Background & Vision (Updated June 2016)
The initial aim was to simply compile a compendium of security and safety, links and information for use by UK people and businesses. The idea followed a sudden spell when several friends and relatives either fell ill or had accidents, became frail and needed our (husband and wife) support.
Millions have been spent on preparing all sorts of security and safety advice by dozens of governmental, charitable and business organizations, but it rarely gets used to its full potential because it is spread over hundreds of different web sites and often takes too long to find.
In addition to delivering a 'social good', SecurityCehckUK and related sites provide us with a vehicle for us to stay up to date with social media, analytics and related developments.
As part of the potential 'social good', 'learning by doing', suggests great value can be delivered by a central portal that provides quick access to UK security and safety, information, news AND discussion. Currently, there seems to be no decent facility to support informed cross-community discussion on issues such as local policing and elderly and primary health care. All that currently exist are newspapers, fixed agenda (charities and single issue causes) and fixed audience (mumsnet etc.) websites and society is missing the enriching potential of such civil discussions. You will therefore see some early experimental content along these lines. Subject to how this is received it can then be developed or dropped as the core compendium-portal element is developed. Ideally, we would love to see Police and Crime Commissioners and others make use of this facility.
Appropriately developed securitycheck.uk could offer thought leaders a platform to present their insights across an array of issues, plus also facilitate civil discussion about specific issues, such as the Investigatory Powers Bill, and public safety, to inform and deliver a better sense of connection.
Without doubt, some will feel the aims for securitycheck.uk are too grandiose. However they ARE credible within a roughly 3-year time-frame, starting from January 2016, with good management and initial development being done on a part time basis. This is because, whilst the first year will be very slow, subsequent uplift will likely be exponential, once positive feed-back starts to kick in.
Early roadmap
The first stages of securitycheck.uk and the family of web sites surrounding it will be a bit rough to begin with, but week by week, content should become increasingly useful and compelling to the broad spectrum of UK people, at home, in business and serving the community. Whilst we appreciate potential content contributors will be reticent at this time, we are really keen to get input from outsiders on all manner of security and safety advice of relevance to individuals and businesses as soon as possible. Such inputs will both serve our early stage experimentation with content, to find an optimal user-friendly site, plus help advance the site's slowly advancing credibility.
After some experimentation with various types of content, to get a feel for how it can be best organised, the hope is that more third parties will volunteer additional information. This will either be hosted by securitycheck.uk, or linked to their web sites, or YouTube and social media content.
Whilst we appreciate that many conservative brand-mangers might prefer to not be involved until the site is more developed, for fear of potentially negative association, we hope more nominative businesses will want to embrace the huge opportunities of 'getting in early' with us. Firstly, there can be no downside to wanting to assist such an effort to deliver a social good, secondly, 'first mover' contributors' will gain the 'high ground' in the information-spaces they service and thirdly, all such credible contributions will not only end up delivering deal-flow directly, via hyperlinks, but they will also assist with the SEO of contributor web sites.
Development will see the site hosted on various platforms as it evolves. Initially it will be on a Blogger platform at https:\\securitycheck.blogspot.co.uk, accessed when typing securitycheck.uk.
The key to success is people remembering, securitycheck.uk, to quickly get to everything else. This and a future sister site at securitycheck.co.uk, currently also pointing to the Blogger site, plus assorted social media accounts will all work to promote securitycheck.uk.
External contributors will be protected by SSL encryption. Given that demand may be 'spiky', one possibility is to in future mirror key parts across securitycheck.uk and .co.uk, with one pointing to the Blogger presence and the other a dedicated WP server, to mitigate downtime.
At around the same time as content starts to ramp, efforts will also be made to do a more professional job on the branding and layout. The hope then is that ever-increasing numbers will also volunteer to 'do their bit' to help securitycheck.uk benefit the community.
We are therefore keen to hear from people controlling access to useful advice that could be used directly on the site, with acknowledgement and links back to their web sites as requested.
We are even more keen to start hearing from community 'thought leaders', be they mayors, representatives of the police or caring services, or representatives of various community interest groups, for both the proposed 'Issues' and the Voices' sections.
Proposed content
Beyond the Numbers and Links and First Aid menus, offering quick look-ups, you will note several additional menu items on the current, 'in development' web site.
'Security' and 'Safety' will provide links to assorted next-stop reference pages compiled for users exploring different security and safety issues. These will for example be security in the home and in the office, and safety whilst on holiday or traveling.
The exact arrangement of headline links and reference pages leading to more detailed information will evolve through 'learning by doing', hopefully with user feedback, so that as content builds the wealth of reference and instructional information becomes easier for users to quickly mine.
The 'Voices' section will offer an open invitation to community thought leaders to share with the wider community their perspective across an array of security and safety issues of their choosing, on either once off, sporadic or regular periodic bases, to help knit the community a bit closer together.
'Voices' will have complete editorial autonomy over their submissions, with the only limitations being that what they say is lawful, non-offensive and there is a means to verify its genuineness. Crucially, submissions can convey all that the author intended, complete with any caveats and nuances
At this stage, with a view to mitigating potential spiraling misinterpretations, and moderating overhead. the thought is to NOT open 'Voices' pieces to comment. Instead, subsequent 'voices' could include reaction to earlier submissions in their pieces, with the proviso that original authors could then respond in-turn, so as to either acknowledge differences or oversights and clarify matters.
Ultimately there may then be sections providing information and news on specific products and services, which my be of value to different audiences in different situations. Beyond delivering value to the end user, these may also offer a means to help monetise and fund the site's operations, but this is not a priority during the opening development phase.
Any suggestions or offers with regard to any of the above will be gratefully received.
Objectives
Before continuing it is important to stress that it is understood that securitycheck.uk will never be 'massive'. However, there is a credible opportunity for securitycheck.uk (and its wider network) to, over the space of just a few years, become reasonably popular:
- By acting as a central portal it can eliminate a lot of unnecessary duplication of advice and guidance material across the public sector so as to benefit public coffers.
- At the same time it can make accessing such data, so much easier for all, including households, overseas travelers, large and small businesses and not for profit organizations.
- Through improving the reach of such information it can improve safety and security both directly, via a more informed public and indirectly after boosting training, such as first aid.
- By affording otherwise inaccessible debates and insights to both key thought-leaders and the true stories of others it can also knit the community closer together.
- When timely security or safety announcement have to be made, securitycheck.uk can also complement the many assorted other specialist platforms by offering, not just a complementary communication channel, but one that, within a just a couple of years, everyone sees as the default first port of call for all such news.
Can you help?
To realize the big visions above requires more than just a couple of very part timers. The aim is to build a team (initially virtual) based in London, comprising LAMP, social media, branding and usability specialists, alongside others overseeing or creating content, strategy and governance.
At this very early stage we would like to connect with several very senior people who could open relevant doors to streams of external content for the various sections of the portal, plus offer insightful views on how the concept could evolve. These could be in the public or private sector and the hope is they could initially volunteer a tiny bit of time, either for the community's benefit or with a view to later spin-off business benefit opportunities, or a part-time exec or non-exec directorship.
There is currently no budget and just very sparse part time development of this site. Hopefully in time, people across the community will start to grasp the potential social good such a site can deliver and will want to contribute, either as a professional representatives of their organizations or as community volunteers. This could even be part of your organization's community outreach!
Here's hoping!
If you can help in any way, we would be very grateful to hear from you.
(contact form on home page)
Thank you
S & B
22 June 2016
