Creative Solutions Award Shortlist
An Innovative Civil Service
Supported by
Digital Services at the Border, Helios
Home Office: Border Force
The Helios team within the UK Home Office’s Digital Service at the Border programme were tasked with replacing critical national infrastructure protecting the UK Border; streamlining safety checks for approximately one billion passenger journey checkpoints annually. Their outstanding work on “Border Crossing in a Basket” showcases innovation, creativity, and transformative impact on delivering real-world benefits. Demonstrating originality, they pioneered a “shift-left” approach to crucial testing and automated suites, significantly reducing development time and enhancing code quality. Their dedication to excellence, modelling of civil service values, and far-reaching impact beyond their immediate team make them truly deserving of this recognition.
SARI Data Studio
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
The Self-Assessment Repayment Incident (SARI) Data Studio is a collaboration between CDIO Data Science and RIS ( Risk and intelligence Service), using cutting edge data science techniques to answer a question set by ExCom: To estimate levels of unknown fraud and compromised accounts in the Self-Assessment and VAT heads of duty. The work had never been undertaken before, and consequently by its very nature, was innovative in its approach, deploying network analysis and machine learning to process large amounts of data, providing insight never previously possible, and enabling mitigating actions to be introduced to services to protect revenue and customer accounts from criminal fraud.
Veterans ID Card Team (Joint GDS, OVA MOD)
Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence (MoD)
The Government has a commitment to deliver ID cards to veterans, which the Office for Veterans’ Affairs has made considerable progress on. The team has worked with GDS, MOD and with contracted experts to identify a creative technological solution, then test and implement it before the end of 2023. With new money committed by HMT, utilising new technology (GDS One Login), working creatively across multiple teams and departments the project is now about to deliver on that commitment and ensure 2 million Veterans right across the UK get their cards and can access services faster.