Privacy Policy

Introduction

At Access Group, we’re committed to protect and respect your privacy.

This Privacy Notice explains how Access (“Access Group”, “we,” or “us”) handle your personal data (also known as personal information in certain jurisdictions).

This Privacy Notice does not intent to conflict with applicable local privacy laws. In case there is a conflict, the applicable local privacy laws will prevail.

We may change this Privacy Notice (also known as Privacy Policy in certain jurisdictions) from time to time. We will always make the latest Privacy Notice available to you via this page. Any changes to this Privacy Notice will apply to you and your data immediately.

Who and where (Access Group)

Access Group is an outsourcing and technology services specialist for governments and diplomatic missions worldwide.

Access Group manages the administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to visas, passports and other citizen services such as passport renewals for its client governments and diplomatic missions. This enables them to focus entirely on the critical task of judgmental assessment and decision-making.

Access Group only provides certain logistic support to visa/ permit or travel document applications on behalf of its client governments and in accordance with the respective contracts with them regarding such services/ support.

Apart from visa/ permit or travel document application processing services and citizen services, Access Group also provides additional services called Valued Added Services (VAS).

Services provided by Access Group

Processing your visa, passport, and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

Access Group is the outsourced partner of client governments and diplomatic missions for managing administrative and non-judgmental tasks related to visas, passports and other citizen services. In this capacity, Access Group (through its Premium application centers (PACs)) is merely responsible for the receipt of visa/ permit or travel document applications, collection of biometric data where applicable, collection of documents to accompany applications on behalf of the respective client government/ diplomatic mission; submission of applications and biometric data to the client government/ diplomatic mission for their consideration collecting passports from visa applicants and returning passports.

Access Group has no role in deciding what documents are to be appended or what comments or details need to be made in the visa, passport, or travel documents application process.

Additional services as our customer

Access Group also offers an additional range of Value Added Services (VAS) to its customers who wish to procure this directly from Access Group.

Please note that our Valued Added Services (VAS) availability may vary from country to country. The services are completely independent of your visa/ permit or travel document application procedure and might be purchased as per your needs.

The Valued Added Services (VAS) offered by Access Group are purely optional/ discretionary services, which are offered by Access Group to the customer directly available under a contract between Access Group and the customer at an additional service charge.

Availing of this service does not affect or guarantee the decision or processing time of your visa/ permit or travel document in any manner, as it is completely dependent on the client’s government/ diplomatic mission decision.

Data Controller

When processing your visa, passport and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

Misson is the responsible party for the use of the personal data you provide in the visa/ permit or travel document application form and, consequently, for the data received from your side in connection with the processing of your visa/ permit or travel document application. Please visit the official website of Ministry Of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration - Republic of Ghana for more information about how they process your personal data.

This role is known as “Data Controller” as established in Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation). However, it can have different names such as “Organisation,” “Data Fiduciary,” “Responsible Party,” “Data Handler,” or similar, depending on your country of residence.

When providing you with Value Added Services as our customer

When ACCESS GROUP provides additional services requested by you, such as but not limited to appointment scheduling at a Premium Application Centre (PAC), application/ document tracking and transmittal, provision of self-service visa application workstations, document courier delivery services, etc., ACCESS GROUP is responsible for processing the personal data you provide in connection with these services; hence ACCESS GROUP is the Data Controller for these Valued Added Services (VAS).

How do we collect your personal data ?

ACCESS GROUP collects personal data about you when you request our services either as part of your visa/ permit or travel document application process or when you purchase any of ACCESS GROUP Valued Added Services (VAS).

When processing your visa, passport and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

ACCESS GROUP is authorized by the client government/ diplomatic mission we work on behalf of to perform administrative support and biometric collection services related to the processing of visa/ permit and travel document applications.

Depending on the country you applied a visa/ permit or travel document for, the personal data required from you may change, but it is always determined by the client government/ diplomatic mission which determines the purpose of the processing of the personal data that, is to be collected, used, and transferred by ACCESS GROUP as part of the visa application process.

A list of the data required from you for each of the different visas/ permits or travel applications is included in ACCESS GROUP dedicated website for the respective visa/ permit or travel application routes at “Visas, eVisas & Permits”.

When you contact a PAC to submit your visa/permit application form or to provide your biometrics as requested by the client government/diplomatic mission you applied for a visa/permit or travel document for, a member of the ACCESS GROUP staff or authorized partners will collect your personal data from you, your guardian, or legally appointed representative.

