prevent or investigate possible wrongdoing in connection with our site
Protect the personal safety of site users or the public
Protect against legal liability
Effectuate a merger, sale, acquisition, or other corporate transaction

With the exception of the activities described in the California Privacy Rights section below, we do not sell your personal information to third parties.

Transfer of Your Data

Your information, including PII, is processed at Citizant’s operating offices and in any other places where the persons involved in the processing are located. It means that this information may be transferred to — and maintained on — computers located outside of your state, province, country, or other governmental jurisdiction where the data protection laws may differ from those from your jurisdiction. Your consent to this Privacy Policy followed by your submission of such information represents your agreement to that transfer.

Citizant will take reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and that no transfer of your PII will take place to an organization or a country unless there are adequate controls in place designed to ensure the security of your data and other personal information.

Citizant hosts the govCDO.com website with SG Hosting, Inc. (“SiteGround”). You can view the full SiteGround privacy policy at https://www.siteground.com/privacy.htm.

How We Protect Your Data

The security of your PII is important to us. However, no method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your PII, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

In order to protect the information of all our customers and site visitors, Citizant operates under an active certification for ISO 20001:2013 for IT security, cybersecurity, and privacy protection. Businesses that partner with govCDO.com may request a copy of Citizant’s Information Security policy for legitimate business purposes by sending an email to privacy@govcdoiq.org.

Citizant uses leading website security tools, practices, and protocols designed to provide commercially reasonable protections for all data stored on our site. We enforce HTTPS on all portions of our site.

How Long We Retain Your Data

Citizant will retain your PII only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. We will also retain and use your PII to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies.

We also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a short period of time, except when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our site, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods.

Different types of information you provide or data we collect may be retained for different periods. For example:

Registration information, which may be shown when you post or comment on our site, may continue to be shown as long as your content is active on our site.
Data collected automatically by cookies are purged from our site’s database whenever you delete the corresponding cookies from your browser/device.
Data about the products or services you purchase through our site is retained indefinitely so we can continue to provide support and answer questions about your purchase history.
Emails you send to us that may contain your personal information are retained in our email servers (e.g., Microsoft Exchange) and in our email reader programs (e.g., Outlook) indefinitely.

Accessing and Controlling Your Data

You may send us an email to privacy@govcdoiq.org to request access to, correct, or delete PII that you have provided to us. Please note that if you or we delete your user contributions from our site (e.g., blog posts or comments), copies of those contributions may remain viewable in cached and archived pages on internet search engines or might have been copied or stored by other individuals.

Usage Data we collect from you automatically is not considered PII. It is often impractical or impossible for us to delete all Usage Data related to your use of our site. However, you may at any time delete the cookies we have stored on your browser and purge the cache on your device/browser to preclude us from associating any additional site Usage Data with you.

California Privacy Rights

California residents (“you” and “your” for purposes of California Privacy Rights section) have specific rights regarding your personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (“CPRA”) (collectively referred to herein as the “CCPA”).

Please note that the CCPA does not apply to certain categories of personal information such as publicly available information, and our processing of CCPA-exempt categories of information is not addressed below. Additionally, our privacy practices with respect to the personal information of employees and job applicants are not addressed below.

Categories of Personal Information Collected, Disclosed, Sold, or Shared in the Last Twelve (12) Months

You have the right to know the categories of personal information govCDO has collected, disclosed, sold, or shared about consumers within the last twelve (12) months. The chart below contains this information.

Category	Examples	Collected?	Source	Purpose of Collection	Categories of Third Parties to Whom Disclosed	Categories of Third Parties to Whom Sold or Shared
Identifiers.	A real name, alias, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, Internet Protocol address, email address, account name, or other similar identifiers.	YES	Directly from you; Indirectly from your activity on our website	To provide our services; To respond to requests for information; To provide you with information and advertisements we believe may be of interest; To administer and improve our website and services	To our service providers so they may help us provide our services	N/A
Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)).	A name, signature, address, telephone number, education, or employment.	YES	Directly from you; Indirectly from your activity on our website	To provide our services; To respond to requests for information; To administer and improve our website and services	To our service providers so they may help us provide our services	N/A
Internet or other similar network activity.	Browsing history, search history, information on a consumer’s interaction with a website, application, or advertisement.	YES	Indirectly from your activity on our website	To provide our Services; To respond to requests for information; To provide you with information and advertisements we believe may be of interest; To administer and improve our website and services	To our service providers so they may help us provide our services	To our analytics and advertising service providers and partners
Geolocation data.	Physical location or movements.	YES	Indirectly from your activity on our website	To provide our services; To respond to requests for information; To provide you with information and advertisements we believe may be of interest; To administer and improve our website and services	To our service providers so they may help us provide our services	To our analytics and advertising service providers and partners
Inferences drawn from other personal information.	Profile reflecting a person’s preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes.	YES	We make inferences based on your activity with us and based on publicly available information we obtain about you	To provide you with information and advertisements we believe may be of interest	N/A	N/A

Retention of Personal Information

Please refer to the section above titled How Long We Retain Your Data.

