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Legal notice & terms of use

General

The «Legal Information and Terms of Use» concern the content and functionalities published by the Zurich City Council on the municipal e-participation platform «Participate in Zurich's Future» E-participation platform «Participate in Zurich's Future». The legal notices for the use of the Internet pages of the city of Zurich apply, as well as the following provisions. 


Data storage 

The City of Zurich operates the «Participate in Zurich's Future» platform on the «Swiss Container Platform APPUiO» through the companies Puzzle ITC GmbH and VSHN AG on servers in Switzerland and in accordance with Swiss law. The data centres in which the data is held are operated by the company cloudscale.ch AG (provider) and are located at Datacenter e-shelter in Rümlang ZH. 

All data collected via the «Contribute to Zurich's Future« platform is held in these data centres. However, this does not apply to embedded content. The «Participate in Zürich's Future» platform allows the embedding of further software and services from third parties. Content and data transmitted via embeddings are not stored on the aforementioned servers of this platform, but are collected directly via the third-party providers. The terms and conditions of the respective providers apply there. 

Emails from and to the email address mitwirken@zuerich.ch and mitwirken-kontakt@zuerich.ch are a special case. These are processed and stored exclusively on municipal servers of the City of Zurich, Organisation and Information Technology (OIZ) on servers in Switzerland and in accordance with Swiss law. The following data is processed:

  • E-mail address
  • E-mail content
  • E-mail subject
  • Date
  • Contact details provided (e.g. name, surname, telephone number if applicable, address).

The information will be stored by the City of Zurich for the purpose of processing the enquiry and in case of follow-up questions.


Users: Account, data, content 

Users are natural and legal persons who are interested in the content of "Contributing to Zürich's Future", read it, comment on it, like it or write their own contributions. The City of Zurich distinguishes between three levels of users:

  1. Without registration: Users can freely and anonymously access and read the "Participate in Zürich's Future" platform. All public content on the platform can be read by everyone. In principle, it is possible to write contributions as a guest in an anonymous manner.
  2. In order to be able to comment on or like contributions by others, registration is always required. In addition, there are contribution processes that require registration; participation as a guest is not possible in these cases. 
  3. For certain functions, such as voting in idea competitions, it may be necessary to first verify the user identity once.


Account

Anyone who registers on the platform will receive an account. This requires a name/pseudonym, an abbreviation, an email address and a password. 

Registration is done via double opt-in: after filling out the registration form, users receive a confirmation email for verification purposes and must accept the «Legal Notice and Terms of Use». Only then is the account active. 

A profile picture and further information can be added to the account, which will then be visible to all users. The email address used for registration is not visible on the platform. 

An account can be deleted at any time in the profile settings. This will irrevocably delete all stored personal data, including the profile picture and other information in the profile. The content generated through the use of the platform (comments, suggestions, answers to surveys, etc.) remains in anonymised form for the purpose of transparency and traceability of the participation processes. This data is assigned to an anonymous account. 

Renewed participation on the platform is only possible after a new registration.

Personal data 

Personal data is recorded in your own account and can be edited via the profile settings. This data includes details such as email address or password. This data is stored in encrypted form. They can never be viewed from the outside.  

Generated content

Users generate content on «Contributing to Zurich's Future» by participating. This content includes comments, suggestions, answers to surveys, etc. The following conditions apply to this content:

  • Public: In principle, this content relates to public issues and can therefore be viewed by the public. The exception is closed processes, which are only created and viewable by invitation.
  • Publication or dissemination of content: The content created by users may be published by the City of Zurich on the "Contribute to Zurich's Future" platform as well as by other means that the City of Zurich deems appropriate to publicise this platform (e.g. in a media release).
  • User-generated content will not be deleted but, if applicable, will be assigned to an anonymous account (see above). 
  • Intellectual property: Unless otherwise stated, content protected by intellectual property rights is subject to the Creative Commons - Recommendation - Share Alike (CC-BY-SA 4.0) licence. 


Viewing your own data

Users can export their data from their account at any time. The export includes all data associated with an account (personal data and generated content). This provides transparency about what data is collected and stored by the platform. 

For the data export, a password-protected compressed file is created for download. Users receive the download link and password by email. As the data is sensitive, it is encrypted and can only be opened with open source compression software (7-Zip (Windows), KUKA (Mac OS) or PeaZip (Linux)).


Basic rules

Users are obliged to behave conscientiously and in accordance with the terms of use. 

The following rules of conduct apply on the platform:

  • Give constructive feedback.
  • Point out alternatives.
  • Maintain mutual respect.
  • Do not use racist, anti-Semitic, sexist or otherwise discriminatory language.
  • Do not use misinformation («fake news»).

All users are responsible for the correct use of the platform and for the legality of the content and opinions shared. All participants can report violations of the rules. The content in question can be reported by clicking on the small flag icon or by e-mail (mitwirken-kontakt@zuerich.ch). The City of Zurich will review the report and take any necessary legal action. 

The City of Zurich reserves the right to remove opinions, information, comments, suggestions or media that contradict the terms of use from the «Contributing to Zurich's Future» platform. The City of Zurich also reserves the right to temporarily suspend the activities of users of the platform, in particular in cases of infringement of applicable law and/or these Terms of Use:

  • making the generated content invisible, 
  • deactivating the account.


Data protection

The processing of personal data collected in connection with the operation of the «Participate in Zurich's Future» platform is subject to the Law on Information and Data Protection of the Canton of Zurich (IDG, LS 170.4) and the Ordinance on Information and Data Protection of the Canton of Zurich(IDV, LS 170.41).

Contact

City of Zurich
Urban Development
Stadthausquai 18
8021 Zurich

Phone +41 44 412 36 68

mitwirken-kontakt@zuerich.ch
stadt-zuerich.ch/city-development

Stadt Zürich auf Social Media

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