Terms & Privacy Policy

1. General Terms of Use

1.1 Purpose and scope

Efficient Nations seeks to make knowledge, technology and collaboration accessible to individuals, communities, researchers, organizations and institutions addressing sustainability challenges and improving quality of life. Its principal technological initiatives include EN-Core and the Efficient Nations Global Library. These terms describe use of the website and services; the contribution terms apply when you expressly submit knowledge to the Library.

1.2 EN-Core and human judgment

EN-Core is an AI-powered assistant for understanding problems and needs, exploring solutions, developing projects, researching relevant information, evaluating implementation pathways, structuring resources, budgets and schedules, and learning from existing knowledge and experience. Its output can contain errors, omissions, outdated information or uncertainty. A structured document or calculation is not professional certification or independent verification of its inputs.

You remain responsible for checking important facts, sources, assumptions and decisions, obtaining appropriate professional advice, and securing necessary permissions. Efficient Nations does not guarantee funding, regulatory approval, technical feasibility or successful implementation. AI assistance supports human judgment; it does not grant authority to act for another person or institution.

1.4 Private work and necessary technical processing

Projects, conversations and documents in private EN-Core workspaces are not automatically submitted to or published in the Global Library. Publication requires a separate, explicit contribution action and institutional review. Providing a private workspace necessarily involves storing and processing selected content through the technology providers described below. Technical processing to provide your requested service is distinct from public publication and from an open license.

You permit the technical receipt, storage, processing and display necessary to provide the functions you request. This limited service permission does not transfer copyright or authorize public Library publication of private work.

1.5 Responsible use

Use the services lawfully, respect others’ rights and privacy, and provide materials you are authorized to process. Do not upload unauthorized confidential information, malicious files or unlawfully obtained personal data; compromise accounts; circumvent access controls; or disrupt the platform. Account access and administrative authority depend on authentication and permissions, not on knowing a public ENU identifier.

1.6 Availability and changes

The initiative and its Alpha services are evolving. Features, capacity limits and availability may change, and interruptions may occur. Keep external copies of important work. Access or content may be restricted for legitimate security, legal or service-protection reasons, with appropriate notice when feasible. Nothing in these terms excludes obligations or rights that applicable law does not permit to be excluded. For support or a concern about a restriction, contact christopher@efficientnations.org.

2. Global Library Contribution Terms

2.1 Voluntary submission and review

Only materials expressly submitted through the Library contribution process enter the contribution review workflow. Uploading a file or saving a private draft does not itself submit or publish it. EN-Core may prepare suggested information for your review; you retain authority over authorship, permissions, corrections and submission. Submission does not guarantee publication. Authorized internal intake remains private until explicitly approved for publication.

2.2 Ownership and authority

You retain copyright and other rights you legally hold. Neither submission nor publication transfers copyright ownership to Efficient Nations. You must own the rights needed to license the eligible material or have authorization from the relevant rights holders. Being the uploader, having an ORCID, or finding a document online is not itself proof of authorship or licensing authority.

Identify third-party material excluded from your license and its source, rights holder and applicable terms. Do not knowingly disclose unauthorized confidential information, unlawfully publish personal data, or infringe third-party rights. Keep a draft and contact us if licensing authority is uncertain; do not accept a rights declaration you cannot make.

2.3 Standard open license: CC BY 4.0

For eligible contributions expressly submitted under the standard consent, the publication license is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0. By accepting that consent, you authorize Efficient Nations to receive, store and review the submitted materials and, if approved, publish the authorized material under that license. Drafts remain private before publication. Existing works with other licenses retain their applicable terms; this policy does not retroactively relicense earlier records or excluded third-party material.

CC BY 4.0 lets others access and download, share and redistribute, translate, adapt and improve the licensed material, and incorporate it into new projects for educational, research, nonprofit and commercial purposes. Reusers must provide appropriate attribution, link to the license and identify modifications where applicable, preserve required notices, and avoid suggesting the author endorses their use. They may not impose additional restrictions inconsistent with the license.

The author retains ownership; this is not a copyright transfer or public-domain dedication. Permissions cover only material the licensor is authorized to license and are generally irrevocable while license conditions are followed. Patent, trademark, privacy and publicity rights are not automatically granted. Other permissions may still be necessary. The official legal code governs the license.

