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 "Operational delivery", along with a short description of the work in alphabetical order.
Ecosystems Analysis Team and Digital & Data Solutions Team, Joint Nature Conservation Committee
The Copernicus User Uptake Project (UK Action)
In recent years there have been large increases in the amount of satellite derived environmental data, notably through the Copernicus space programme. These data have great potential for the environmental sector and are free at point of access; however appropriate skills and knowledge are required to make best use of them. This project delivers 5 different components with as many as 32 different public sector organisations interacting with one or many.
Long Term Monitoring Network (LTMN), Natural England
Improving environmental data publication processes through increased efficiency and usability
The Long Term Monitoring Network (LTMN) was set up in 2009 to intensively monitor environmental and ecological information on a network of sites (mostly National Nature Reserves) across England to provide evidence on the effects of changing climate, air pollution and land management. The LTMN team, a small number of Natural England staff, was initially tasked with setting the project up and developing protocols. With these largely now in place, the team has recently been concentrating on manipulating and analysing the data, and to making it available quickly and in user-friendly formats to those who could benefit from it.
NIMA Support Team (NST), Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI), Dept. of Finance (Northern Ireland)
Supporting and enhancing Northern Ireland’s public sector spatial data infrastructures to transform the delivery of key public services
The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) depends on spatial information and technologies to deliver critical public services. To leverage and optimise the benefits of geographic information, many NICS departments rely on NIMA Support Team (NST) to support and enhance these services. NST’s 2020 contributions to NICS departments’ spatial data infrastructures are evident in the delivery of transformative projects including the implementation of innovative data collection and workflow processes, data analyses to inform departmental and national policies, and transforming and enhancing access to authoritative, high-value datasets for use and re-use throughout the public sector and by the public at large.
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