Winners of the 5th Analysis in Government awards

Early Years Data and Analysis Team

• Department: Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)
• Nominated work: “Childcare Deserts and Oases”

Summary

“By September 2025, most working parents will be entitled to 30 hours of funded childcare, crucial for the growth and opportunity missions. Recognising the need for detailed local evidence, Ofsted analysts launched an ambitious project to quantify neighbourhood-level childcare accessibility. Collaborating with the Cabinet Office and Treasury, they secured funding to develop hyperlocal childcare accessibility metrics. This project united a team from government, academia, and industry, including experts in geospatial modelling, data visualisation, and local labour markets. The team worked with academics to develop advanced modelling techniques. They partnered with the ONS to create innovative data visualisations and to apply semi-automated journalism techniques that generate bespoke text specific to a user’s postcode. Their collaborative efforts ensured flexibility to meet evolving policy needs during the early days of the new government. New metrics are feeding into No.10 delivery dashboards and informing DfE’s evaluation of its £14 billion investment in expanded childcare”.

Judges’ comments

Outstanding international collaboration across other government departments (OGD), industry, academia using novel methods and techniques delivering impressive results including innovative data visualisations and feeding into No 10 delivery dashboard. Impressive praise from the stakeholders.

Very strong collaboration across disciplines and departments.

Direct policy impact, cross-organisation collaboration to improve data and insights, using uncommon methods (data journalists) to do so.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Early Years Data and Analysis Team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Defra’s “Access to Green space in England” team

• Department: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Nominated work: “’Access to Green space in England’ official statistic in development”

Summary

“The government made an ambitious commitment in the Environmental Improvement Plan that everyone should be within a 15 minutes’ walk of a green or blue space. Achieving this requires good data to measure the current baseline and indicate where policy could be targeted to improve access. We setup a multi-disciplinary team to develop data measuring walking times for 26 million households to nearby green spaces. It brought together analysts from multiple professions, alongside policy and subject matter experts. They reviewed relevant research and literature, developed definitions, undertook complex calculations using a range of large geospatial datasets, and produced a high-quality statistical publication. The result is a new Official Statistic in Development: “Access to Green Space in England”. This has been welcomed by stakeholders as a step change in the accurate modelling of access in a way that is sensitive to the geographical barriers that people encounter when visiting nature”.

Judges’ comments

Wide collaboration across Whitehall and beyond using different channels which improved data, methods, enhanced insight. Official Statistic in Development was published and well received but collaboration and development of the project continues.

Strong evidence of collaboration across professions and organisations, with good governance structures. Good evidence of drawing on external approaches. Good evidence of public engagement (dedicated mailbox).

Good collaboration across professions and departments; improved data through a new dataset.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for Defra’s “Access to Green space in England” team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

 This year we had two highly commended nominations for the collaboration award!

GSS Vision Metrics Group

• Department: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)
• Nominated work: “Delivering a Monitoring System for the GSS Vision”

Summary

“The cross-government Government Statistics Service (GSS) strategic vision (‘Strength in Numbers’) aims to improve collaboration across the GSS. This group of 14 analysts from eight government departments have come together to showcase what this collaboration can look like: in just 12 weeks, the group have voluntarily built a monitoring system to measure progress against many of the key deliverables of the GSS strategic vision, all whilst carrying out their day jobs. Members worked with other analysts they never worked with before, collected data from numerous departments, and analysed this unfamiliar cross-government data. They then turned that raw data and analysis into clear outputs and insights to highlight progress against the GSS strategic vision, which Sir Ian Diamond and other senior members of the National Statistics Executive Group will regularly review going forward. They have done this in a short time frame despite numerous barriers, highlighting the effective collaboration of all involved”.

Judges’ comments

Fantastic example of corporate contribution for the benefit of one of the AF professions. Volunteers collaborated well within the virtual volunteer team.

Multi-department engagement, structured ways of working operating in tight timings.

