Alaska Heat Smart (AHS) recognizes today’s need for personal privacy, strict document security, and institutional trust. We have privacy practices in place to provide you with the assurance and confidence that any personal information shared with Alaska Heat Smart is protected and secure.
AHS and partner organization programs, including but not limited to our Healthy Homes Program (HH), our Clean Heat Incentive Program (CHIP), (formerly known as our Heat Pump Incentive Program), and Renewable Juneau’s Juneau Carbon Offset Fund (JCOF), are income-qualified programs. In order for an applicant to qualify for one of these programs, household income must be verified and compared to current federal income tables generated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Verifying household income, using HUD’s ‘Part 5 Income Verification Method’ is dependent on a program applicant providing AHS with personal household income information.
Required documents may include identification, birth certificates, pay stubs, bank account statements, IRS tax filings, retirement account statements, social security award letters, as well as other records where deemed necessary or appropriate, depending on the household, such as floor plans, utility history and/or bills, and proof of home ownership.. AHS does NOT need and will never ask for social security numbers or specific account numbers. We encourage all program applicants to either delete or black out such account and identification information prior to uploading any files to our secure data management system.
Alaska Heat Smart uses an encrypted and multi factor authentication document handling system maintained by Citrix ShareFile. ShareFile is a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that enables the exchange of confidential business files easily, securely and professionally. ShareFile safeguards files in transit and at rest using industry accepted protocols and ShareFile stores files in state-of-the-art data centers equipped to protect against data loss, even in emergencies. ShareFile employs Transport Layer Security (TLS) security protocols to protect authentication, authorization and file transfers. Files are encrypted in transit with up to 256-bit encryption depending on web browser capabilities. ShareFile employs a keyed-hashed message authentication code (HMAC) to authenticate and ensure the integrity of intra-system communications and relies on file size and hash to ensure file integrity.
To learn more about Citrix ShareFile’s security and compliance practices, download their PDF entitled, ‘citrix-sharefile-security-and-compliance-faq.pdf’.
AHS requests that program applicants only provide personal information via a secure folder link provided by AHS via Citrix, and shared with the applicant. Emailing documents to AHS is discouraged. Each program applicant will have a secure document folder within the AHS Citrix system. One-way access to these folders is provided to the applicant and administrative access to these folders is only available to two AHS staff: the executive director and the administrative assistant. The AHS bookkeeper will have access only to the secure folder containing uploaded IRS W9 files. If an applicant chooses to email documents to AHS, these documents will be moved by AHS staff to a secure Citrix folder and the email and any attachments will be deleted. If an applicant chooses to mail documents to AHS, or deliver them to the AHS office, either the executive director or administrative assistant will scan the documents and move them into the applicant’s secure Citrix folder. The original scans will be deleted.
If you have questions or concerns about document privacy, please contact Alaska Heat Smart at privacy@akheatsmart.org.
Ver. 1.0, 12.14.2022