Consent documents

A consent document is the article 8 disclosure the person concerned reads and consents under. It is the text that makes consent informed: it states which information is collected, for which purposes, by which means, how long it is retained, how to withdraw consent, and to whom the information may be communicated.

#Anatomy of a document

A document carries a code, a name, a version, an effective date (date d'entree en vigueur), a status, and a list of items: the catalog cells it groups.

The article 8 disclosure fields are bilingual (French and English):

• Purposes (fins): the purposes the information is collected for.
• Means of collection (moyens de collecte, article 8 para. 2): the means by which the information is collected.
• Categories: the categories of personal information involved.
• Retention (conservation): how long and how the information is retained.
• Withdrawal of consent (retrait du consentement): how the person concerned can withdraw consent.
• Recipients (destinataires): to whom the information may be communicated.
• Cross-border communication (communication hors Quebec): communication of information outside Quebec, where applicable (this field may be null when there is no cross-border communication).
• Rights: the rights of the person concerned.
• Responsible person (responsable): the name and contact details of the privacy officer.
• Automated decision: a flag and a text, when the disclosure covers a decision based exclusively on automated processing.

#Editable draft, immutable published version

A document has two states that matter. A draft (DRAFT) is editable: until it is published, you freely adjust its fields and items. A published version (PUBLISHED) is immutable.

To change a published document you do not reopen it: you create a new version, which clones the published version into a new draft. You edit that draft, then publish it in turn. The old version stays intact, frozen as it was for the people who consented under it.

#Publishing: material or minor change

When publishing, the company classifies the change as material (MATERIAL) or minor (MINOR). The default is material.

A material change opens a re-consent campaign: the affected persons are invited to consent again, on the new version.

#Assisted generation of a draft

The app can generate a draft disclosure from the structured sources you have already entered:

• the grouped catalog cells feed the purposes and the categories;
• the retention rules feed retention;
• cross-border communication and governance feed the communication section;
• the privacy officer feeds the contact details.

Generation is gated, not one-click magic. It hard-blocks when the sources are incomplete and shows you the list of missing sources to fill before you can proceed. Recipients stays a manual entry. And above all, a human review and a review by legal counsel remain mandatory before any publish.

#PDF and IPFS anchoring

A published version can be downloaded as a PDF on the company side, and it is pinned to IPFS. Its CID (content identifier) is surfaced on the document detail page, with a way to copy it, a gateway link, and an anchor-status pill: anchored (anchored), pending (pending), or not pinned (notPinned).

For the detail of pinning, CID computation, and document integrity, see IPFS document integrity.

#Next

• The catalog: the (category, purpose) cells a document groups.
• Consent requests: issuing an offer under a published version.
• IPFS document integrity: CID pinning and verification, protocol-side.