Access to information manual

YardNote is run by YARDNOTE (PTY) Ltd., registration number 2026/741332/07. It is a private body under the Act, and in this manual “YardNote” means that company.

Every request goes to YardNote’s information officer.

Information officer

Trevor Bruns, Chief Executive Officer

Street and postal address

17 Harker Crescent, Midstream Hill, Centurion, 1692

Telephone

+27 76 496 1068

Email

info@theyardnote.com

Website

https://www.theyardnote.com

The Information Regulator publishes a guide on how to use the Act, as section 10 of the Act requires. It explains how to ask for a record, what help is available, and every remedy the law gives. It is in each official language.

Get it from the Regulator’s website, https://inforegulator.org.za/paia/, or ask the information officer for a copy.

These are on this website, free, and need no request:

• The privacy notice: what the service holds about a person, why, and for how long.
• The terms: what the service costs, and what YardNote and a business promise each other.
• What a person agrees to: the words every person agrees to before anything of theirs is recorded.
• This manual.

• Records of personal information, under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013.
• This manual, under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000.
• Records of electronic transactions and communications, under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002.
• Tax records, under the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 and the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011.

• The businesses that use it. Each business’s name, its industry, its time zone and its settings; the email address each of its managers signs in with; its free days, its payments and its bill; and what it has asked YardNote to do.
• The people a business puts on it. Each person’s name, mobile number, role and language; whether they can read a written instruction and which recording they prefer to hear; and the record of their agreement to being recorded.
• The work. Each job, its number, the place or equipment it concerns, who it was given to and what happened to it.
• Messages and recordings. Every message sent and received, whether it arrived and what it cost; every recording; and the transcript and translation of each, with any correction a person made.
• YardNote’s own running. Its accounts, its tax records, and its agreements with the services it uses.

Most of these records belong to a business that uses YardNote. YardNote holds them as that business’s operator, on its behalf, and a request for them may be better made to the business itself.

Why. To send a business’s daily work to its workers over WhatsApp, to take their spoken replies back and put each against its job, to let the business’s managers read and hear them, and to bill the business.

About whom.

• Managers and office staff: name, email address, mobile number, role and language.
• Workers: name, mobile number, role and language; their recordings and messages; the record of their agreement; and a location, only when a worker chooses to attach one to a message.
• The businesses themselves: name, settings and account.

Who else receives it. WhatsApp (Meta) carries the messages and the recordings. Speech services transcribe and translate recordings, and read numbers and titles aloud. Hosting providers store the database and the recordings, and run the service. Nothing is sold, and nothing is used for advertising.

Outside the Republic. The database and the recordings are kept in Frankfurt, Germany. A recording is sent to a speech service in Europe to be turned into writing, as the words every person agrees to say. WhatsApp carries messages on Meta’s own terms.

How it is kept safe. One business cannot see another business’s people, work or recordings: the database itself refuses it. A manager signs in with a code sent to their own email address. The keys that reach every business are held on the server and never sent to a browser. An original recording is never written over.

Fill in Form 2, “Request for access to record”, from the Regulator’s website, and send it to the information officer by hand, by post or by email. Say which record you want, how you want to see it, and which of your rights the record is needed to exercise or protect. If you ask for somebody else, say in what capacity.

A request fee and an access fee may be payable, at the amounts the regulations under the Act set. No request fee is charged to somebody asking for a record about themselves. YardNote tells you the fee before any work is done.

YardNote decides within 30 days of receiving the request, and tells you in writing. Where the Act allows, it may take up to 30 days more, and tells you why. A request not answered in time is treated as refused.

Where a record is about another person or another business, that person or business is told of the request where the Act requires it, and may say why it should not be given.

Access may be refused only on a ground the Act gives: among them, another person’s privacy, another business’s commercial information, somebody’s safety, and legal privilege. A record must still be given where the public interest test in section 70 of the Act is met.

If you disagree with a decision, you may complain to the Information Regulator, or apply to a court, within the time the Act allows.

• On this website.
• At the address above, during business hours.
• To anybody who asks the information officer for a copy.
• To the Information Regulator, on request.

It is updated whenever what it says changes. Issued by Trevor Bruns, Chief Executive Officer.