HMIC (Government body assessing the performance of the police) are launching a site called My Police which will report on statistics for the police, this saturday (13th March) at 9.30am sometime (edit: the page has been changed in the past hour). A quick search on the internet reveals only one reference to the HMIC site; the West Midlands Police Authority’s Chief Executive’s report dated 18th Feb 2010. According to the report, it says:
HMIC have indicated that they intend to publish the ‘Police Report Card’ in the week beginning 8 March 2010. The information will be published as part of the HMIC website, likely to be entitled ‘My Police’. The card is likely to cover a number of themes to include local policing, protection from serious harm, anti-social behaviour and value for money. The report will be a mix of data reports, narrative, gradings and direction of travel.
On Monday we were notified by email from the HMIC that they are launching a product called My police at midnight tonight. Apparently, to our knowledge, it is a site about the public feeding back on police statistics (including how much they spend in their areas) to discern the best/worst police force in the UK and other such trivia’s.
The purpose of their email was to ask us to get in touch to discuss the issue of any misdirected traffic. Further to the name, they bought all the related domain names (something I had tried to do a while ago) and chose to use http://mypolice.org.uk for their product, even though the product is also available on the HMIC site. Our domain is http://mypolice.org, this is, as you can see, a huge issue for us.
We began correspondence with them today via phone and email. There was no budging on changing the name or domain. In goodwill they have offered us the other domains but we still feel that without changing the name, this is irrelevant.
She goes on to explain that she thinks this is a problem because:
We are in an extremely narrow market, and it is incredibly likely that confusion would arise if they continue to use our name, Mypolice.
It is extremely unprofessional to view all our channels and move forward with the name mypolice.
If HMIC launch as Mypolice, they will run the risk of confusing the public to think they are an independent company, which they are not.
Which are all valid and very reasonable concerns. MyPolice has been tweeting about this issue all morning – so much so that their servers are currently overloaded.
As someone who was involved in MyPolice back in SICamp, and knowing Sarah and Lauren, this must seem like an obstacle out of nowhere for them. I hope the issue gets resolved somehow, and that both parties find someway around the issue. Who would have thought? Two sets of people coming up with the same name? Good luck girls – and I hope we all get a satisfactory result.
Wed afternoon (10th March) Update: Check out the cheeky, but funny http://myhmic.org!
Thursday morning update (11th March) Further Update: According to MyPolice and Ian Cuddy, HMIC are continuing with My Police as the name. You can now show your support for MyPolice with a twibbon: http://bit.ly/aGicCM
StartupCafe 
That is absolutely ridiculous. The government should be working ‘with’ the existing mypolice to leverage their skills and make it an official public service. The aim of public services is not to create an environment where services strong arm one another but create unified products which are the best for the general public.
Quite apart from anything, I deeply distrust any Government website that doesn’t use the .gov.uk domain. It smacks of spin!
I work for a police force (commenting in a personal capacity) and was looking forward to seeing the “real” MyPolice, as I think it could be a real game-changer for the police in the UK.
The HMIC one will (most likely, imho) contain lots of useless statistics that make it look like they are being accountable, but without any intepretation they will just cause police forces lots of grief.
Looking forward to seeing how this one pans out – I think HMIC will have to eat some rather large humble pie fairly shortly!
[…] the people behind MyPolice aren’t thrilled. Kate Ho at StartupCafe has the full conversation, which includes the fact that the HMIC has bought up domains around the MyPolice name – including […]
Well in a roundabout way, it is a compliment to the real MyPolice team that the government is convinced of the importance here and wants to take them up on the idea.
They’re quite clearly terrified of the power that the original folks stand to have – again, a compliment. It’s no surprise HMIC wants that power and content under its own control, but that is by no means an excuse for unfair play.
What is most amusing to me is that HMIC got in touch ‘to discuss the issue of any misdirected traffic’ – hmmm perhaps they should have thought about that before shamelessly copying the name?
Think David vs. Goliath is very apt – if HMIC think they can use government authority and intimidation to squash MyPolice, we owe it to the real team to rise to their defense and whistleblow this embarrassing government behaviour.
what planet are these people on?
did they really think a private company would be allowed so much authority!
[…] At present, the smaller company has been on the media offensive, and has mentions on the Guardian website (as well as interest from other major media organisations), as well as a lot of traffic on their site – someone has also set up a parody site, levelled squarely at HMIC’s use of ‘My Police’ (MyMHIC.org), where individuals are expressing their displeasure at the current situation. On the other hand, the larger organisation has done little of note, apart from apparently removing the launch date from their holding page. […]
http://timesonline.typepad.com/crime/2010/03/tweetshire-up-in-arms-over-mypolice.html
More commentary on this story: http://publicstrategist.com/2010/03/government-is-an-elephant/
[…] the people behind MyPolice aren’t thrilled. Kate Ho at StartupCafe has the full conversation, which includes the fact that the HMIC has bought up domains around the MyPolice name – […]
The actions of HMIC can be nothing but deliberate & I can’t say I’m impressed with their subsequent responses.
I suggest that IF HMIC wish to “connect” with people, they start by choosing another domain name.
I like the blog, but could not find how to subscribe to receive the updates by email. Can you please let me know?
Hi Samantha, thanks very much for your message, great to hear you want to keep up. We’ve not yet found the time to email out updates ourselves, but you can add us to an RSS feed if that helps? Maybe one of my more tech-savvy colleagues will have additional insight 🙂
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Hey, really great , I have book marked your page 😀
stupid, why would the police let it go out there hand
[…] We encourage people to apply for the Saltire Fellowship, tell people about the Strategy Society’s first meeting, talk about BraveNewTalent raising £350k of funding, highlight the fight between MyPolice and HMIC. […]
[…] Camp when the idea was being fleshed out. Then she was one of our 60 second interviewees. Then we wrote about them when the HMIC tried to take the MyPolice name and […]
[…] the people behind MyPolice aren’t thrilled. Kate Ho at StartupCafe has the full conversation, which includes the fact that the HMIC has bought up domains around the MyPolice name – […]
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