This notice explains how we use your information during the external pilot of SpeakAI, a digital assistant currently being tested within Adult Social Care. This is a time limited pilot and functionality may change as the service is evaluated.
The London Borough of Hounslow is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Through this Privacy Notice we have sought to be as transparent as possible and fully explain how your personal data is held and processed.
This privacy notice applies to the use of SpeakAI – an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool developed by Beam – and tells you what we will do with your personal information.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or any concerns about how we process your data, for Adult’s Services please contact 020 8583 3100 or adultsocialcare@hounslow.gov.uk. The privacy notice will continue to be monitored and updated. You are advised to check this page from time to time.
Postal address for Adult Social Care is:
What type of information we have
We currently collect and process the following personal information for individuals:
- Names
- Addresses
- Dates of Birth
- Contact details
- Financial details
- Housing status
- Employment or Educational details
- National Insurance and/or NHS numbers
- Unique reference number
- Language and interpreter needs
- GP/Health Professional details
- Skills and abilities
- Hobbies and pastimes
As well as personal information, where applicable we may collect and share additional information known as ‘Special Categories of Personal Data’ where appropriate including:
- Gender
- Nationality
- Ethnicity
- Health data, including any social, physical, emotional and mental health difficulties and any special educational needs
- Religious or philosophical beliefs, if required
- Sex life and sexual orientation, if required
- Criminal offence data
How do we get your information?
Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you, but we may also receive personal information indirectly from:
- Your family, carer or representative, if applicable
- Health professionals such as your GP and those providing therapeutic or medical care
- General hospitals or other in-patient services
- Government bodies such as the Department for Work and Pensions
- Schools and Academies
- Teams within Hounslow Adult & Children’s Social Care, Lifelong Learning, Skills and Employments and other departments, such as Housing
- Members of the public who make a referral to us
- The Police
- The Ambulance Service
- The Fire Service
- Other Local Authorities
We only process information from the above if it is required for us to carry out statutory functions for which we are legally responsible for.
How your phone number is used
When you call the service, your phone number is automatically collected from the telephone system (known as Calling Line Identification or CLI). The system will read this number back to you for confirmation. At present, this number cannot be changed or overridden during the call.
If you agree, we may send a follow up text message (SMS) to this number. This message may include a summary of the call and relevant information or signposting. You can choose not to receive an SMS.
Our lawful basis for processing your information
The lawful basis we rely on for processing this information is:
- Legal obligation Article 6 (1)(c) – so that we comply with a common law or statutory obligation.
- Public task Article 6 (1)(e) – so that we may perform a task in the public interest or for an official function, and the task or function has a clear basis in law
- Basis in law referred to above includes but is not limited to: The Care Act 2014, Health & Social Care Act 2015, Localism Act 2011, Best Value Duty (Local Government Act 1999).
- Criminal data - UK GDPR Article 10 condition
Criminal offence data will include any offence details given to us in respect of safeguarding matters and may include information about suspected offences. The article 10 requirements are met by the Article 6 lawful basis as for personal data and the DPA 2018 Schedule 1 conditions 1, 2, 6 and 18.
If the information you provide us contains special category data, such as health, religious or ethnic information, the legal basis we rely on to process is
- Health or social care purposes – for the provision of health or social care or treatment and for social support services
- Substantial public interest – processing is necessary to meet statutory and government purposes
Why we need your information (purposes of processing)
The personal data we collect will be used for the following purpose:
The Council is undertaking a live pilot for the use of SpeakAI (powered by Beam), a voice and chat* assistant tool designed to assist with managing inbound demand for council services and providing prioritised responses. The pilot will begin with the Adult Social Care (ASC) Front Door team (the first point of contact for anyone who needs help, support, or information about care services) and will handle real incoming calls from residents.
During the pilot, the service is currently available in English only. Callers can request to speak to a human adviser at any point during the call.
*The pilot will take place in 2 stages utilising just the voice assistant tool – there are no plans as yet to utilise the chat assistant tool, but this may be piloted at a later date.
The tool is intended to improve efficiency by identifying and prioritising urgent calls, whilst also handling general and day-to-day enquiries about ASC services.
When a resident calls the Front Door the call will be answered by the voice assistant tool and an introductory message will be made informing the caller that their call is being handled by a digital assistant. The caller can ask to speak to a human at any point in the call and will be automatically transferred to one of the ASC Front Door team.
If the caller proceeds with the voice assistant, the conversation will be recorded and appear in a dashboard , having been prioritised based on the content of the conversation. The Front Door managers will then assign follow-up actions to team members, working in order of priority. The voice assistant is programmed to detect high-risk scenarios, such as mental health crises or a safeguarding incident, and can automatically divert calls to emergency services or designated teams.
For straightforward queries, for example requests for information about care homes in the area, the voice agent is programmed to provide answers directly. Once a straightforward query has been answered and the call has ended, the tool will mark the call as complete.
During the pilot, its performance will be evaluated based on several metrics, including service user satisfaction, practitioner feedback, and resolution times.