When providing you with additional services as our customer

When you contact our customer support center, provide these details in a web form on our websites or request any of ACCESS GROUP Valued Added Services (VAS), ACCESS GROUP collects and processes the personal data provided by you in order to deliver the service requested. Such information may consist of the following:

First Name.
Last Name.
Delivery Address.
Email address.
Mobile Phone Number.
We may also collect your date of birth to identify you when using the Track & Trace service for your visa application or permit.
Application reference number.

Please note that it is not mandatory to provide your personal data for requested Value Added Services (VAS). However, without providing the required personal data, we may not be able to deliver these services.

Children’s privacy protection

Our services are not designed for, or intentionally targeted at children. When we process data from children, we will require parental or guardian consent.

Lawful basis for processing your personal data

When processing your visa, passport, and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

In respect of the lawful basis used by the respective client government / diplomatic mission as Data Controllers of the visa/ permit application process, you may need to provide your consent as part of the visa /permit application process. For further details on the content of this consent you are required to provide, please check the visa application/ permit form where the same is explained.

Please note that each client government/ diplomatic mission has its own application form, which means that there is no unique consent and the same may vary depending on the country you applied for a visa/ permit or travel document.

When providing you with additional services as our customer

If the data protection law in your country of residence allows, ACCESS GROUP will use the lawful basis of “performance of a contract.” What this means in plain terms is that when you purchase a Valued Added Service (VAS) from ACCESS GROUP, you enter into a contract with us to deliver that service. We could not deliver that service without using some personal data from you, by entering into that contract implies you have given your permission for us to process that personal data. For example, in order to provide the courier service, we will need a delivery address.

If the data protection law in your country of residence does not have the lawful basis of “performance of a contract,” then ACCESS GROUP will ask for your consent for the processing of your personal data for one or more specific purposes.

How is your personal data used?

To process your visa, passport and other citizen services (passport renewal)

As per the visa /permit or travel document application process, the information collected by ACCESS GROUP on behalf of the client government/ diplomatic mission is submitted to them for the purpose of assessing your visa/ permit or travel document applications.

Please note that ACCESS GROUP (or any member of its group of companies or staff) does not take any part in the decision-making process and the grant or refusal of any visa/ permit or travel document application.

This assessment is carried out at the sole discretion of the client government/ diplomatic mission as the Data Controller (in respect of any personal data processed in connection with this process), which reserves the right to ask for further documentation and information for the visa/ permit or travel document you have applied for and, to refuse any visa/ permit application. You must supply such further documentation and information if you wish the application to continue to be considered.

Please do note that ACCESS GROUP role (as a Data Processor), as defined in the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation), of the respective client government/ diplomatic mission regarding the visa/ permit or travel document process, is restricted to handle documentation solely on behalf of the concerned client government/ diplomatic mission, purely as an administrative/logistics measure and we cannot comment on the documents shared by you for forwarding to the concerned client government/ diplomatic mission.

To provide you with additional services as our customer

When providing Valued Added Services (VAS), ACCESS GROUP will use your personal data in order to provide additional services to you, including for the following purposes:

to book an appointment with one of our visa submissions officers at a PAC;
to validate who you say you are when you come to collect your travel document;
to enable you to track the progress of your application;
to provide you with additional services that you request, such as courier delivery, for which we will need to know the delivery address and the name of who to deliver the travel document to; and
with your prior permission, to send you information that you have requested and that may be of interest to you.

How long do we hold your data?

VISA application

Your visa application data is deleted from ACCESS GROUP systems after its transmission to the client government/diplomatic mission.

Only your name and contact details, as well as your passport number, are retained for the purposes of the appointment arrangements.

Your personal data is kept until the return of the passport to the applicant and deleted thirty (30) days thereafter.

If you contact us with follow-up questions or a complaint, we may retain your contact information and any other information provided for the time it takes to resolve your matter.

We may be legally required to hold some types of information for a longer period of time to fulfil our statutory or contractual obligations (for example, invoices for taxation legislation).

Value Added Services:

For Valued Added Services (VAS), we retain and hold, for a limited time, a small amount of personal contact information in order to be able to perform a requested service, such as courier delivery of your travel documents. This information consists of the following: your full name, date of birth, email address, phone number, alternative phone number and delivery address (if requested). This information is retained by ACCESS GROUP for thirty (30) days after the collection or delivery of the travel documents or visa to the applicant. It is retained for 30 days in order for us to deal with any queries or issues that may occur. After 30 days, this information is automatically purged from our systems.

