Editorial

GOV.UK Notify team wins major public sector ‘Operational Excellence’ recognition

The team behind the GDS notifications platform – used across the public sector – grabs the Operational Excellence Award in this year’s Civil Service Awards

Posted 12 November 2018 by Gary Flood


The 12-person GDS team behind the GOV.UK Notify platform has won the Operational Excellence Award in this year’s Civil Service Awards.

Notify, which is now being used by 127 bodies across the entire UK public sector, including the NHS, was built by the Government Digital Service and is supported 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It sent its first messages in May 2016, and allows service teams across the public sector send emails, text messages and letters to their users: at least 200 million messages have been sent using GOV.UK Notify, including more than 170 million emails, since.

Now, that hard work has been recognised by the Awards in the shape of The Dame Lesley Strathie Operational Excellence Award for excellence in the delivery of public services, and which also acknowledges when a project puts user needs at the heart of a project and significantly improving the quality, value for money or productivity of services to the public.

“Obviously we’re incredibly proud of Notify and the impact it’s having right across the public sector, but this recognition for how our little team goes about delivering it really means so much to us,” enthused Notify Product Manager Pete Herlihy at the gala event at the end of last week.

Commenting on their decision, judges noted that, “GOV.UK Notify is a great example of a small, diverse set of civil servants challenging established ways of doing things, to rapidly deliver a product benefitting millions of people, whilst saving taxpayers millions.”

Notify is delivered by a multidisciplinary team including designers, user researchers and developers who GDS says “work closely with service teams across the country to constantly iterate and improve it”.