Student Finance Modelling Unit

• Department: Department for Education (DfE)
• Nominated work: “Awesome collaboration while forecasting £billions of student loans

Summary

“As deputy director for the Higher Education Analysis division, I would like to nominate DfE’s Student Finance Modelling Unit (SFMU). SFMU deliver some of the Department’s most business-critical modelling on a high-profile area of Government expenditure; over £20bn of student loans are issued every year to over half a million new student entrants. It is the kind of business-as-usual analysis that too-easily goes uncelebrated, and yet perfectly demonstrates the crucial value of analysis to the running of Government. With a very broad range of stakeholders, effective collaboration is embedded into almost every day-to-day activity. The unit collaborate brilliantly with multiple internal and external stakeholders: policy colleagues, other analysts, finance partners, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), National Audit Office (NAO), HM Treasury, the Student Loans Company, and officials in devolved administrations. They achieve great results: constantly meeting pressing deadlines, continually improving relationships and working arrangements with partners, and gradually expanding the sophistication of the model pipeline”.

Judges’ comments

Good collaboration across DfE, other government department (OGD), and external stakeholders showing how the team consistently improve their collaboration to achieve better results in their business as usual (BAU). Good comments from the stakeholders praising the team.

Good example of ongoing work that relies on good collaboration.

Within department collaboration, high impact.

This year we have two joint winners for the communication award!

Programme for Government (PfG) Wellbeing Framework Development team

• Department: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA)
• Nominated work: “Northern Ireland Programme for Government Wellbeing Framework”

Summary

“The two teams involved in this collaboration have ensured that evidence in the form of official statistics is right at the heart of NI government decision making. The Wellbeing Framework they have developed and promoted has been published alongside the draft NI Programme for Government (PfG). The framework combines social, environmental, economic, and democratic factors essential for our society to flourish; ten strategic domains of Wellbeing, supported by a series of official statistic indicators describe the state of NI society. Disseminated via a carefully considered, user-centric dashboard the framework provides politicians, policy makers and the general public with an unparalleled opportunity to assess the state of NI society, progress over time and impacts on sub-populations. It has undoubtedly raised the profile and strategic importance of our outputs and the analytical community in NI”.

Judges’ comments

Great bid, clear detail on how the metrics were developed and agreed with rigour (to OS standards) and clear praise from key users. With more time, it will be possible to see wider impact of publication.

Good balance between consideration of indicators and then their communication – recognising that ever changing metrics are unhelpful for meaningful public debate.

This felt like a game-changing approach, where the team had to convince seniors and ministers of a fundamentally new approach and then delivered it. Achieved across-the-board positive endorsement of the final product.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Programme for Government (PfG) Wellbeing Framework Development team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Explore Subnational Statistics team

• Department: Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• Nominated work: “Launching Explore Local Statistics Beta service”

Summary

“Local data can be difficult to find, fragmented and inconsistent, hampering decision-making. The new Explore Local Statistics (ELS) service enables people to find, visualise, compare, and download subnational data, accessibly presented to both the public and local policymakers.

Visualisations show how areas compare with other local authorities across topics including health, education, and the economy. To power the innovative interface, the team sourced and standardised data from across departments, providing it in one place. Extensive user research throughout its development ensured this groundbreaking tool provided a careful balance of technical detail and simple headline numbers, to serve its broad user base. Stakeholders have described ELS as ‘invaluable’ and ‘an important tool’ that will ‘directly inform’ policy work, with 57% of users rating it ‘extremely useful’.

The service won this year’s Campion Award for Excellence in Official Statistics, where it was praised for its ‘real potential to empower local areas’”.

Judges’ comments

Excellent bid – clear thought has gone into the design and presentation of the product, with an award-winning service as the result.

Considered user needs from outside an individual departments. Perspective with good user engagement throughout reflected in usage and feedback.

Liked user research, the real-world problem that was tackled (i.e. the multiple sources/burden on LAs), the development of comparisons and the strong feedback scores.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Explore Subnational Statistics team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

StatsAID team

• Department: Department for Transport (DfT)
• Nominated work: “Transport in Numbers”

Summary

“The Transport in Numbers (TiN) project is an ambitious initiative aimed at creating a one-stop, user-centred website for accessing and exploring key DfT statistics. The core idea is to present data through a story-driven narrative, allowing users to choose strategic areas they care about, and receive the information they need. Different user needs are served by varied presentations of the data, offering key lines and customisable charts, as well as a full backseries of data for users interested in the broader context. To ensure that the data is timely and relevant, TiN makes use of sophisticated data engineering and cloud technologies to automatically collect the relevant cross-modal statistics on the day of publication and uses a modular construction to allow easy addition or pivoting of topic areas to meet emerging strategic interests. The launch of TiN represented a step forward in allowing users to self-serve policy-relevant data at pace”.

