About This Policy
This policy governs how the GATE Portal collects, uses, stores, and shares personal information. It is written in plain language for portal users and is aligned with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), Act 4 of 2013.
Walter Sisulu University is the Responsible Party as defined in POPIA. The portal is operated by the Alumni Relations Office under the authority of the University's Information Officer.
Information Officer contact: informationofficer@wsu.ac.za · www.wsu.ac.za
1. Who This Policy Covers
This policy applies to people and organisations that use or are recorded in the GATE Portal, including:
- Walter Sisulu alumni and graduates.
- Employers and organisations posting opportunities.
- Skills providers, mentors, donors, ambassadors, and partners.
- Walter Sisulu administrators and authorised staff using the portal.
2. Information We Collect
Alumni information
- Identity and contact details, such as name, student number, ID or passport number, email address, phone number, and location.
- Academic information, such as faculty, department, qualification, graduation year, and student registry data.
- Life After Walter Sisulu information, such as employment, further study, entrepreneurship, unemployment, work history, industries, and career progress.
- Career information, such as CV details, skills, certificates, uploaded documents, job applications, and matching results.
- Participation information, such as mentorship, giving, advocacy, alumni engagement interests, availability, and communication preferences.
Organisation information
- Organisation name, contact person, email address, phone number, and account details.
- Job opportunities, skill offerings, requirements, shortlists, interview notes, and recruitment outcomes.
- Communication history between the organisation, Walter Sisulu, and candidates where the portal supports that workflow.
Technical and security information
- Login activity, audit logs, role permissions, session activity, IP address, browser information, error logs, and system events.
- Email queue records, password reset requests, activation requests, and security-related actions.
3. Why We Use This Information
Walter Sisulu uses portal information to support alumni engagement, graduate tracking, career readiness, opportunity matching, institutional reporting, and secure portal administration.
- To verify alumni records and activate accounts.
- To help alumni update their profiles and Life After Walter Sisulu outcomes.
- To connect job-seeking alumni with suitable opportunities.
- To support mentorship, giving, advocacy, alumni chapters, events, and community-building initiatives.
- To allow employers and organisations to manage opportunities and candidate shortlists.
- To send relevant portal, alumni, career, event, and administrative communications.
- To protect the system through audit logs, role access controls, monitoring, and error investigation.
- To prepare aggregated reports about alumni outcomes and engagement.
4. How We Share Information
Personal information is shared only where there is a valid portal purpose and the user has the correct role or authorisation.
- Authorised Walter Sisulu staff may access alumni records for verification, support, reporting, communication, and administration.
- Employers may receive candidate information only where candidates are shortlisted, submitted, released, or otherwise processed through the portal workflow.
- Mentorship, donor, advocacy, and participation information may be reviewed by authorised Walter Sisulu teams responsible for those activities.
- Aggregated and de-identified information may be used for institutional reporting and planning.
- Information may be shared where required by law, regulation, audit, security investigation, or lawful institutional process.
5. Uploaded Documents and CVs
Alumni may upload CVs and supporting documents for career and opportunity workflows. These files must be treated as sensitive personal information.
- Uploaded documents are used for profile completion, job readiness, candidate matching, and shortlist submission where applicable.
- Users should upload only documents relevant to the portal purpose.
- Recommended file sizes: CVs up to 5 MB (Text-based PDF or DOCX preferred (export from Word/Google Docs). Maximum size: 5 MB.). Supporting documents up to 8 MB (PDF, JPG, PNG, DOC or DOCX. Maximum size: 8 MB per file.).
- Allowed formats are shown on each upload screen before you submit a file.
- Files are validated for type and size. Where enabled, malware scanning is applied before documents are stored or shared.
- Where CV text is extracted for matching, the extracted content may be stored to avoid repeatedly processing the same file.
- Scanned or image-based PDFs may not be readable by the matching engine unless OCR functionality is added later.
6. External Links
The portal may link to official Walter Sisulu services and trusted third-party websites (for example university payments, LinkedIn, or verification services).
- External links open in a new browser tab with
rel="noopener noreferrer"for your security. - Only institutional and approved partner domains are used for embedded or highlighted external services.
- Links to external websites open in a new tab. Walter Sisulu is not responsible for the content of third-party sites. Only follow links you trust.
7. Security Measures
The portal applies technical and administrative controls to protect information, including:
- Role-based access for alumni, employers, administrators, directors, and super administrators.
- Password hashing, temporary password controls, session protection, and login rate limiting.
- CSRF protection on forms and audit logging for sensitive actions.
- Upload validation and restricted storage for user documents.
- System health monitoring, queued email processing, job tracking, and error logging.
8. Data Accuracy and Corrections
Alumni are encouraged to check their Walter Sisulu record during activation and profile updates. If information such as qualification, faculty, department, or graduation year is incorrect, alumni can submit a correction request through the portal or contact the Alumni Office.
9. User Choices
Alumni can update their profile, communication details, participation interests, employment or study outcomes, and job-seeker status inside the portal. Some data may remain part of institutional records and may require Walter Sisulu verification before correction or removal.
Organisations are responsible for keeping their contact details, opportunities, requirements, and skill offerings accurate and lawful.
10. Retention
Personal information is retained for as long as reasonably required for alumni engagement, graduate tracking, career services, institutional reporting, legal compliance, audit, security, and operational purposes. Specific retention periods are governed by Walter Sisulu's institutional data-retention policy.
Alumni may request deletion of their portal account by contacting the Alumni Office. Some information may be retained in anonymised or aggregated form for institutional reporting, or where retention is required by law.
11. Your Rights Under POPIA
As a data subject under POPIA you have the right to:
- Access — request a copy of the personal information the portal holds about you.
- Correction — request correction of inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated information.
- Deletion — request deletion of your information where it is no longer necessary for the original purpose, subject to legal retention obligations.
- Objection — object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
- Withdraw consent — where processing is based on consent, withdraw it at any time by contacting the Alumni Office. Withdrawal does not affect processing already carried out.
- Complain — lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa if you believe your rights have been infringed.
Information Regulator: inforegulator.org.za · inforeg@justice.gov.za
To exercise any of these rights, contact the Alumni Office or the portal administrator using the details in section 12.
12. Automated Processing and Chatbot
The portal uses an automated matching engine to suggest job opportunities to alumni based on their profile, qualifications, skills, and CV content. This is a decision-support tool; final candidate selection is made by authorised staff.
The Tatu Xhamela assistant (chatbot) responds to questions about the portal and alumni services. Chatbot conversations may be logged for quality assurance, security monitoring, and service improvement. Logs are reviewed only by authorised staff and are not shared with third parties. Personal information is not used to train external AI models without explicit consent.
The portal does not use personal information for direct marketing without consent. Communication preferences can be updated inside the portal or by contacting the Alumni Office.
13. Contact
For questions, corrections, or privacy-related requests, contact the Alumni Office or the portal administrator.