Why this matters

For the second year in a row, Apolitical will be celebrating innovative, groundbreaking teams that get the job done through our Public Service Team of the Year Awards. Though their work often goes unnoticed, we know that teams are at the heart of every effective government and are working hard every day to make people’s lives better.

This award celebrates teams with a focus on innovative policy putting citizens’ needs at the heart of their work. We’re looking for teams that have trialled or implemented policy that can deliver citizen-centric innovation in the public sector and ultimately make people’s lives better.

How to Vote

Voting has now closed.

How we selected the finalists

Our team received hundreds of nominations from teams all over the world. We then reviewed each nomination individually, and a panel of judges at Apolitical decided on a shortlist of teams for each category.

K-5 Plus Team, New Mexico Public Education Department

K-5 Plus is an education programme in New Mexico which gives children ‘at risk’ of falling behind their peers more time in school. The objective of this programme is to close the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged children and other students. The school-finance legislation offers money for participating school to increase the number of days schools are open. Overall, students whose parents sign them up for the state’s pre-kindergarten, K-5 Plus, and the extended learning programmes would receive the equivalent of 2½ additional years of school.

__ MineduLab, Peru__

MineduLAB is an innovation lab for education policy housed within the Ministry of Education (Minedu) and the Office of Strategic Monitoring and Evaluation (OSEE) in the government of Peru. The lab pilots and evaluates the effectiveness of innovations, with the ultimate goal of allowing the Ministry to use evidence to improve children’s learning throughout the country. They are focussed on finding cost-effective innovations, typically as modifications to the existing interventions of the Ministry of Education or as a new intervention proposal that is based on evidence based-principles. Among the innovations of MineduLAB is “Expand your mind” which helped students develop a growth mindset from an early age, and a SMS campaign that helped schools use the funds available to them for the maintenance and improvement of infrastructure.

UNDP Accelerator Labs Network

The Accelerator Labs are UNDP’s new way of working in development. Together with their core partners, the State of Qatar and the Federal Republic of Germany, 60 labs serving 78 countries will work together with national and global partners to find radically new approaches that fit the complexity of current development challenges.The labs aim to transform government approaches and introduce new services, backed by evidence and practice, by accelerating the testing and dissemination of solutions within and across countries.

Administrative Data Research Wales

Administrative Data Research Wales (ADR Wales) is an innovative partnership between public servants and data analysis experts from Swansea and Cardiff Universities to help inform and develop policy making in Wales. Together they are developing new evidence which supports the Welsh Government’s national strategy, Prosperity for All. This partnership enables the Welsh Government to understand more about the relationship between different areas of public service delivery and gain a better understanding of people’s experience as they move through different services. Previous analysis has contributed to the Welsh Government policy interventions including the following Fuel Poverty report, the homelessness support programme Supporting People, and the early years development programme Flying Start.

Ofgem Behavioural Insights Unit, UK

Ofgem is Great Britain’s energy regulator, and they have recently worked to apply behavioural insights to help previously disengaged energy consumers switch energy tariff and save money on their energy bills. They ran a series of five randomised control trials where consumers were offered an exclusive ‘collective switch’ tariff. Customers received priming, savings and reminder letters which outlined the easy and accessible steps to take to switch tariff before the trial deadline. In the most successful trial arm, the switching rate of 29.5%, compared to 4.5% in the control group, shows the effectiveness of the intervention at engaging customers. Customers who switched saved between £150 and £298 on average across the trials, leading to overall savings to consumers of £13.2 million

The Evidence-Based Policing Team, Wellington, New Zealand

The Evidence-Based Policing Team based in Wellington is the first of its kind in the world. It’s created a centre solely dedicated to EBP research projects, and distributes those findings to the wider police force. The team is comprised of researchers, data scientists, and design experts and works collaboratively with academic advisors from the University of Waikato. The team is conducting research on homicide trends, how to better police domestic violence, and how long police should remain at a crime scene.

__ Co-Lab, Ministry of Manpower, Government of Singapore__

Co-Lab is an innovation unit on a mission to ensure policies and services are not built on assumptions or beliefs, but on evidence and data from testing and trying. Their approach is helping the government in Singapore to redesign interactions with citizens and building a strong culture of data within. One initiative involved the personalisation of letters requesting people to book appointments to discuss their retirement plans. This saw the rates of people booking appointments after receiving the first letter increase from 15% to 31%

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