HM Inspectorate of the Constabulary has stolen the name of a social enterprise, MyPolice, for its new online site. They should find a new name.
Our guest writer is Guy Lodge, Associate Director at the ippr.
What happens when a giant state bureaucracy decides to trample all over one of the innovative social enterprises in Britain? So far, nothing much.To explain: two conferences happened in London today. At the first David Cameron (and pretty much half the shadow cabinet) stood up to talk up their vague concept of a “Big Society“. There remain real problems with Tory thinking in this area, not least the assertion that an active state and a big society are locked in some kind of zero-sum relationship. But since his much derided conference speech last year when he claimed that rising inequality was primarily a consequence of big government, Cameron has at least tried to think more creatively about the role of the state.
Back in November he gave the Hugo Young Memorial lecture when he said that government should concentrate on:
“Galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal. It must help families, individuals, charities and communities come together to solve problems.”
The idea that it would be good for the state to help husband and grow small, innovative social enterprises (or at least do them no harm) is something which should unite progressives and conservatives alike.
Sadly, then, there was perhaps a more significant event also happening today, about a 15 minute walk across London, run by the National Police Improvement Agency. There two young social entrepreneurs—Lauren Currie and Sarah Drummond, from the innovative police accountability organisation MyPolice.org—told the reality of how such organisations get treated.
MyPolice is an online feedback tool that enables the public and the police to have a conversation, and help people in local communities identify weaknesses in their policy service, and work with local forces to fix them. Most interestingly, all this data is then fed back to the police to help them improve. In short — a really good idea, and one supported by a range of groups, from Geoff Mulgan’s Young Foundation to Tom Steinberg’s MySociety.org.
The two founders were dismayed to find out recently that HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) — the police OFSTED — had decided to launch a vaguely similar site, with exactly the same name. The news wasn’t just irksome, but threatened their very survival: their organisation needs a good google ranking to allow the public to find them, and they had spent a year building relationships under their brand. Both of these won’t happen if a giant bureaucracy gobbles up the name, and creates confusion over who the real MyPolice might be.
That HMIC is investing in public online accountability mechanisms is a great thing — and to be encouraged, even applauded. But it would obviously be better to do this without friendly casualties in the process. And HMIC’s regrettable decision has already got some coverage, with more expected soon.
Rumours suggest that the Conservatives in particular are annoyed about this, given MyPolice are exactly the sort of organisation Cameron wants to flourish. But Labour supporters should be equally put out. We saw something like this happen when the government health website NHS Choices stomped over innovative startups, like PatientOpinion. And now its just happening all over again.
Thankfully, the solution is simple. HMIC should just admit they made a mistake, and change the name of their site. If they don’t, the first, smaller, better MyPolice will get swamped, and it is even possible that one of the most innovative small organisations in Britain could be snuffed out. If HMIC do change their name, everyone wins. And luckily, there are plenty of other good choices out there: OurPolice, YourPolice, BetterPolice, or indeed any one of literally dozens of other choices. Lets hope HMIC see sense, before their reputation suffers.
47 Responses to “MyPolice impersonation”
Pete Hoskin
RT @jamescrabtree: & ++good stuff on #HMICfail re #mypolice from James Forsyth at the Spectator—http://bit.ly/aGbUNm (background http://bit.ly/auJ3P6) PLS RT
Stephan Shakespeare
Big State tramples on social entrepreneur start-up: @wdjstraw excellent with cross-party rallying-call: http://bit.ly/auJ3P6
Rob Waller
@StephanShaxper seriously, statist are morons. What the hell do they expect from a big state? Milk and honey? http://bit.ly/auJ3P6
Chris Paul
RT @StephanShaxper: Big State tramples on social entrepreneur start-up: LeftFootForward excellent with cross-party rallying-call: http://bit.ly/auJ3P6
HMIC
HMIC have put out this statement:
‘We have been working with the mypolice.org founders since 08 March 2010 to address their concerns and to provide the best possible solution.
‘They asked that we stop marketing ‘mypolice.org.uk’ as a redirect page, since the public might confuse this with their service. We agreed, and now only refer to http://www.hmic.gov.uk/mypolice. We also agreed not to renew our ownership of any of the ‘mypolice’ domains. This will give them the opportunity to buy and use them when they get their service up and running.
‘To ensure the public gets the benefits of both services with no chance of confusion, we will change the name of the ‘my police’ pages on our website. We are currently consulting on the best option, and will announce the results in the next week.
‘We have nothing to gain by overwhelming mypolice.org: and as an independent organisation ourselves, we would never wish to do so. Indeed, throughout our negotiations we have both been keen to stress that we can usefully work together in the future.’
The founders of MyPolice.org responded with this statement:
“We would like to say thank you to Denis O’Connor for enabling us to continue on this journey as MyPolice.org.
We think HMIC’s product is a very good idea, it is important to enable the public to rate and score their local force but our product is different. We think HMIC’s product compliments MyPolice. There are many ways we could work together. Firstly, in bringing our empathy fueled data together with your accurate statistics we would create something powerful. Secondly, when people ask us questions about the performance of their local force we will happily signpost them to the HMIC site. Now let’s get on with the real work and collaborate to bring the police and public together.”
Copies of these statements can be found at http://www.hmic.gov.uk and http://www.mypolice.org.
This comment was posted by the HMIC Press Office.