A pilot of the use of SpeakAI has taken place internally with council staff and those taking part in the pilot provided evidence that the voice agent was able to capture information provided by the caller and ask relevant questions. Internal users of the pilot reported that interacting with the voice agent felt like speaking with a real human and that correct signposting and guidance was offered. In addition, the voice agent was able to detect a crisis situation the pilot caller spoke about and immediately transferred the call to a human staff member.
We will work hard to ensure that any personal data in our care will be kept safe and that where your information is shared with other parties working on our behalf, we will seek to ensure that they have satisfactory systems and procedures in place to prevent the loss or damage of personal data.
Information collected by the digital assistant is used to support triage and handling of your enquiry. Any information provided during the call is treated as unverified until reviewed by a member of staff.
Who we share your information with
To provide this service, the Council works with Beam, who supply the SpeakAI digital assistant. Beam processes information on our behalf and uses a small number of authorised technology providers to support the service (for example, for speech recognition, secure hosting and SMS delivery). These organisations process your information only under contract with the Council and cannot use it for their own purposes.
How long we keep your information
Call logs and conversations handled by the digital assistant are retained for up to 30 days, after which they are securely deleted. The Front Door workers will transfer only relevant conversations into the LBH Adult Social Care case management system to be retained for the applicable time period dependent upon the case.
Any personal data captured by SpeakAI that is transferred into our case management system and will have the same retention policies as explained in the main Adult Social Care privacy notice. We will keep the information for the following time period:
Adult Social Care (varies and includes):
Records description: Support Plan for domiciliary care, day services, community access, employment support, occupational therapy and sensory needs provision
Retention period: 6 years
Trigger: From date of case closure or death of individual
Legal basis for rentetion or justification: Limitation Act 1980 (s2)
Records description: All records related to the integrated health and social care for clients known to the Mental Health teams
Retention period: 20 years
Trigger: From date of case closure or death of individual
Legal basis for rentetion or justification: The Records Management Code of Practice for Health and Social Care 2021.
The full retention schedule for Adult Social Care and all other services can be found on our privacy notices page.
We will dispose of the personal information in the most secure manner possible. SpeakAI (Beam) will retain your information in their system for a maximum of 30 days before it is securely and permanently deleted.
The system records only the part of the call handled by the digital assistant. Recording stops once the call is transferred to a human advisor.
Business Intelligence, Profiling and Analysis
We may analyse the personal information you provide to improve the council’s services for the following purposes:
- Undertake statutory functions efficiently and effectively by seeking feedback on the provision of services and measuring outcomes
- Service planning by understanding resident’s needs and to provide the services that you request and for which you are eligible
- Help us to build up a picture of how we are performing at delivering services to you and what services the residents of Hounslow need
- Analysis of costs and spend of services we provide so that we can ensure better and efficient use of public funds
The council is committed to using pseudonymised or anonymised information where practical, and in many cases, this will be the default position.
Pseudonymisation is a procedure by which the most identifying fields within a data record are replaced by one or more artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms. There can be a single pseudonym for a collection of replaced fields or a pseudonym per replaced field. An example of this is your National Insurance number or Council Tax Reference number.
Anonymisation is the process of removing identifying particulars or details. This means that the data cannot be linked back to identify you.
Please refer to Business Intelligence, Profiling and Analysis privacy notice for further information.
Data Matching and Auditing
We are required by law to protect the public funds we administer. We may use the information you provide to us for the prevention and detection of crime. We may also share this information with other bodies that are responsible for auditing or administering public funds including the Department for Work and Pensions, other local authorities, HM Revenue and Customers and the Police.
The council uses data matching as a way of processing large volumes of information. While this can be a useful way of detecting fraud, it also enables us to identify information that is inaccurate or out of date, helping us comply with Data Protection law, while improving service provision.
As part of the council's fraud prevention and detection activities, the council participates in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). The data matching exercise is run by the Cabinet Office.
You can find more information about this on the data protection section of our website.
The national data opt out
The national data opt out was introduced on 25 May 2018 to allow you to opt out from the use of your data for anything other than your individual care and treatment. This will prevent it being used for research or planning purposes as listed above. The opt out is in line with the recommendations of the National Data Guardian in the Review of Data Security, Consent and Opt-outs.
The national data opt out applies to the NHS and some of the activities of the council. You can find further information and details about how you can opt out if you choose to do so by visitng the National Data Opt-Out page on our website.
Your data protection rights
The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. For further information about your data protection rights and how to make a request, please see ‘Your rights’
Your right to make a complaint
The Council tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.
If you want to make a complaint you can contact us on:
E-mail: complaints.crt@hounslow.gov.uk
Data Protection Officer
The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on:
InformationGovernance@hounslow.gov.uk
Information Commissioner’s Office
The Information Commissioner is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights.
If you would like to know more about your rights under the Data Protection law, and what you should expect, visit the Information Commissioner’s website.
If you have any concerns regarding any privacy practices or about exercising your Data Protection rights, you may contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:
Our Data Protection registration number is Z5761176. You can view our registration on the Information Commissioner's website.
