Effective Date: 16/03/2026 Last Updated: 16/03/2026
GovSkills Academy (“we,” “us,” or “our”) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of the personal information of our users, clients, municipal partners, and website visitors (“you” or “your”). This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, retain, and protect your personal information when you visit our website, enrol in our training programmes, use our digital learning platform, or communicate with us.
As an entity operating within the Republic of South Africa, GovSkills Academy is fully committed to compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act No. 4 of 2013 (POPIA), as well as other applicable data protection legislation. This policy dictates our data processing practices to ensure that your personal information is treated with the utmost confidentiality and is processed lawfully, reasonably, and transparently.
“Personal Information” means information relating to an identifiable, living, natural person, and where it is applicable, an identifiable, existing juristic person, as defined in POPIA.
“Data Subject” refers to the person to whom the personal information relates.
“Processing” means any operation or activity, automated or not, concerning personal information, including collection, receipt, recording, organisation, collation, storage, updating, modification, retrieval, alteration, consultation, or use.
“Special Personal Information” refers to highly sensitive data, such as race, trade union membership, health status, or criminal behaviour.
We collect various types of personal information to provide you with our municipal capacity-building services, manage your enrolment, and improve our digital learning platform.
When you interact with GovSkills Academy, you may provide us with personal information directly. This occurs when you register for an account, enrol in a course, request a training proposal, or contact our support team. The information we may collect includes:
Identity Data: First name, last name, identity number, or passport number.
Contact Data: Email address, physical address, billing address, and telephone numbers.
Professional Data: Job title, department, municipality or organisation name, and professional background.
Account Data: Usernames, passwords, and profile preferences.
Financial Data: Payment card details, billing information, and transaction history (processed securely through our third-party payment gateways).
Communications Data: Records of your correspondence with us, including emails, contact form submissions, and support tickets.
When you navigate through and interact with our website and digital learning platform, we may use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns. This includes:
Technical Data: Internet Protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, and platform.
Usage Data: Information about how you use our website, courses, and platform, including course progression, quiz scores, login times, and duration of sessions.
Tracking Data: Information collected via cookies, web beacons, and similar tracking technologies (detailed in Section 10).
In the context of municipal training, we may receive personal information about you from third parties.
Employer/Municipality: If your municipality or employer enrols you in a GovSkills Academy programme, they may provide us with your name, contact details, and job designation to facilitate your registration and platform access.
Verification Agencies: We may receive information from third-party identity or qualification verification services where necessary for issuing formal certifications.
GovSkills Academy generally does not intentionally collect Special Personal Information unless it is strictly necessary for a specific statutory requirement or unless you provide explicit, voluntary consent. If we must process such information, we will do so in strict accordance with Section 26 of POPIA.
We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was collected, or for purposes that are closely related to the original purpose.
To register you as a new learner on our digital platform.
To process and deliver your course enrolments and materials.
To track your academic progress, quiz results, and module completions.
To generate and issue verifiable professional certificates upon successful course completion.
To manage your user account and profile functionality.
To respond to your inquiries, support requests, and requests for training proposals.
To send you administrative notices, such as updates to our terms, password reset emails, and changes to course curriculums.
To provide technical support and troubleshoot platform issues.
To process payments, issue invoices, and manage accounting records.
Where your enrolment is sponsored or mandated by your municipality or employer, we use your progression data, assessment scores, and completion status to generate attendance and performance reports for your organisation. This ensures compliance with municipal skills development protocols.
To analyse usage trends to improve our website layout, course delivery, and overall user experience.
To ensure the technical stability and security of our online learning environment.
To conduct internal research and statistical analysis regarding the effectiveness of our training programmes.
To send you newsletters, updates on new municipal courses, and promotional materials, provided you have explicitly opted-in to receive such communications. You may opt out of these communications at any time.
Under POPIA, we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal information. GovSkills Academy relies on the following legal justifications:
Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you (or your municipality) are a party, or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract. This applies to course enrolment, platform access, and payment processing.
Processing is necessary for us to comply with applicable South African laws, regulatory requirements, tax obligations, and statutory auditing purposes.
Processing is necessary for the purposes of our legitimate business interests, provided that these interests do not unreasonably override your fundamental privacy rights. This includes improving our platform, ensuring network security, and preventing fraud.
Where required by law, we will obtain your clear and explicit consent before processing your personal information, particularly regarding direct marketing or the collection of special personal information.
GovSkills Academy does not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may share your information only in the following controlled circumstances:
We may share your data with trusted third-party service providers (“Operators” under POPIA) who assist us in operating our website and delivering our services. These include:
Cloud hosting and server providers.
Payment processing gateways (e.g., PayFast, Yoco, or similar SA-compliant gateways).
