communications strategy: Crisis communications

Recommended by the ELIXIR-STEERS Toolkit (2025). Draft – to be ratified by the Coordination Office.

What counts as a crisis

• Public misstep – a comm, programme, or representative draws criticism.
• Security or data incident – a vulnerability or breach affecting an ELIXIR-UK resource or hosted content.
• Sensitive press enquiry – a topic where silence is itself a story.
• Conduct violation – serious incident triggering the community participation guidelines reporting process.
• Loss of key person or capability – unexpected staff change; major resource down for an extended period.

First-hour principles

1. Acknowledge before explaining. A brief, accurate “we’re aware and looking into it” beats a slow detailed response.
2. Don’t speculate. “We are investigating” is honest; “this is what happened” before we have facts is not.
3. Internal first, external second. Active members hear from us before they hear about us second-hand.
4. One designated spokesperson. Default: Node Coordinator. Named substitutes in the plan.
5. Document everything. Timeline log from the moment we become aware.

Workflow

1. Detection – notify the Node Coordinator within the hour.
2. Triage – Coordinator categorises, convenes the response group (Coordinator, relevant HoN, Coordination Office Assistant).
3. Holding statement – ready within 2 hours of triage. Template: “We are aware of [event]. We’re looking into it and will share more as we have it.”
4. Internal brief – sent to active members before any external comm. Slack + mailing list.
5. External response – channels appropriate to the audience. Conduct violations follow the participation guidelines and override this page.
6. After-action review – within two weeks. What happened, what we did, what we’d do differently.

Press engagement

• Default: engage when the topic intersects our mission and we have something useful to say. Don’t engage with speculative “comment for comment’s sake” enquiries.
• Routing: all press enquiries go through the Node Coordinator. Even if a journalist contacts an individual member, the Coordinator is copied before any response.
• On vs off the record: Coordination Office may speak on the record. Members speaking on ELIXIR-UK topics in a personal capacity must be clear they’re not speaking for the Node.
• What we won’t do: brief the press on an ongoing incident before active members are briefed; provide quotes without sight of the surrounding article; speculate about Hub or other Nodes.

Templates to draft

• Holding statement (incident under investigation)
• Internal-only “we know, we’re handling it” brief
• Press response – declining with reason
• Press response – providing with caveats
• Apology – short, declarative, no conditionals

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