The Indian Security Industry recently showcased its talents and exceptional accomplishments on a global platform during the presentation of the 2020 India OSPAs which took place virtually on Saturday, 8 August 2020. As a part of an online Thought Leadership Summit, OSPAs was organised in association with BW Businessworld, and BW Securityworld & SecurityLinkIndia as the Media Partners.
OSPA winners were selected by an esteemed panel of industry figures, through their respective industry associations, who judged entries using the standard criteria applied across the world, in every country where OSPAs conducts the awards. Each winner demonstrated that it has performed at an extraordinary level and has shown its commitment and outstanding performance within the security sector.
On the occasion, Rajiv Mathur, Regional Advisor for Asia, and the man behind getting OSPAs into India said, “OSPAs were established in UK and had the first event in Norway in 2015 and now has come to India. In my opinion and if you see the mirror image of this journey as on date, it is not only that OSPAs have come to India, instead, it is the Indian Security Industry which has now gone global. It is the outstanding performances of our security professionals which has taken the world stage. It is the deeds and heroics of Fellow Security Professionals which are being showcased now in several countries and will be talked about for many weeks to come.
We have winners in each category, but I think it is India, it is Indian Security Industry who is a winner and I am proud of it; I am proud to be a part of this festival.”
The OSPAs is a global awards scheme created to reward companies and individuals across the security sector. They are based on strict ethical principles with a transparent process to create a level playing field. Judges are nominated by the security associations. The aim is to produce truly credible winners and to then celebrate their success.
The OSPAs evolved from extensive research. Professor Martin Gill, founder of the OSPAs and his team undertook a research project with the aim of finding out what distinguishes those who are excellent in matters of security from those who are just average. And it was that process of saying “Let’s find out who is outstanding, and let’s find out why that’s the case,” which shaped the OSPAs and helped produce a set of criteria by which nominations are assessed.
In the security world it is difficult to show that you do a good job. Some say cynically that when a security professional reduces crime, the response isn’t “Well done,” the response is “We don’t need you anymore.” Security is often under appreciated – the role is not understood and success is not celebrated, and understanding why people are doing a good job in security is crucial as it’s important to recognise what they are doing that makes them good.
This is why OSPAs give so much weight to the judging process and criteria. We aim to make the judging panel representative of the whole security sector by asking each of the major security associations to nominate a judge. All judges follow a strict code of conduct and mark all entries independently against the criteria set out in the category requirements. The aim is to select finalists and winners in a way that reflects the OSPAs core values: to be independent, credible, transparent and respectable.
At the moment the OSPAs operate in 13 countries, with more to be announced. The idea is that in due course by winning in a category in your own country you go into a global awards programme. Already we’re finding that there’s a lot of prestige to winning, and I think going forward this will be more so the case. But ultimately what’s most important to me is that in every country we recognise that there’s a big difference between ‘outstanding’ as opposed to ‘good’, and the consequences of being outstanding are dramatic for the end user.
The India OSPAs will return for a second edition in 2021. The organisers and BW Securityworld look forward to holding the event physically next year.