Who do we share your personal data with?

When processing your visa, passport and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

We share or disclose your personal data with the respective client government/ diplomatic mission that we are an authorized or contracted service provider. This information includes the personal data supplied by you to support your visa/ permit or travel document application, consular service, or other services that we provide on behalf of a client government/ diplomatic mission.

We may also share or disclose your personal data with the client government/ diplomatic mission whose visa, consular service, or any other services you applied for, in connection with a complaint, request, or data access request, received from you.

Our suppliers and partners

We may share or disclose your contact information with our suppliers and partners where it is necessary for the processing of your requests or to deliver an additional service that you have requested. For example, if you have asked us to deliver your travel document to your home or office, we will need to provide the courier company with your name, delivery address, and a contact phone number.

We only use suppliers and partners that have sufficient privacy and data protection measures in place.

Sell your data to third parties

We do not sell your personal data to third parties.

Transferring your personal data offshore

When processing your visa, passport and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

As part of the visa/ permit or travel document application process, the information collected by ACCESS GROUP on behalf of the client government/ diplomatic mission you applied for a visa/ permit or travel document for will be transferred offshore, from the country of your application to the home country of the client government/ diplomatic mission.

When providing you with additional services as our customer

In order to provide a service to support your visa application, such as appointment scheduling, tracking your application, and invoicing, we will transfer your personal data, internally within ACCESS GROUP, to one of our data centers located in Europe ,United Kingdom or united stated as applicable.

The sharing of your personal data with certain recipients may imply transfers of your data out of the European Economic Area (EEA). We pay particular attention to the protection of your personal data. Thus, where such transfers out of the EEA shall take place, we first implement appropriate safeguards by signing the standard contractual clauses of the European Commission with the entity out of the EEA, which processes your personal data.

We only use suppliers and partners that have sufficient privacy and data protection measures in place.

Your rights

Data Subjects rights in relation to the processing of your visa, passport and other citizen services (such as passport renewal)

As an authorized contractor of the client governments/ diplomatic missions we work with, ACCESS GROUP has no access to the information submitted by you as part of your visa/ permit or travel document application. This includes copies of your visa application, or any information submitted by you in connection with your visa application.

If you require this information, you need to directly contact the Data Controller of the respective client government/ diplomatic mission of the country whose visa you applied for, which details are provided in the respective privacy notice of the specific website route of the visa/ permit or travel document you applied for.

Data Subjects rights in relation to the additional services provided to you as our customer

The right to be informed how your personal data is being used.
The right of access and a copy of your personal data.
The right to rectification if your personal data is incorrect.
The right to erasure your personal data (where the law permits this).
The right to restrict the processing of your personal data.
The right to data portability.
The right to object to how your personal data is used.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.
Registering a concern about data privacy.
Requesting a copy of your personal data, correcting inaccurate personal data, and deletion of personal data.

You can exercise your rights by contacting ACCESS GROUP at:

DATA SUBJECT ACCESS RIGHTS FORM

Accessing your information: Authentication

In order to protect your privacy and to authenticate that the request is genuinely from you and not from anyone else masquerading as you, we might request some additional details of your last interaction with ACCESS GROUP, some details that nobody else would know about.

This is to ensure that it is really you who is making the request and not someone else. We will only request enough information to enable us to identify you properly.

How ACCESS GROUP protects your personal data?

We are committed to protecting all personal data that we hold about you. When you give us personal data, we take steps to ensure that it is safeguarded and held securely. Any sensitive information is encrypted and protected.

On our websites, when you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear in the address bar of most web browsers. This means the transfer of information from your browser to our web servers is encrypted to keep it safe.

Please bear in mind that emails may be transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, please do not include personal data in an email when you communicate with us. If you do, you do so at your own risk.

Monitoring

CCTV

Please note that at ACCESS GROUP premises we maintain strong security standards in place for our staff and customers. For this reason, you will find that ACCESS GROUP uses CCTV systems where the law permits so.

The required CCTV signs are deployed in our PACs and offices and indicate that you are being recorded. This CCTV footage is kept for a certain period of time in line with our client governments / diplomatic missions’ requirements and applicable local laws.

Guarding services

As part of our security standards, you may find deployed in our PACs and offices guarding services. In certain locations, you will be required to identify yourself prior to accessing our PACs and premises.