2.4 Attribution and traceability

Efficient Nations promotes recognition of original sources. Its design objective is for EN-Core to reference identifiable source materials materially used in new project documents. Where available and applicable, references should include author or originating organization, document title, source or Global Library URL, license and relevant adaptations. Current attribution and export features are still developing; this is not a representation that every generated passage or export already supplies complete automatic attribution. Users must inspect sources and preserve applicable notices when reusing material.

2.5 Review, corrections and removal

Efficient Nations may review, request corrections, approve, reject or remove contributions for legitimate legal, privacy, quality or relevance reasons. Consent does not bypass review or automatically publish a document. Public author and institutional metadata, approved files and applicable licenses may be displayed with an approved contribution. Private contact details and internal review notes are not intended for public display.

For copyright concerns, corrections or removal requests, email christopher@efficientnations.org with the relevant title, URL or ENL identifier, your relationship to the work and a clear explanation. Removal from the Library does not automatically invalidate lawful copies already distributed or existing CC BY 4.0 permissions. Privacy withdrawal, record removal and the legal effect of an already granted copyright license are different matters.

3. Privacy Policy

This privacy notice describes the current service and the means to exercise rights under Mexico’s Federal Law on Protection of Personal Data Held by Private Parties (LFPDPPP). It applies to information processed by the initiative, including private work and voluntary contributions.

3.1 Data controller and privacy contact

The founder currently operates the initiative and is responsible for handling privacy requests. The address above is supplied for this legal disclosure, not as a public institutional office.

3.2 Information processed

• Accounts and profiles: provider-linked authentication identifier, account identifier and public ENU, name and email supplied through sign-in where available, role, status and account timestamps. Optional profile information can include organization, profession, position, location, biography and ORCID.
• Private project work: project names, conversations, structured project information, decisions, revisions, uploaded documents, extracted text, file metadata and user-reported results.
• Contributions: drafts and submissions, authors and contributors, affiliations, geographic and language metadata, sources, classification, rights information, uploaded files, extraction suggestions, review messages and publication/version history.
• Consent evidence: submitting account, contribution and file identifiers/checksums, submitted-content fingerprint, accepted terms and license versions, consent statement and server timestamp.
• Technical information: session identifiers, access/security and error records, request and AI-operation metadata, usage counts and network information processed by infrastructure. Guest rate limiting uses a daily IP-derived hash. Browser storage holds interface preferences and some temporary interface state.
• Optional interactions: contact name, email, organization and message; audio you choose to dictate and its transcription. Dictation audio is sent for transcription; the application does not provide a persistent audio archive.

The service is not intended to collect sensitive personal data such as health, biometric, religious or political information, nor bank credentials or payment-card details. Free text and uploaded documents can nevertheless contain such data. Do not submit unnecessary sensitive data or information about others without an appropriate lawful basis and any required permissions. The contribution checkbox is not consent on behalf of people identified in a document.

3.3 Purposes and choices

Primary service purposes: authenticate and manage accounts; create and persist projects and conversations; provide requested AI assistance, research, transcription and document processing; store files; prepare, administer and review contributions; maintain attribution and publication history; prevent abuse and protect security; respond to support and rights requests; and meet applicable legal duties.

Optional purposes: public Library contribution, optional public profile/attribution details and collaboration preferences are choices separate from operating a private workspace. Public contribution requires your explicit submission consent and review. The contact form has its own response-purpose consent. Contacting us does not subscribe you to marketing. Any materially different optional processing requiring consent will need a separate lawful basis or consent; the contribution checkbox is not blanket permission for advertising, unrelated profiling or unrelated reuse of private projects.

Requested AI preparation or project assistance may process selected content before a final Library submission. You can keep a private draft or choose the available manual contribution path instead of AI preparation. Necessary storage and security processing still applies to those choices.

3.4 Private information, public sharing and transfers

Private EN-Core work is not automatically published or licensed to the public. Approved public contributions may expose the author/organization details, document content and metadata you submit for publication. They may be viewed, downloaded, indexed and reused worldwide under their applicable licenses. By expressly submitting the publication consent, you authorize this intended public disclosure of the contribution and its attribution metadata if approved. Do not submit personal information you are not entitled to disclose.

