Career Information System Privacy Policy

The purpose of the Career Information System (CIS) is to help you identify career and education opportunities and make career plans. This version of GCIS is created and maintained by intoCareers, a research and service center within the College of Education at the University of Oregon. Access to CIS is available to you through your school or the organization providing you with career development services. You may access all of the content in CIS without entering any personal information.

To take advantage of some components of this site, you must create a personal portfolio. You only need a user name and password to create a portfolio. After you create a portfolio, you have complete control over the information you choose to save. In order to make the most use of the portfolio, you will need to enter or save personal information such as your preferences and notes on why you are interested in particular careers or educational opportunities.

intoCareers adheres to guidelines created by the Children's On-Line Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1996. We respect your privacy. Except as stated herein, or as otherwise provided or permitted by law, this information is not disclosed to any other group or agency for any purpose, nor, except as necessary to correct system problems, is individual information looked at by staff of intoCareers.

General Website Activity
In general, we maintain logs of site usage in order to improve the site. This information is collected in aggregate and is not identifiable to an individual user. We gather such information as how often content is accessed, frequency of responses for assessment questions, average length of user session, etc. This information is reported in aggregate and may be shared with others but cannot be used to identify individuals or the data they save in their portfolio.

Institution-level Reports
Schools or agencies that make GCIS available to their students or clients can receive aggregated information in the form of various reports. This information cannot be used to identify individual users. These reports are designed to help GCIS Coordinators (i.e., individual at the institution responsible for providing access to CIS) evaluate use of the GCIS by their students or clients and enhance their career development programs and services.

Portfolios for students at K-12 Institutions
K-12 institutions are covered by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1996 or FERPA. Additionally, GCIS is designed in accord with the Children's On-Line Privacy Protection Act of 1998.

FERPA includes provisions that reflect the way GCIS operates in K-12 institutions. First, all student portfolios at a school are accessible to the GCIS Coordinator for the institution and to designees of the GCIS Coordinator. However, under FERPA, the Coordinator and/or the designees must have a "legitimate interest" to look at material in a student's portfolio. If a GCIS Coordinator wants access to a student’s portfolio, they must send an email request to ncishelp@oregon.uoregon.edu requesting to be contacted by intoCareers staff. A parent can obtain access to her/his child's portfolio (student under 18) by requesting access through the CIS Coordinator.

Provisions of the Children's On-Line Privacy Protection Act of 1998 require verifiable parental consent in order to collect personal information on individuals under the age of 13, (“Child”). Schools making GCIS available to students under the age of 13 need to obtain written authorization from parents or legal guardians before a Child creates an on-line portfolio. The parent must agree to the provisions of the GCIS Privacy Policy. Parents may obtain access to their Child’s portfolio from the school’s GCIS Coordinator or by using the Child’s user name and password. GCIS Coordinators need to contact intoCareers at ncishelp@oregon.uoregon.edu to disable the Child’s portfolio if the parent wishes to prohibit future use of the portfolio. GCIS Coordinators may also request that the option to create a personal portfolio be disabled for all students at a school.

Cookies
A "cookie" is a small file that is saved on your computer’s memory during the time you are accessing CIS. The cookie does not contain personal information. The cookie is erased whenever you “log out” of CIS, close your browser, or if you remain connected but inactive for 24 hours.

Linked Sites
intoCareers has identified many other Internet sites that provide potentially valuable information. These sites may provide services requiring you to register and enter personal information such as school that accept electronic applications or job search sites that store electronic resumes. We do not endorse the privacy policy of these sites and you need to choose whether to use their services.