The websites www.bs.ch or www.basel.ch respectively are the portal for “official Basel”, i.e. the authorities of the Canton of Basel-Stadt and the city of Basel. The departments and offices are generally represented on subordinate websites (following the format www.bs.ch/department-xy). The information below applies to all official websites of the Canton. Anyone who accesses the websites of the Canton and calls up information, communicates with or conducts transactions with the Canton electronically is deemed to have agreed to the following provisions.

The Canton makes every effort to ensure the safe operation of the websites. Nonetheless, defects such as data loss or falsification, malware, disruptions to operation, etc. cannot be ruled out. Therefore, users access the websites at their own risk and responsibility.

The Canton rejects any liability for damages or consequential damages arising from access to its websites or parts thereof (such as downloaded documents), from their use (or from the impossibility of access or use) or from links to other websites.

The Canton takes every care to ensure that the information on the websites is correct and up to date at the time of publication and that the information does not violate the rights of third parties (in particular rights to the protection of personality). However, neither the Canton nor individual offices or departments are able to provide a guarantee regarding the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the information. The definitive publication body is the electronic version of the Cantonal Gazette (www.kantonsblatt.ch).

In some instances, the websites contain links to third-party websites, in particular private offerings. The Canton assumes no responsibility for their content, the products, services or other offerings offered on such websites or their compliance with data protection regulations. Users activate such links at their own responsibility. In other respects, no entitlement exists for the inclusion of links to private offerings.

It is not permitted to frame the content of cantonal websites on external websites.

The Canton of Basel-Stadt maintains a presence on various social media platforms (e.g. Facebook, X/Twitter). By using these platforms, you accept the respectively applicable terms of use of the platform operators.

When using a social media presence of the Canton, your personal data may be recorded, transmitted, stored, disclosed or used by the respective platform operator. As a rule, the nature and scope of the data processed by the operators, the nature of processing and use or the forwarding of this data to third parties are determined according to the terms of use applicable to the respective platform. The Canton has no influence in this regard.

No content of any kind may be made available on the social media presences of the Canton, which violates third-party rights or contains unlawful material. In particular, this includes hate speech, calls to violence and attacks on individuals or groups of people. The Canton reserves the right to report such content to the platform operator, to delete such content, to report an offence if applicable and to take other measures against the responsible users.

The Canton is not responsible for content that is published on its social media presences by third parties. To the extent permitted under law, the Canton excludes any liability for all damages arising from or in connection with the legitimate or illegitimate use of its social media presences.

As the official emblem of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, the Basel staff is protected under the Federal Act on the Protection of Official Emblems and Other Official Symbols dated 5 June 1931 and may not be used for commercial purposes in particular.

We shall treat confidentially the data and in particular sensitive personal data, which you send to us, for example, via a contact form or by email, and shall only use such data in the context for which you sent us the data. However, please note that the transmission of form data and emails is generally insecure – i.e. the data may be intercepted by unauthorised third parties (hackers). For this reason, we recommend not sending particularly sensitive personal data via email and first checking whether the transmission occurs by way of a secure protocol (e.g. https://, also recognisable by the lock symbol in the address bar of your browser).

In the electronic Cantonal Gazette, disclosures that contain personal data may be viewed until the purpose of publication has been fulfilled. If the purpose of publication is not fulfilled at a defined time, disclosures containing personal data are deleted after three months. In justified cases, disclosures containing personal data may be viewable for longer. The duration of access to disclosures, which are published in both the Cantonal Gazette as well as the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC), is determined by Art. 11 (2) and (3) of the Ordinance on the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (OSOGC) dated 15 February 2006. Disclosures containing personal data may still be viewable in the PDF version of the Cantonal Gazette after expiry of the aforementioned periods. The PDF version is not covered by the full text search.

In the Cantonal Gazette Archive 2000-2018, all publications of

• the Department of Security
• the Department of Justice (excluding the section “Texts for the Collection of Laws”)
• the courts
• the commercial register
• the land register

are removed from the full text search of the Cantonal Gazette Archive six months after their publication and are then only viewable in the PDF version.

For statistical purposes and in order to improve our offering, information is collected and processed which your access device (PC) and display program (browser) automatically sends us when you visit the website. This process occurs in anonymised form and removes reference to your personal identity.

Your data is used exclusively by us. The data is not forwarded to third parties.

We use the cloud service Siteimprove to analyse the data. The data collected for this purpose is stored in the provider’s certified data centres. In the case of Siteimprove, these are located in Germany (Frankfurt) and Denmark (Copenhagen).

The following data, among others, is stored:

• Date and time of the website visit
• Type, version and language settings of the display program (browser) and the operating system used
• Display size of the display device used
• IP address of the end device or the Internet access in anonymised form

When accessing our websites, the web server may send cookies to your end device. These cookies enable you to use our websites in a convenient manner. For example, you will not need to reconfigure your language settings for each visit. These cookies do not cause any damage. This data is also collected in anonymised form and no reference can be made to an individual person.