What is City Voice?
Aberdeen City Voice is a panel of Aberdeen City residents who have agreed to give their views on a range of issues. We contact our panellists and ask them to complete at least two questionnaire surveys a year. The questionnaires cover a wide range of topics and issues that affect our community.
The City Voice is run by Aberdeen’s Community Planning Partnership. The partnership includes Aberdeen City Council; Aberdeen Civic Forum; Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership; Active Aberdeen Partnership; ACVO; NHS Grampian; North East Scotland College; NESTRANS; Police Scotland; Robert Gordon University, Skills Development Scotland; Scottish Enterprise; Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the University of Aberdeen.
Aberdeen City Council is responsible for managing the day-to-day running of the City Voice. This involves collating questions from planning partners, preparing and issuing the questionnaire, conducting the analysis, and preparing and distributing the results.
Why Should I join Aberdeen City Voice?
- To tell us what you think are the important issues facing you and your community.
- To tell us how Aberdeen’s public services can make things better.
- To help us measure performance and improve future service delivery.
- To find out through our newsletter what we are doing based on the responses we receive.
FAQs
- Anyone who lives in Aberdeen City and is aged 16 years and over can join the panel.
- We are keen to encourage as many people as possible – of all ages and social groups and from all areas of the city – to try to ensure that all of Aberdeen’s citizens are represented.
- You will be asked to complete at least two questionnaires per year.
- This is done online via a link to the questionnaire we will send you in an email.
- It is also possible to do this by postal questionnaire on request.
- You will note that we ask for some personal information about you. Firstly we ask for your name and address. This is to allow us to keep a record of who is on the panel, and to be able to remove you as a panellist if you request it.
- Secondly we ask for information about you, including your age, gender, ethnic group, employment and housing. We include this information in the data analysis. We do this to enable us to look at possible differences between different social groups or different parts of the city. For example, certain issues may only affect certain age groups or particular areas.
- Please note, we remove personal identifying information (e.g. name and address) before analysing the questionnaire – which means we don’t know how you answered each question. Your personal contact details are kept separately on a secure database that is password protected and not shared with anyone. We hold this information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, and use it for administration purposes only.
- We use Citizen Space software on the Aberdeen City Council Consultation Hub to collect the questionnaire data from the online panellists. Citizen Space is owned by Delib and used by more than 100 organisations around the world, from small councils to national governments. Information on Citizen Space can be found at: https://www.citizenspace.com/info .
- All questionnaire responses are downloaded and stored in a password protected file. Delib do not have access to any personal information you supplied to us when you joined the City Voice panel, for example, your name, address, gender, etc.
- All information from the online questionnaires is directly downloaded into a secure database. This information contains no personal details and is anonymised.
- The data collected in paper questionnaires is manually entered into a database. We then keep the questionnaires until the final report is published, after which time they are destroyed.
- Both hard copy and online databases are then combined for the analysis. This information is kept for 2 years and then deleted.
- A full report is produced for each questionnaire. Additionally a newsletter which highlights key issues from the report is produced.
- You can see the latest report and newsletter at the Central Library.
- Online copies of the report along with copies of all previous reports, newsletters and questionnaires can also be found on our webpage.
How we use your information
If you choose to join Aberdeen City Voice citizen’s panel, we ask for your contact details, for example name, address or email so that we can send you our questionnaires, newsletters and updates. We also ask for additional information about you, such as your age and gender, to ensure we have a representative panel and to allow us to look at whether responses vary between different social groups. Understanding these differences can help our Community Planning partners to prioritise their activities.
If at any time you no longer wish to be a member of Aberdeen City Voice Panel, please email cityvoice@aberdeencity.gov.uk and your details will be removed.
Once the questionnaire responses are anonymised and analysed, a full report is produced and published on the City Voice webpage. Key issues are highlighted in our newsletter which is sent to all panel members. You cannot be identified from this information.
How long we keep your information
We will keep your information for as long as you are a member of Aberdeen City Voice.
Questionnaire responses are kept for three months after the full report is published. The reports are kept permanently.
Anonymised statistical data is kept for 2 years.
Your rights You have rights in relation to your data, including the right to ask for a copy of it. See more information about all the rights you have and how they work in practice, as well as contact details for the Council’s Data Protection Officer. You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They are the body responsible for making sure organisations like the Council handle your data properly.
Our legal basis
Aberdeen City Council is the Data Controller for this information. Wherever we process data we must have a legal basis in data protection law for doing so. The Council understands our legal basis as being part of our public task.
Where this processing includes special category data the Council’s legal basis is that the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest
Other ways of getting involved
City Voice is just one way we gather the views of people and communities across the City. There are many ways you can get involved in the work of Community Planning Aberdeen to make things better for your local community and influence how public services are delivered in your area to meet your needs. You could join the Civic Forum which is an umbrella group of communities of interest across the City with representation on the Community Planning Aberdeen board. You could join one of the Locality Empowerment Groups or Priority Neighbourhood Partnerships set up for your local area to ensure we are planning and delivering improvements with local residents. Or perhaps you would like to become a community connector and contribute to one of our improvement projects which focus on specific issues that may be of interest to you and your community.
If you are part of a wider community group, you could also joint our Community Empowerment Group. ALL community groups and organisations are welcome to this network where we learn, connect and explore how we can work better together to do more together. Click on the links to the right to find out more!