Right to Know and Data Portability

You have the right to request that govCDO disclose certain information to you about our collection, use, disclosure and sale of your personal information. Once we receive and confirm your request, to the extent you have requested them, we will disclose to you:

The categories of personal information we collected about you;
The categories of sources from which your personal information was collected;
Our business or commercial purpose for collecting, selling, or sharing your personal information;
The categories of third parties to whom we disclosed, sold, or shared your personal information, if any;
The categories of personal information we have disclosed, sold, or shared about you; and
The specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you (also called a data portability request).

Right to Correct

You have the right to request that govCDO correct any inaccurate personal information we have collected and maintain about you.

Right to Delete

You have the right to request that govCDO delete any of the personal information we have collected and maintain about you, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your request, we will either delete, de-identify, or aggregate your personal information, unless a CCPA exception such as those listed at California Civil Code § 1798.105(d) applies, or not doing so is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to comply with a legal obligation.

Exercising Your Rights to Know, Correct, and Delete

To exercise your rights to know, correct, and delete under the CCPA please submit a request by emailing us at privacy@govcdoiq.org or calling us toll-free at 833-335-1505. You can also fill out the form on our Do Not Sell page at https://govcdoiq.org/do-not-sell/.

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf (i.e., your authorized agent), may make a request related to your personal information. govCDO may require an agent to provide verification that they are acting on your behalf when they submit a request related to your personal information.

All requests to know, correct, or delete (whether made by you or an authorized agent) must (1) provide sufficient information for us to reasonably verify you by providing two to three pieces of personal information, which we will match with personal information we maintain in our records, and (2) describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing

Certain of our advertising activities may constitute a “sale” or “sharing” as those terms are defined under the CCPA. You have the right under the CCPA to direct us not to sell or share your personal information (known as, the right to opt-out). We do not collect, sell, or share the personal information of consumers we actually know are less than 16 years old.

Exercising Your Right to Opt-Out of Sale or Sharing

To exercise the right to opt-out, you (or your authorized representative) may use our site’s Do Not Sell function by clicking the banner that appears on the site when you visit, or by clicking on the blue “CookieYes!” button in the lower part of any page on our site. You can also get instructions for this function by visiting https://govcdoiq.org/do-not-sell/. Alternatively, you may submit an opt-out request by emailing us at privacy@govcdoiq.org. Once you make an opt-out request, we will wait at least twelve (12) months before asking you to reauthorize personal information sales. However, you may change your mind and opt back in to personal information sales or sharing at any time.

Additionally, govCDO makes reasonable efforts to honor opt-out preference signals that are set at the device- or browser-level to communicate a consumer’s choice to opt-out of the sale or sharing of personal information, provided such signals meet the requirements of the CCPA.

Sensitive Personal Information

govCDO does not collect, use, or disclose sensitive personal information as that term is defined by the CCPA.

Right to Non-Discrimination

govCDO will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

Deny you services;
Charge you different prices or rates for services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties;
Provide you a different level or quality of services; or
Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for services or a different level or quality of services.

Right to Appeal

govCDOiq provides consumers the right to appeal any decisions we make regarding consumer requests to know, correct, or delete. You may appeal any decision within 30 days of receiving notice of the decision.

International Users

Our site is designed for users from the United States. By using our site, users from other countries consent to the transfer of any personal or other information to the United States and the housing of such information on servers in the United States. Your information will be subject to use and disclosure in accordance with this Privacy Policy and applicable United States federal, state, and local law.

Contact Information

All inquiries about this Privacy Policy can be directed to privacy@govcdoiq.org or to contracts@citizant.com. Our privacy officer for govCDOiq is Bruce Milligan, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Citizant, bmilligan@citizant.com.

Update History:

March 14, 2023 — First version of Privacy Policy published.

June 27, 2023 — Domain changed from govcdo.com to govcdoiq.org, including all related links and email addresses. No other policy changes.