Dear Mr Vass,

I would like to thank you on behalf of the Governors of Chalfont St. Giles Infant School & Nursery for bringing the issues regarding the use of biometric data at the school to our attention.

Both our school Committee and Management Committee discussed the issues raised in the document you sent at great length, and I would like to thank you for the time and effort you have spent in researching this and presenting it to us for our consideration.

When we implemented the biometric data system in our school library, it was done so, with two main objectives in mind.

1) To Improve the administration and efficiency of the library, thereby reducing loss of books

2) To provide the children with another way of using ICT technology as part of their day to day school lives to ensure a broader use of ICT within the school

We still believe that these two reasons are just as relevant today, and given the young age of the children, we are happy that the current fingerprint system works well with this age group versus some of the alternatives.

In order to address some of thew data protection issues you raised, we have taken advice from Martin Gibson - Data Protection Officer at Bucks County Council.

He has reviewed the systems we have in place with regards to the data that we store via the library system, and is happy that we are following the correct procedures. He has however suggested that it would be advisable for us to inform parents of the use of the biometric data in the school literature. We did of course inform parents at the time of installing the system, but your enquiry has alerted us to the fact that new parents would not be aware of this, and this is something we will remedy through a newsletter and future inclusion in induction packs.

With regards to the cleansing of records after a child leaves the school, he has confirmed that according to the advice he has received from the Information Commissioner's Office, as long as reasonable security measures are taken, (which we are confident the school does) it is sufficient that we delete the child's records from our PC. We are under no obligation to use a professional data cleansing company to completely remove all trace from the hard drive.

With regards to the data stored for your children, we have deleted this data from the system. However we would also like to stress that we are very happy with the current system, and believe that your children's data is being managed in a professional and responsible manner, which we believe does not pose any greater risk to their security than any other data which the school manages.

After reviewing all of the data and advice, we have decided to continue using the current biometric fingerprint system for the library. We are however very grateful that you have raised these issues, as it has allowed us to explore this area fully once more as a Governing Body, to ensure that it still meets our needs, but also as it has highlighted a potential area for improvement regarding the communication to new parents.

We hope this letter is clear in terms of how we have arrived at our decision.

If you are unhappy with our response to your request, you may wish to discuss the contents of this letter directly with the Information Commissioner's Office. The telephone number is 01625 545745.

The postal address of the Commissioner's office is:

The Office of the Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Rafael McDonnell

Chairman of Governors

Chalfont St. Giles Infant School & Nursery