Judges’ comments

Good bid and description of development approach putting focus on users and accessibility. Comprehensive in approach to scraping all statistics daily.

Good use of stories and customisable charts to cater to different user’s needs, like focus on making dashboard appearance GOV.UK-like.

Liked user research, seamless pipeline of data using web-scraping and making the work available to other analysts across government.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the StatsAID team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Fingertips webinars team

• Department: Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC)
• Nominated work: “National Fingertips webinar programme”

Summary

“We believe good analysis should not sit gathering dust, but that it should be available to the right person, at the right time and in the right format. Sometimes though, our audience may not have the necessary skills, confidence, or understanding to be able to make best use of the public health data that is available to them. Our Fingertips webinar programme is designed to support users of public health intelligence through a statistical journey, building confidence in their own understanding of data and ultimately empowering them to make better evidence-based decisions that improve the health of their population. Through interactive webinars delivered at scale, we introduce our data tools clearly and accessibly in a supportive environment, tailoring to the needs of the audience. Our webinar programme demonstrates that it is possible to communicate complex analysis with a large, diverse audience in a way that leads to better working practices”.

Judges’ comments

Interesting bid, focused on webinars to communicate a data tool. Excellent way to consider how to ensure data is effectively and appropriately used.

Refreshing to see a nomination based on engaging users to help them access data and tools alongside all the dashboard nominations.

Liked the problem being tackled (a 15-year-old, fundamentally sound, product that couldn’t support different types of users who needed to use it in the real-world) and the feedback scores were fantastic.

Contracted Employment Analysis Team

• Department: Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)
• Nominated work: “Changing our understanding of the impact of Contracted Employment Support”

Summary

“In the last few years the team, from all the analytical professions, have transformed the evidence base for employment programmes. By linking a wide range of datasets and applying ground-breaking analysis they demonstrated these interventions have significant impact for helping tens of thousands of people enter and remain in employment for many years. In turn, they calculated these programmes, costing around £0.5bn/year, more than pay for themselves. All analysis was academically peer reviewed. Moreover, they have used this evidence, alongside qualitative research, to influence the design and procurement of major new programmes including Restart and Universal Support. They presented the evidence to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) who scored the employment impacts – first time ever for a labour market programme. This has influenced evaluation and policy making across more Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) teams: a brilliant demonstration of driving ‘the policy cycle’ to develop evidence-based policies that improve the lives via complex and innovative analysis”.

Judges’ comments

Strong on collaboration and innovation and use of evaluation, clear outcomes including influencing policy and convincing OBR.

Outstanding evidence of complex analysis with a clear real-world impact. The team have influenced significant amounts of spend and the design of several of DWP’s work programmes – impressive stuff.

Nice piece of complex analysis delivered over long time horizon.

Excellent impact demonstrated so far in a tricky policy area with long standing evidence gaps… the potential longer-term impact for this project is huge.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Contracted Employment Analysis Team team for the People’s Choice Award 2025.

Employment Rights Analysis Team

• Department: Department for Business and Trade (DBT)
• Nominated work: “Make Work Pay analysis”

Summary

“The Employment Rights Bill is the first phase of delivering the Plan to Make Work Pay, supporting employers, workers, and unions to get Britain moving forward. The Bill is wide-ranging and complex, but in just over two months the team delivered advice to Ministers on the impacts of the Bill and published 24 impact assessments totalling over 800 pages of robust analysis. This made headline news and ensured that Parliamentarians had an assessment of the Bill ahead of the first Parliamentary debates. It also meant that Government has been able to effectively communicate the rationale for the changes and the expected impacts on workers, business, and growth. At the same time, the team have supported decision-making around the next increase to the National Living Wage announced at the Budget, using analysis to secure a pay rise for 3 million low paid workers”.

