Key properties and processes
The second term group covers the key properties and the processes that maintain them. The draft's definitions are not public.
What the public record carries
Not stated in the public record beyond the group title and the introduction's naming of the three key properties. The public abstract adds that other standards covering particular sides of those properties, privacy included, get a common set of words from the document. The draft's own definitions and any change to them are not public.
Basis. The public preview carries the group title and the introduction, which names safety, effectiveness and security as the three key properties. The definitions are not public.
Why it matters in a health estate
A property and a process are different things, and the difference decides what evidence looks like. A property is a state the system must hold; a process is the work that keeps it. An organisation that can name the process but not the property will produce activity records that never show whether the system was safe, effective or secure. An organisation that can name the property but not the process will have a claim it cannot sustain over time.
What to do now
For each of safety, effectiveness and security write two lines: the property as the organisation states it, and the process that maintains it. Attach the evidence each produces. Where the two lines cannot be written, the register has a gap, not a wording problem.
The evidence a reviewer will ask for
| Evidence | What it is |
|---|---|
| Property statements | One statement each for safety, effectiveness and security, in the organisation's own words |
| Process map | The process that maintains each property, with its owner and cadence |
| Evidence pair | The artefact each process produces and where it is kept |
| Interdependence note | Where a change to one property affects the other two |
What a reviewer will ask
A reviewer will ask which process keeps a property true and what it produces. A property with no process is a slogan.
Common gaps
- Safety, effectiveness and security are run as three separate programmes with no shared risk record
- A process exists but produces no artefact that can be shown to a reviewer
- The property statement is copied from marketing copy rather than from the system's behaviour
- Privacy is treated as outside the three properties although the abstract includes it
Before the draft publishes
Draw the two lines for each property and mark the ones that cannot be completed. Those are the first three rows of the plan.
If the draft changes this row
The draft is edition 2 and 62 pages, one page more than the first edition. Its text and any change summary are not public as at 21 October 2026. This row follows the published first edition's structure, which is what your procedure should name today. The change watch emails you when the record changes or the draft text lands, and the row is re-read then. No one can tell you what moved before that, and this page does not guess.
Related rows
Who this binds. The CISO, the quality lead and the clinical safety officer, because this group fixes what safety, effectiveness and security mean as properties and as processes.