Secure Integrated Communications Suite

对于这个项目，Etic Lab将为非营利性法律咨询部门开发一个安全的综合通信套件(SICS)，这是一个慈善机构社区，致力于确保经济能力有限的人获得进入英国司法系统所需的支持。我们的平台将允许咨询提供者通过视频、音频或文本与客户聊天和留言，安全地传输重要文件，并通过附带的电子邮件和短信通知安排约会。它还将支持对等发现和咨询提供者之间的交流，并为客户反馈提供门户。这一部门的工作从未像现在这样重要。由于新冠肺炎危机，越来越多的人在住房、债务、福利和就业等法律问题上寻求援助，这只是其中的一小部分。咨询提供商正试图解决这种需求激增的问题，同时通过转向远程工作来保护他们的员工、客户和普通公众。在许多情况下，这意味着他们别无选择，只能采用Skype、Zoom或Facebook Messenger等专有视听消息平台作为向客户提供服务的手段。然而，这些程序并不具备法律咨询提供者所要求的全部功能；它们也不符合一个经常与易受攻击的个人和敏感个人信息打交道的部门的隐私和安全要求。在目前的情况下，该行业正被迫在其价值观上做出妥协，以继续为客户服务。SICS将通过将其产生的数据完全掌握在咨询行业及其客户手中来解决这些担忧。这不仅将确保敏感信息的安全，还将使该部门能够利用该平台产生的元数据(例如，与客户对话的时间长短、频率和目的)来系统地评价其工作做法，支持慈善机构努力制定可持续的服务提供模式，以应对当前的挑战。通过将所有法律咨询提供商聚集到一个单一的通信平台上，SICS将为整个行业提供一个共享资源、建立社区和团结起来的基础，以确保它能够在整个危机期间和未来几年继续履行其社会使命。现在扩展该项目将允许其他敏感服务提供商在安全的平台上为他们的客户提供服务，并附带避免广泛使用的专有平台的道德和专业原因，因为他们知道，面对新冠肺炎疫情，他们选择了扩展业务的媒介并没有损害他们的标准。此外，在我们到目前为止在该项目中进行的对话中，我们已经清楚地知道，在像我们这样的平台推向市场之前，有一些行动和服务是根本不可能的，我们将在能够扭转这一点方面产生立竿见影的效果。也不能忽视的是，随着流行病的二阶效应开始形成，对诉诸司法部门同事的服务的需求大幅增加。Etic Lab已经与法律界各级工作组合作，试图为无家可归、失业和福利制度等人的案件不可避免地增加做好准备。

For this project, Etic Lab will develop a Secure Integrated Communications Suite (SICS) for the not-for-profit legal advice sector, a community of charities dedicated to ensuring that people with limited means receive the support they need to access the UK justice system. Our platform will allow advice providers to chat with clients and leave messages via video, audio or text, to securely transfer important documents and to set appointments with accompanying email and text notifications. It will also support peer-to-peer discovery and communication between advice providers, as well as providing a portal for client feedback.The work of this sector has never been more vital than it is now. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, unprecedented numbers of people are seeking aid with legal issues involving housing, debt, welfare and employment, to name just a few. Advice providers are attempting to address this surge in demand whilst also protecting their staff, clients and the general public by pivoting to remote working. In many cases, this means they have had no choice but to adopt proprietary audio-visual messaging platforms such as Skype, Zoom or Facebook Messenger as a means of providing services to clients. However, these programs do not have the full range of functions required by legal advice providers; nor do they meet the privacy and security requirements of a sector which routinely works with vulnerable individuals and sensitive personal information. As things stand, the sector is being forced to compromise on its values in order to continue serving its clients.SICS would address these concerns by placing the data it produces solely in the hands of the advice sector and its clients. Not only would this ensure the security of sensitive information, it would also enable the sector to use the meta-data generated by the platform (for instance, the length, frequency and purpose of conversations with clients) to systematically evaluate its working practices, supporting charities in their efforts to develop sustainable models for service delivery equal to the challenges of the present. By bringing all legal advice providers together onto a single communications platform, SICS would provide a basis for the sector as a whole to share resources, build community, and come together to ensure that it is able to continue its social mission throughout this crisis and into the years ahead.Extending the project now will allow other providers of sensitive services, with attendant ethical and professional reasons for avoiding the widespread proprietary platforms, to deliver for their clients in a secure platform safe in the knowledge that their choice of medium for extending their business in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic has not compromised their standards. Further, in the conversations we have had thus far in the project it has been made clear to us that until a platform such as ours is brought to market there are certain actions and services that are simply not possible and we would have an immediate impact in being able to reverse that. It can also not go unnoticed that there has been a massive increase in demand for the services of our colleagues in the access to justice sector as the second order effects of the pandemics begin to take shape. Etic Lab has already been working with working groups at all levels of the legal sector to try to prepare for the inevitable rise in cases of people dealing with homelessness, unemployment and the welfare system, to name a few.