Judges’ comments

An impressive amount of work done in a short space of time; the impacts are good in influencing the public debate.

Good evidence provided on the importance of the analysis produced at pace for a significant Bill Impact Assessment. Impact will be felt once the Bill is enacted.

Excellent impact evidence, timely, important work

Great work, which demonstrates the value and impact analytical support can have during work to develop a bill.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for Employment Rights Analysis Team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

This year we had two highly commended nominations for the Impact award!

Living England Team

• Department: Natural England
• Nominated work: “Living England open data sharing”

Summary

“Living England has published national maps of England’s diverse habitats, derived from satellite imagery, machine learning and a targeted national field survey programme. Publishing reproducible datasets every two years under an OGL, the team are transparently sharing their methods, analysis-ready Earth Observation (EO) products and survey data across the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) group and externally. The Living England team has fostered engagement with key environmental organisations, thereby enabling diverse and extensive impact. This has included use of Living England data to inform key policies like the 25 YEP, Biodiversity Net Gain, 30-by-30, Nature Recovery Networks and Local Nature Recovery Strategies. Data users range from those in Defra group and arms-length bodies (ALBs), academia, non-government organisations (NGO)s, and commercial bodies such as Ordnance Survey (OS), Verna Earth and Map Impact. The project’s success has been recognised by the EO industry, winning RSPSoc’s Business Innovation Award. It has also featured in Defra CDO’s Roadmap as a flagship example of strong cross-government collaboration”.

Judges’ comments

Great collaboration from within and outside of government, and clear there is a lot of impact for a wide range of stakeholders.

Strong, innovative analysis. Clear evidence of broad collaboration and team being proactive to disseminate the results.

Lovely bit of data generation for impact.

Strong demonstration of impact, particularly impressed by the ability to build-in citizen generated data into the system.

 

Maritime Analysis team

• Department: Department for Transport (DfT)
• Nominated work: “Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy Analysis”

Summary

“Decarbonisation of the maritime sector represents an analytically ambitious challenge. The sector is diverse and mostly privately-operated, making it trickier to understand, and harder for Government to intervene. This nomination reflects the impressive work by the multi-profession Maritime Environment Analysis team to use analysis to define decarbonisation measures, which form the backbone of the UK’s Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy. The team has developed a highly innovative emissions model, forecasts of emissions and costs, under a range of scenarios that reflect the choices the sector must make with these policies. This has enabled us to produce an improved greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pathway for UK domestic maritime”.

Judges’ comments

Great work, developing in a new area and utilising expertise from both within government and academia including novel use of operations research (OR) techniques.

Fantastic modelling work which the team has been able to demonstrate has moved forward the evidence base considerably.

Strong impact – impressed by potential soft power benefits of developing a world leading model.

HMRC’s National Neurodiversity Network project team

• Department: HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
• Nominated work: “Make Working at HMRC Work for Everyone survey”

Summary

“The co-chairs of HMRC’s National Neurodiversity Network and a team of dedicated researchers have exemplified commitment to diversity and inclusion by spearheading a Government Social Research (GSR) project to address negative workplace experiences of neurodivergent employees. Going beyond their regular duties, the team conducted HMRC’s first large-scale survey exploring the experiences of neurodivergent employees. Their efforts led to actionable insights and cost-effective interventions that are being reviewed by HMRC’s Executive Committee and HR department. This work not only benefits colleagues in HMRC, but also sets a precedent for inclusivity practices across the Civil Service. To help improve the data collected across the civil service, this GSR-led project team has been contacted by other government departments to share their knowledge on designing and delivering robust social research with neurodivergent colleagues. This nomination brings together the unique viewpoints of neurodivergent colleagues and the expertise of government researchers to champion inclusivity within government”.

Judges’ comments

Good example of challenging inequalities and barriers as well as producing analysis on the subject, all whilst going beyond their day jobs. Still to determine the measurable positive impact.