Service providers process information to supply the requested functions as described below. Where a disclosure is legally a national or international transfer rather than processing on our behalf, it must have the consent or statutory exception required by applicable law, and relevant recipients must be informed of the applicable privacy obligations. No additional optional transfer to unrelated recipients is authorized by a private-workspace upload. Disclosures to competent authorities may occur when legally required. Contact the privacy address to oppose or withdraw consent for optional disclosure; this does not undo lawful prior processing or automatically recall public copies.

3.5 Technology providers and international processing

• ChatGPT Sites / OpenAI: website hosting platform services and ChatGPT sign-in infrastructure; OpenAI API services process selected conversation/project content and document material for requested AI functions, web-assisted research, extraction and dictation.
• Cloudflare: Worker application hosting, D1 structured databases, R2 document storage and related delivery/security infrastructure.
• FormSubmit and email service providers: the contact form sends entered contact details and messages to FormSubmit for delivery and spam checks, then to the official mailbox. You may email us directly instead. See FormSubmit’s privacy information.

These providers and their authorized subprocessors may process information outside Mexico. The application does not establish a Mexico-only data-residency guarantee. Specific processing regions, processor/transfer classifications and provider retention arrangements depend on the applicable service agreements and configuration; those contractual details have not all been confirmed for this notice. Requests for current information can be sent to christopher@efficientnations.org. The OpenAI response-generation requests inspected use store: false; this is not a promise of zero provider-side security retention or a blanket representation about all model-training practices. Provider terms and applicable data controls also govern their processing.

3.6 Cookies and local storage

Authentication/session mechanisms support account access. The optional guest workspace uses an opaque HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite cookie with a 24-hour access lifetime. Browser storage is used for theme and other interface preferences. Blocking storage may affect sign-in, guest continuity or preferences. Provider authentication, contact and spam-check services may use their own mechanisms under their notices. This policy does not install a new analytics or marketing tracker.

3.7 Security, retention and deletion

Current application controls include server-side authentication, owner and role checks, private/public access boundaries, origin checks for sensitive actions, file-size/type validation, server-only API credentials and private no-store responses for protected data. Hosting is delivered over HTTPS. These measures reduce risk; no system can promise absolute security. We will address incidents and provide notices where legally required.

Standalone EN-Core chats currently have a 90-day access period, set on creation or detachment from a project; expired content is cleaned up lazily when workspace access triggers maintenance. Guest access expiring after 24 hours is not a guarantee that all underlying records are deleted at that moment. Project-linked work and Library records do not share a universal automatic deletion period. Some removal actions archive or restrict access while preserving history rather than immediately erasing all stored data.

Retention is tied to providing the service, ongoing review, publication/attribution history, security, legal duties and establishing permissions or defending claims. Deletion and withdrawal requests require review of the relevant records and legal limits. Minimal consent or audit evidence may need to be retained where legally justified. Provider backups, logs and deletion schedules are subject to their own arrangements; immediate erasure from every backup is not promised. Ask us to review retention or deletion for your specific information.

3.8 Access, rectification, cancellation, opposition and withdrawal

You may request access to your personal data, correction of inaccurate or incomplete data, cancellation where applicable, or opposition to particular processing (ARCO). You may also request limits on use or disclosure and withdraw consent for processing based on consent. Withdrawal is not retroactive; stopping necessary processing may limit the corresponding service.

Email christopher@efficientnations.org with the subject “Privacy / ARCO request.” Include your name, a response address, the right or action requested, enough information to locate the relevant records, and supporting corrections if applicable. We will request proportionate proof of identity or representation through an appropriate channel before releasing or changing protected information; do not send unnecessary identity documents or passwords in your first email.

Under the applicable Mexican statutory process, the determination is communicated within 20 business days of receipt; an accepted request is implemented within the following 15 business days. A justified extension may apply once for an equal period as permitted by law. Access is provided electronically where appropriate. Requests are generally free, subject to legally permitted reproduction or delivery costs. If a request is limited or refused, we will explain the applicable reason. You may seek protection from the competent Mexican data-protection authority, currently the Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno, where available under applicable law.

3.9 Notice changes and contact

The current version and effective date appear at the top of this page. Updates will be published here. Where a material change requires direct notice or renewed consent, it will be provided as legally required; a changed notice does not silently expand an earlier contribution license or permission. For privacy, copyright, correction, removal or service questions, contact christopher@efficientnations.org.

Reference texts: Mexican personal-data protection law · CC BY 4.0. Contractual provider details identified above remain subject to factual confirmation and legal review.