The 2021 Geography in Government Awards opened for nominations in January, seeking examples of excellence in geography across the range of disciplines and organisations. The awards are now in their third year, and all the judges were impressed by the outstanding quality and range of examples the profession can offer. Once again, reading the nominations it was clear that geography in government is a broad profession with excellence across the public sector and a profession which is full of dedicated and talented individuals.
Although we’re again unable to host the award ceremony in person this year, the Government Geography Profession would like to take this opportunity to share the short listed nominations for each category. The virtual ceremony will take place on Thursday 27th May where the category winners will be announced, along with the overall winner. The overall winner is invited to the hugely prestigious Royal Geographical Society Awards, recognising the impact and importance of geography across the public sector.
Here are the shortlisted nominations for the category of "Contribution to the profession", along with a short description of the work in alphabetical order.
Christine Walton, UK Hydrographic Office
Christine Walton is to retire this year after 36 years at the UK Hydrographic Office. In this time she has contributed enormously in wide variety of fields within nautical charting both nationally and internationally. These have included chart compilation work, the conversion of charts to WGS 84 in UK waters, defining charting standards and policy, implementing a new GIS based production and maintenance system at the UKHO and finally becoming the Geographic Technical Lead at the UKHO for Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the west coast of England. Throughout her career she always displayed the core values that the Civil Service encourages, has acted with great integrity, always achieved an exceptional high standard in her work and has shown great enthusiasm to drive up the standard of our work and promote and further the role of women in our field.
ONS Geospatial, Office for National Statistics
Geography for Statistics Training
ONS Geospatial have undertaken a refresh and extension of the geographic training provided by the team. Existing content has been refreshed and restructured and new courses have been developed, to build theoretical and practical geographic expertise across ONS and the public sector. The results of the can be seen through the increased use of geospatial analysis and maps by analysts at ONS who support policy decisions for Covid-19. The training material is also the foundation for a module on the Data Science for the Public Sector MSc. This work has championed and promoted geography across the public sector.
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