Fantastic example of driving forward new analysis to improve the department’s understanding of the barriers faced by neurodiverse colleagues, and thereby enabling change to happen. Potential applicability across other departments to have even great impact. Great work by the team.

The team has produced unique analysis to analyse and address negative workplace experiences of neurodivergent employees making improvements to data collection.

Important evidence to drive inclusion in a poorly (often misunderstood) area of diversity. Huge amount read across for the wider civil service in terms of the evidence base, but also the policy changes/adaptions put in place as a result.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the HMRC’s National Neurodiversity Network project team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Black Analyst Forum

• Department: Cross-government
• Nominated work: “Black Analyst Forum; a new network for civil servants”

Summary

“The Black Analyst Forum (BAF) launched in 2024, is a network formed of black analysts from all the different analytical professions within the Civil Service. The forum aims to be a safe space to network; learn from one another and be able to discuss any specific challenges or issues faced. The network has members from all the core professions (Government Economic Service (GES), Government Operational Research Service (GORS), Government Statistical Service (GSS), and Government Social Research (GSR)), as well as colleagues from other backgrounds such as data science, finance etc. The network has put on a range of events so far and brought in seniors from across departments and professions to endorse their work. Overall, the part that makes the network so unique is how niche it is on focusing on the analysis within the Civil Service, and how we make both the environment and our work more inclusive”.

Judges’ comments

Great example of where members of the function have spotted a gap, and created a new staff network to fill it, with significant potential to grow and have further impact into the future.

Fantastic work and a huge amount of potential for the future with some great impact already made in the first six months. Would really encourage the lead to re-nominate in a year when they have a clearer strategy / objectives and are able to tell an even more compelling story of the change they are making.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Black Analyst Forum for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Charlotte Bateson, Hayley Forrest, Hannah Willmett, Trudy Hill, Helen Banks, Esme Hookway, Courtney Cox, Emily Knipe, Chloe Stone, Tansy Arthur.

• Department: Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• Nominated work: “UK Veterans Survey”

Summary

“The UK government is committed to making the UK the best place to be a veteran by 2028. The ONS Veterans Analysis Team and Adhoc Surveys Team delivered outstanding qualitative analysis on the UK veterans population. Their work improved our diversity and inclusion data, ensuring accurate and comprehensive insights. By analysing veterans’ unique viewpoints, they have demonstrated an inclusive culture. The qualitative analysis of nearly 8,000 text responses ensured comprehensive and richer insights. The teams coded, themed and QAed responses, identifying key themes with quotation evidence, significantly enhancing the quantitative analysis and the understanding of veterans’ challenges and lived experiences. It will inform policy decisions eg. the qualitative analysis identified that although most veterans had access to a dentist, many struggled for access, sometimes waiting a very long time to access a dentist. The analysis has demonstrated a positive impact on understanding the lives of veterans and their families”.

Judges’ comments

Some good examples of considering accessibility and diversity of the groups being considered for surveying.

Good example of using analytical techniques to gather further evidence on the experiences of veterans to inform policy.

The ONS team produced great quality analysis of the UK veteran population identifying some insights not obvious from jut quantitative analysis.

Discovery analytics team

• Department: Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl)
• Nominated work: “Innovative horizon scanning identifies the science and technology of the future”

Summary

“Horizon scanning to identify the most impactful science and technology of the future is a conceptually and technically challenging problem given the large volume of academic papers and scientific news published every day. The Discovery team has built a pipeline that uses a range of innovative techniques to progressively filter out articles which are less likely to be relevant including: – Large topic models that group millions of papers into around 50,000 themes. – Carefully crafted prompts for a Large Language Model that help us understand the potential of the science described for Defence. Previously, entirely manual processes required analysts to read up to 800 articles per month, with a 1% “hit rate” for new signals, a tiny proportion of the material published. Now, over 300,000 articles are sifted and triaged automatically per month. These automatically triaged articles achieve up to a 40% “hit rate” when read by analysts in more detail”.

Judges’ comments

Very interesting work grappling with a difficult area and achieving real efficiencies. Clear attention paid to learning from emerging approaches internationally.

Great example of using technology to drive significant efficiencies and enhanced outcomes. Also an excellent demonstration of identifying and explaining the risks of the approach taken, testing the process and engaging with other for input and review.

