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 Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra)
• 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.