Privacy policy

Who uses it

Teachers, head teachers, field officers, district education officers, the Ministry of Education and the system's administrators. Nobody can sign up on their own: every account is created by a head teacher, a field officer or an administrator. The system is for school staff and officials. It is not for children, and children do not use it.

What it records

• Your account. Your name, username, phone number, role, and your school or district; for a teacher, also gender and class. Your password is stored only in scrambled form. Nobody, including us, can read it.
• An email address, if one is given. It is optional. Whoever registers you may add one, and you can add, change or remove it yourself in Settings. It appears under your name on your own screens and on no other screen in the app; the system administrator can see it in the registry, like the rest of your account. Nothing is sent to it.
• A photo, if you add one. It is optional. Only you can add or change it, in Settings, where you can also remove it at any time; the administrator removes it when an account is closed. What is kept is a small square copy made from your picture; the picture you chose, and the details a phone stores inside a photo (such as where it was taken), are not kept. It is shown to you beside your name, and, if you teach, to your own school's head teacher. Nobody above the school sees it.
• Attendance. The date, time and session of each check-in, and how it was made: a code in the app, the QR poster, or USSD on a basic phone.
• Location, at check-in only. When you check in with the app, your phone's position at that moment is used to confirm you are inside the school's boundary. We keep that position, its accuracy and the distance from the school. Location is never collected at any other time, never in the background, and a USSD check-in uses none.
• Your phone. To stop one phone checking in for two teachers, a teacher's account is tied to the phone they sign in on, using a random key the system gives that phone.
• Class figures. How many boys and girls were present and absent, and how many children were away and why (diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid, other illness or other reasons). These are numbers only. No child is named.
• Records of use. Sign-ins and failed sign-in attempts, changes made, files downloaded, and every time somebody uncovers a hidden name or phone number.

Before classes were counted, some schools kept class registers that named children, with a parent's or guardian's consent. Those records are kept as the school's attendance history. No new names are collected.

Why

To record whether staff were at school and how many children came, to give schools, districts and the Ministry the same attendance figures, and to keep accounts secure. It is not used for advertising, it is never sold, and nobody is profiled.

Who can see it

• Your head teacher sees their own school's staff and attendance in full, and the photos of staff who have added one.
• Field officers and district education officers see the schools in their area. Staff names and phone numbers are hidden from them. Uncovering one takes a one-time code, and every time it is done it is recorded.
• The Ministry sees figures by district and school. It never sees an individual member of staff's name.
• Administrators run the system and can see what is needed to do that.

Who else receives it

• Africa's Talking, with MTN and Airtel, sends our text messages and runs the USSD menu. They receive the phone number and the message.
• Hostinger hosts the server the data is stored on, in the United Kingdom.
• OpenStreetMap draws the map on the School boundary screen, where a head teacher, field officer or administrator sets a school's position. The map's pictures come from OpenStreetMap's servers, so opening that screen tells them which area is being looked at and the address of this site, and, as with any website, the internet address the phone connects from and which browser it is. No name, account or attendance is sent. Their policy is at osmfoundation.org.

Nobody else, unless the law requires it. The app uses no advertising or analytics services, and apart from that map it loads nothing from other websites.

Text messages

Messages come from DHQATTEND. They are one-time codes, for resetting a password or uncovering hidden information, and account security notices. Never marketing.

On your phone

The app keeps a copy of its own screens so it opens without a signal, holds anything saved with no signal until it can be sent, and keeps the sign-in cookie and the phone's key. Clearing the app's storage removes all of it.

How long it is kept, and how it is protected

An account is kept while its holder is in post. Attendance records are school records and are kept for as long as they are needed for that purpose and as the law requires.

Everything travels encrypted (HTTPS). Passwords are never stored in readable form. Names and phone numbers are hidden above the school, and uncovering them is recorded. Every download is locked with a password.

Your rights, and deleting your account

Under Uganda's Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 you may ask to see what is held about you, to have it corrected, and to have it deleted. Your head teacher or field officer can correct most details straight away.

To delete your account, email info@ketiai.com with your name, username or phone number, and your school. You can also ask your head teacher or field officer. Within 30 days we close the account so it can no longer sign in, and remove your name, phone number and photo from it. The school's attendance records that must be kept stay, without your name.

Changes

If this policy changes, this page is updated and the date at the top changes with it.