Clearly innovative, learnt from outer countries (and peer reviewed). Significant saving on human effort and success rate. Particularly liked the extension to test for “weak links” recognising it’s not perfect and they used resources to improve their filtering to identify potential edge cases. While not traditional analysis the impact of more efficiently processing vast amounts of information is clear.

Fantastic use of AI to solve an automation problem and drive efficiency and outcomes.

This felt like a real gamechanger/paradigm shift in terms of sheer scale and strike rate, with multiple approaches used, risks recognised, and international peer review undertaken. Code going to be shared.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for the Discovery analytics team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Risk & Intelligence Service (RIS) Preventive Risking – Fraud DNA Team

• Department: HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
• Nominated work: “Fraud DNA”

Summary

“Imagine having a superpower that helps spot fraudulent behaviour in customer activity before it’s too late. Our project, Fraud DNA, uses innovative graph-theory to build a tool for identifying and combating fraudulent behaviour in taxation. By creating a knowledge graph (think of it as your social network) representing relationships between customers and their activities, we’ve developed a system that identifies large-scale fraudulent behaviour and helps compliance workers to assess large volumes of repayment claims quickly and efficiently. This allows for smarter working by grouping similar activities together, enabling better productivity by streamlining the process. Moreover, the system is application agnostic, making it easily adaptable across government. Our solution not only improves fraud detection but enhances the customer experience by reducing processing times for genuine claims. Additionally, its flexible structure provides a platform to put interim controls in place in response to imminent policy changes, while dedicated systems can be optimised”.

Judges’ comments

Great bid – using innovative methods and graphing techniques to predict fraudulent activity and more efficiently target resources. It would have been interesting to know the benefits derived at scale, but great to see development follow agile approaches and be thoughtful about how products would be used.

Great example of drawing on techniques used within the commercial sector to support vital government operations, with a clear objective. Good recognition of some important risks with controls in place to manage them, and insight from stakeholders to develop a better tool. Efficiency benefits recognised with cases taking 25% of the time previously required. Also good illustration of design and approach to be ready for wider use, adding to value.

Interesting graph approach to identifying potentially “risky” cases. Good learning from wider financial sector.

This is a full transformation program with clear impact, really innovative approach.

I thought this another gamechanger/paradigm shifting project, enabling proactive prevention and detection of fraud and enabling operational staff to have all the information they need at their fingertips, and with an efficiency saving compared to manual.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for RIS Preventive Risking – Fraud DNA Team for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Data Science Unit

• Department: Welsh Government
• Nominated work: “AI Predicted Historic Woodlands”

Summary

“Evie Brown, from Welsh government’s Data Science Unit, has led a project to train a computer vision machine learning model to identify areas of woodland shown on map data from as early as the 1840s. The work, commissioned by Cadw (the Welsh Government’s historic environment service), aims to identify areas of historic woodland that have been cleared over the last 150 years. These are of significant environmental importance and could be targeted by replantation schemes due to the historic seed bank and root systems improving the chance of success. It also gives us a unique glimpse into our natural heritage. The model predictions, which cover the whole of Wales, have been published under Open Government Licence as a polygon layer on Data Map Wales. This meets our commitment to work openly and share our work across the wider public sector and beyond”.

Judges’ comments

Very interesting bid on analysing historic maps to identify likely historic woodland in Wales. Limitations (to do probabilistic outputs) communicated to users, and potential use of the analysis made very clear.

Excellent use of technology to undertake analysis previously proving too time consuming to effectively scale. Good illustration of wider input and review, with refinement of the analysis and highlighting of the limitations of the approach.

Novel (and interesting) approach to reusing old data (historical maps) to better understand ancient woodlands. Use of neural networks and lots of recalibration to produce an innovative data set for public use (good transparency). Techniques learnt will be applied elsewhere.

Innovative solution to an interesting challenge.

This project used AI to replace a manual process that had never been able to predict at scale, enabling key geographical areas to be found that were beyond living memory. Refinement reduced limitations and the project has been very transparent in its approach.