Learning Management System (LMS) software providers.
Email delivery and customer support software platforms.
Accounting and auditing firms.
All operators are bound by strict confidentiality agreements and POPIA-compliant data processing addendums, ensuring they only process your data on our documented instructions.
If your participation in our programmes is funded or mandated by your employer or a municipal body, we will share your course progress, attendance logs, and final assessment results with the designated representatives of that organisation.
We may disclose your personal information if required to do so by law, court order, subpoena, or statutory regulatory body in South Africa. We will also disclose information to protect the rights, property, or safety of GovSkills Academy, our users, or the public.
In the event of a merger, acquisition, reorganisation, or sale of assets, your personal information may be transferred as part of that business transaction. We will notify you of any such change in ownership or control.
GovSkills Academy utilises modern cloud infrastructure to ensure platform reliability. As a result, your personal information may be transferred to, and stored at, destinations outside the borders of the Republic of South Africa.
In accordance with Section 72 of POPIA, we will only transfer your personal information to a foreign country if:
The third party receiving the information is subject to a law, binding corporate rules, or binding agreement which provides an adequate level of protection that effectively upholds principles for reasonable processing of the information that are substantially similar to the conditions for the lawful processing of personal information relating to a data subject who is a natural person and, where applicable, a juristic person; or
You consent to the transfer; or
The transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and GovSkills Academy.
We have implemented robust, industry-standard technical security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed. This includes SSL encryption for all data transmissions, secure firewalls, and regular vulnerability scanning of our digital learning environment.
Access to your personal information is strictly limited to those employees, contractors, and agents who have a legitimate business need to know. They are subject to strict duties of confidentiality and disciplinary action for policy violations.
While no system is completely infallible, we have procedures in place to deal with any suspected personal data breach. In the event of a breach that compromises your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as legally required under Section 22 of POPIA.
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it. For enrolled learners, we retain your account data and certification records indefinitely to allow you to access your digital certificates and course history at any time in your career.
We may retain certain financial and transactional data for a minimum of five (5) years to comply with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) and the Companies Act.
Once the retention of your personal information is no longer legally or operationally required, we will securely delete, destroy, or completely de-identify the data so that it can no longer be associated with you.
Under the Protection of Personal Information Act, you possess specific legal rights regarding your personal data. GovSkills Academy is committed to facilitating the exercise of these rights.
You have the right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. Furthermore, you may request details about the identity of all third parties who have had access to your information.
You have the right to request the correction of any inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, or outdated personal information we hold. You also have the right to request the deletion or destruction of your personal information (often referred to as the “Right to be Forgotten”), subject to our legal obligations to retain certain data.
You may object, on reasonable grounds, to the processing of your personal information if we are relying on legitimate interests as our legal basis. You may also object at any time to the processing of your data for direct marketing purposes.
Where we are processing your personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This withdrawal will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew your consent.
If you believe that GovSkills Academy has processed your personal information in violation of POPIA, you have the right to lodge a formal complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa.
Website: https://inforegulator.org.za/
Email: POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
To exercise any of the rights listed above, please contact our designated Information Officer using the details provided in Section 14. We may request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity before processing your request.
Our website utilises cookies—small text files placed on your device—to distinguish you from other users, provide seamless platform functionality, and analyse website performance. We use the following categories of cookies:
Strictly Necessary Cookies: Required for the operation of the website, such as enabling you to log into secure areas or use the shopping cart.
Analytical/Performance Cookies: Allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and see how visitors move around our website.
Functionality Cookies: Used to recognise you when you return to our website, enabling us to personalise our content and remember your preferences (e.g., your language or region).
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. Please note that if you disable or refuse strictly necessary cookies, certain parts of the GovSkills Academy digital platform may become inaccessible or fail to function properly.
Our digital platform, course materials, or resources may contain links to third-party websites, plug-ins, or applications (such as government portals or external legislation databases). Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these external websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. We strongly encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
GovSkills Academy provides professional municipal training intended strictly for adult professionals and civil servants. Our platform is not intended for, nor do we knowingly collect personal information from, children under the age of 18. If we discover that we have inadvertently collected information from a minor without verified parental consent, we will take immediate steps to delete the information securely.
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes in our operational practices, new technology, or updates in South African data protection legislation. When we make significant changes, we will post the updated policy on our website and update the “Last Updated” date at the top of this document. If the changes significantly affect your rights, we will notify you directly via email or through a prominent notice on our platform.
In accordance with POPIA and PAIA, GovSkills Academy has appointed a dedicated Information Officer to oversee compliance with this policy and address any privacy-related concerns.
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data subject rights, or require further clarification on our data processing activities, please contact us using the details below:
Information Officer: Bongani Gwamada Email Address: info@govskills.co.za
