Why this matters

For the fourth year in a row, Apolitical is celebrating innovative, groundbreaking teams that are changing the game through our Public Service Team of the Year Awards. This has been a challenging year, and public servants have been pushed to be more creative, innovative, and thoughtful than ever before — and we want to celebrate their work.

How the finalists were selected

We received 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. Winners and runners-up were then selected based on votes from public servants around the world. You can see all categories of nominated teams here.

Winner

Data Literacy Training Initiative at Statistics Canada

The team behind the Data Literacy Training Initiative have worked in collaboration with Apolitical to create a 7-week training course teaching Canadian public servants fundamental data literacy skills. This course is the first of its kind and has been taken by over 5,000 public servants from hundreds of government organisations so far, with 95% of learners agreeing that their data skills have improved as a result. The course will be running for a third time in 2022, so watch this space!

Runner-up

Observa, Office of Studies and Statistics, Ministry of Science, Chile

Observa is a platform that gathers data and information on Chile's capacities and production in science, technology, knowledge and innovation. The platform allows organisations from across government to share information and strengthens research approaches. In September, the platform collated information from 28,000 projects that have received public funds from various organisations. This information is being used to create evidence-based policies that deliver better results for citizens.

Finalists

Disciplinary Action Unit, New South Wales (NSW) Fair Trading, Australia

The Disciplinary Action Unit (DAU) at NSW Fair Trading has been driving forward a digital transformation journey to make its internal processes as seamless and integrated as possible. So far, the team has migrated the data and information of over 800 matters dating back to 2015. Using live dashboards and custom-built automations, a single officer can now collate statistics in less than 10 minutes, something that used to take 2 staff members upwards of 4 hours! The DAU has been pioneering these game-changing technologies within the department, and is now more capable than ever to deliver on a broad range of positive outcomes for customers.

Open Contracting Portal, Government of Makueni County, Kenya

Makueni County in southeast Kenya is the first government in the country to implement an open data procurement platform. Today the number of public procurement processes published on the platform stands at 628 with a total worth of around $23.5 million. The platform has helped fight corruption and make savings in public procurement. It also allows civil society organisations to easily monitor spending. The data has been used by one advocacy group to identify 34 delayed projects and prompt investigations by the government.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) Collection and Ingestion Division for Census 2021, UK

The Digital Services and Technology teams at the ONS successfully delivered a digital-first census for the first time in 2021. The team created a respondent focused online experience for over 22 million citizens. Some 89% of households completed the census online, substantially exceeding the 75% target. Use of cloud architecture allowed the team to scale up to meet the high demand. On Census Day, the site was receiving just under half a million census submissions per hour at the peak.