Rebecca Vincent

• Department: Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)
• Nominated work: “Childcare deserts and oases”

Summary

“Rebecca Vincent, a Senior Analytical Officer, has significantly advanced our understanding of access to local childcare. Alongside the government’s £14 billion investment in childcare reforms, Rebecca led a highly innovative project to develop neighbourhood-level metrics of childcare access. She built and capitalised on collaborations across government and academia to develop a model that assesses accessibility based on childcare providers and local travel infrastructure. Her innovative approach included highly intuitive interactive visualisations, which generated strong interest from the media and even No.10. Rebecca also built partnerships with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to publish a joint report on childcare accessibility, linking Ofsted metrics to local earnings and education figures. The timeliness and impact of this work has been widely recognised, influencing ongoing government policy and earning her team a finalist spot in the Civil Service Awards 2024. Rebecca exemplifies the initiative, drive, and big-picture thinking needed in future analytical leaders”.

Judges’ comments

Really strong analysis using multiple complex data sets; and great relationship building, convening cross govt teams. Impressed with interface with academia and with concentration on impact.

Strong on collaboration across government and innovation with some clear outcomes and good to see how they upskilled their team, great to see the feedback from others too.

Impactful large-scale project on local level childcare metrics – involving multiple depts/orgs. Published and informing national debate on childcare issues.

Good passion and drive, and impactful work.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for Rebecca Vincent for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Jamie Thomas

• Department: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG)
• Nominated work: “All round amazing contributor to the GSS & Analysis Function”

Summary

“Jamie joined the Civil Service from university in 2022 on the Fast Stream. During his first year, innovating while delivering stats production, it was clear he was an exceptional candidate ready to perform at Grade 7. He took on MHCLG’s Deputy Head of Profession (Statistics) role on temporary promotion. Jamie has made an incredible contribution with exceptional passion and energy yet delivering in a calm, composed and efficient manner, even through the challenges of the pre-election period. He has reinvigorated the statistician community in MHCLG, developed processes and information flows to support the departmental analytical community and delivered exceptionally across a huge variety of tasks and topic areas. He has made a valuable contribution towards the new GSS vision, leading groups to set up metrics to monitor its success. He also pushes his own development, taking on opportunities such as the department’s Shadow Executive Team and providing cover in a ministerial office”.

Judges’ comments

Strong and impressive coordination of stakeholders and timely work under pressure.

Well-written, with clear outcomes and good reflections on where next and building on success so far in particular for a G7 on temporary promotion (TP).

Reinvigorated the statistical process and community of MHCLG. Pro-active and impactful across a range of areas. Stepping up into departmental Head of Profession (HoP) role in their second year. Delivering statistical governance as well as improved stats production. Impressive so early in career.

Delivering beyond grade already, good impacts, many of which were community related/supporting others.

People’s Choice Award 2025

From Monday 27 January you can vote for Jamie Thomas for the People’s Choice Award 2025

Will Shepherd

• Department: Office for National Statistics (ONS)
• Nominated work: “Longitudinal Business Database, HMRC trade in goods data and local employment dynamics”

Summary

“Will Shepherd is an Apprentice who has excelled as an economist, delivering above and beyond what would be expected of someone so early in their career. Only two years into his apprenticeship he has lead work on employment dynamics using ONS administrative data which he presented at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence conference. His commitment and passion for analysis made him become an expert in the HMRC Trade in Goods data, from which he developed another complex and novel dataset for our stakeholders. He used his expertise to train and inspire other analysts some more senior to him. Will’s technical proficiency, curiosity and leadership showcases his immense potential to excel in his future career”.

Judges’ comments

Really top leadership, understanding need for Rapid Analytical Pipelines (RAP), taking on Deputy Head of Profession (HoP) at an early stage.

Great start for this person and good to emphasise both what and how they’ve done things and how they were supportive of other colleagues.

Strong start to career. Varied examples demonstrating enthusiasm and drive for analysis. Clearly impacting inside organisation and improving processes. Commitment to learning and knowledge sharing. Strong QA vibes.

Exceeding performance of an apprentice, supporting colleagues through training while delivery impactful outputs.