I'm currently working at an IT school department. We have a intranet where all students and teachers are registered and manage the school bureaucracies.<p>By law, at the end of the year, we have to ask everyone for feedback, so we can improve things. This survey is advertised as anonymous.<p>To make sure everyone has answered, the system creates a simple relationship in a database, between the person (identified with the school number) and their answers.<p>After that, our team exports this data and hands over to a person to interpret it.<p>I don't think this is anonymous, but this person says it is, because "I won't identify" and "no one else in the public can identify it".<p>Is that so?
It's not anonymous; even if the intended user can't identify anyone, the people above them can (as they have access to the infrastructure). It would be a bit different if the survey was hosted on a neutral third-party's infrastructure. Furthermore the simple fact that the data exists means it can leak by accident later on down the line and this would apply to both in-house and third-party surveys.