Research England Success

Rapid delivery of five GDS-compliant surveys in a few weeks

The Challenge

Launch five small scale surveys to universities with complex questions in short notice
Work with a tiny budget of a few thousand pounds
Integrate submissions with a ticketing system Freshdesk

We trained two inhouse people in the Research England Policy and engineering team to use the Govforms Platform
The Govforms Digital Survey Builder reused common GDS Design system components and patterns, as well as a front end tool to accelerate service assembly.
We obtained a restful API from Freshdeck to integrate into the Govforms Platform through out of the box configuration

The Results

Successfully delivered within time and budget.
17x cheaper than incumbent supplier and delivered within a few weeks
Five surveys delivered exploring aspects of the Research Excellence Framework enabling users to enter key information, attach documents to upload, save and come back later securely
The surveys enjoyed bug free experiences: across 4028 returning journeys and 943 submissions / completions
- Main Panel Chair Recruitment with 506 returning journeys and 50 submissions
- People, Culture and Environment (PCE) Expression of Interest with 584 returning journeys and 110 completions
- People, Culture and Environment (PCE) Pilot Panel Recruitment with 1759 returning journeys and 569 submissions
- People and Diversity Advisory Panel Recruitment with 669 returning journeys and 122 completions
- Research Diversity Advisory Panel Recruitment with 510 returning journeys and 92 submissions
Research England team members designed and built the surveys; self-trained to a proficient level on the Govforms Platform
Surveys created using Research England branding met GDS standards
Surveys were integrated with Freshdesks to control the monitoring of submission responses
Consequently, Govforms platform became an approved technology for wider use in the whole of UKRI 9 councils of which Research England is one.