Exemplar Award 2021

Exemplar Award 2021

We want to highlight your work. It’s incredible. GeoPlace’s Exemplar Awards are a powerful way to show local authority leaders why they should be investing in maintaining quality data, and how best practice can be delivered in their own areas too.

Over the past twelve months, we know you’ve gone above and beyond in your work. 2020-2021 has been an extraordinary year. We’ve seen location and place as vital drivers for responding to COVID-19, enabling all kinds of services to provide support for the most vulnerable people in our communities. After all, when we know where people are, we can help them faster and we can help them better.

Local authorities have been at the forefront of this response. The address and street data that the DCA community maintains has been critical in not just supporting central government, the NHS and Welsh Government’s response but also on a local level.

Although COVID-19 been the big focus for society as a whole this year, local authorities have also been delivering service as usual. We’re now accepting entries for the Exemplar Awards, recognising both the outstanding work that’s being done in the face of a global pandemic and the exceptional level of services being delivered by local government throughout.

If you’ve worked on a project that benefits people or your authority in some way or the data you’ve been maintaining has been used to great effect – perhaps in collaboration with partners – please let us know.

Entries can be based on:

• Responding to COVID-19
• Supporting vulnerable people
• Collaborating with emergency services
• Bringing data and systems together to deliver services better
• Making a difference to your local community.

You’re welcome to send in one entry, or multiple entries – we recognise there’s no limit to the impact of your work or what can be achieved with location data – and we’re particularly interested in entries that show the human side of your work. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, to qualify for an Exemplar Award.

See how to enter here.

The closing date for Award entries is 26th April 2021.

Past winners of this Award include:

• 2019: Sophie Birchall-Rogerson, Senior Management Information Systems Officer, Conwy County Council for the Environment Roads and Facilities Digital Transformation Project
• 2017: Ryan Gilchrist from Northumberland County Council for his work in using the gazetteer to roll out 30 hours free childcare a year in advance of full roll out nationally, doubling the existing free childcare for 3-4 year olds
• 2016: Rachel Antcliffe from Leeds City Council for her work on Understanding local populations between censuses
• 2015: Luke Chittock from the London Borough of Bromley for his work Evidence based procurement returns £800,000 per annum in Bromley
• 2014: Michelle Williams from the Joint Emergency Serviced Group (Wales) for the project how the UPRN underpins the Multi Agency Incident Transfer (MAIT) standard. The work was undertaken in partnership with:
  • North Wales Fire and Rescue Service
  • South Wales Fire and Rescue Service
  • Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service
  • South Wales Police
  • Dyfed Powys Police
  • Gwent Police
  • Welsh Ambulance Services Trust
  • Newport City Council