Questions we are asked

No fee to nominate, to be shortlisted, to accept, to attend the ceremony, or to use the badge. There is no paid tier and nothing to upgrade to. If anyone invoices you in connection with GovTen, it did not come from us and we would like to know.

Yes, and most honorees will have. Nobody knows what your agency achieved better than the people who did it. Self-nominations are scored identically to third-party ones — the route in carries no weight in the rubric.

Yes, in one or several categories. Each entry is scored on its own. What does not work is one entry describing everything your department does, which will lose to a focused entry about one thing.

You will score lower than an entry that does, and you should still enter if the work is real. But spend ten minutes looking — a council report, a quarterly dashboard, a grant evaluation. The number usually exists somewhere and finding it is the highest-value thing you can do.

Staff who screen for eligibility, then two judges who see it with your agency name, jurisdiction and any vendor names removed. Your own name and email are never shown to judges and never published.

No. Lists are balanced across population bands, and where two entries tie, the smaller jurisdiction places higher — because doing it with less is harder. Small agencies are the ones we most want to hear from.

Yes. Around thirty-five countries are in active outreach and entries are accepted from anywhere. The form is available in six languages and judges are briefed to score on outcome rather than on how familiar the governance structure looks.

No. Honorees are named whether or not anyone attends, and the recording goes to everyone registered the same day. Gold Award recipients are invited to record a 120-second clip, and declining changes nothing.

Yes. We can send a certificate only, or nothing physical at all, and provide a declared-value letter for your disclosure filing. The list placement is never contingent on accepting the object. See the gift-rule guidance.

It should not, in either direction. Customers are eligible and are redacted like every other entry; judges have no access to customer data. We publish which honorees are customers if asked. Being a customer confers nothing, and neither does refusing to be one.

No sales or marketing action may be triggered by, timed to, or reference a GovTen award, and the honoree list is not given to the sales team as a lead source. That is a written policy with a technical control behind it. If it happens anyway, tell us and we will publish that it did.

Because it would measure communications capacity rather than quality of work. A three-person team in a rural county would lose to a metropolitan agency with a social media manager, every time, and the list would stop meaning anything.

Not individual judges' scores, because that would compromise the blind process and discourage candid scoring. We do publish the rubric, the weights, the funnel numbers, and — on request to the Chair — the reasoning recorded against your own entry.

We publish fewer than ten and say so plainly, or the Chair withholds the category. Filling a list to reach a round number would defeat the purpose of the programme.