The first global peer-to-peer platform for government, to help public servants find the ideas, experts and partners they need to solve today’s hardest challenges

Project Information

APOLITICAL

Grant agreement ID: 946233

DOI

10.3030/946233

Project closed

EC signature date 18 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 30 September 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 1 904 541,25

EU contribution

€ 1 333 178,00

Coordinated by

APOLITICAL GROUP LIMITED
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - APOLITICAL (The first global peer-to-peer platform for government, to help public servants find the ideas, experts and partners they need to solve today’s hardest challenges)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2022-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

OECD countries spend around 40% of GDP on government, i.e. $30 trillion globally; $6 trillion in the EU. Yet the policies that govern the allocation of these vast sums are often made haphazardly, without looking around the world to see what’s worked and what’s failed – at great cost to society.

Apolitical Group Limited was founded in 2015 in London, UK, by two experienced entrepreneurs: Robyn Scott and Lisa Witter. The company now has 45 employees. We have developed a web-based platform
called Apolitical (TRL7) which went online in June 2017. It is the first of its kind global policy insights peer-to-peer platform which addresses the $8 trillion global public-sector procurement market. It has reached more than 30 million people with its policy content; and its private network is used by more than 16,000 policymakers in more than 140 countries.

Through the SME Instrument Phase 2 project will upscale the TRL7 platform into a fully featured version which, along with other new features, includes a subscription-based community and marketplace serving governments, policymakers and business. We will target the public sector market in OECD countries comprising 8M civil servants, including 3M potential users for our subscription product.

Our project team, led by our CEO Ms. Robyn Scott, has a strong track record in project management, marketing, finance, fundraising, leadership, and technology.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Despite the pandemic, 2020 has been a year of tremendous progress for Apolitical, largely thanks to the impact of the H2020 grant on our ability to innovate and hire the specialist staff required to make the technological advancements we to solve the growing knowledge and skills challenges faced by the global public service.

Year 1 of our project has seen a heavy focus on research, user testing, redesign and technological advancement.

Research and User Testing
We have undertaken both qualitative and quantitative market research to better understand our target market at both an individual and organisational level. This has provided critical input into decisions relating to how we have redesigned and restructured our platform for our user base.

Redesign and rebuild
Our product team worked extensively through Q3 to rebuild and relaunch our platform using the data and insights gained from our research. Early feedback (we’ve attained an NPS of 95%) suggests that the latest version of the platform, which includes short courses as a new content type, suggests this has been successful.

Business Development
We have won some important early sales, which has allowed for some early experimentation and testing of an initial c. 6,000 underlying individuals on Apolitical Plus+ who will be utilising the platform, as well as a total of 115,000+ users across both the paid and the free platform. Whilst we have completed extensive research, it is imperative that we use the early data and feedback to continue to innovate and improve our service. We are in the process of hiring a Head of Learning for whom we can call upon in Year 2 of the project to help drive continuous changes and improvements to the platform.

Technological advancements
Our early Civia product (which we’re now calling GovQuery based on user research) has been developed by our data science team throughout Year 1 of the project. We have set up extensive infrastructure for web-scraping policy-related content from high quality sources. We have deployed an advanced graph database solution called RDFox, which supports semantic reasoning through the application of logical rules to link data points from different sources. We then implemented a content discovery tool to allow a non-technical user to extract insights from the graph and we’re currently in the process of creating and testing a user interface for this, likely employing faceted search

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Apolitical’s mission is to make government work better for people and the planet. We measure our success by whether we are achieving this mission. Ultimately this is achieved by helping governments be more effective (delivering better services) or more efficient (delivery more for less taxpayer money).

In turn, this is enabled by helping public servants be more effective in their jobs. continuously undertake user research and seek feedback to understand the impact our service is having. Early data is encouraging: 83% of users of the free product say it makes them more effective in their jobs and our NPS score on the new paid product is 95%.

Of those users we surveyed, 66% have already applied their learnings.

Some samples of feedback we’ve heard since starting the project:

“I’ve worked for the government for over 40 years, this is the first time I’ve seen an article that actually acknowledges the breadth and depth of our jobs and the stress that goes with it. I find that refreshing and encouraging.”— A Canadian public servant.

“It’s so hard to get the right information to policymakers in the way they need it. I’m so pleased that DfID is partnering with Apolitical to try and solve that.” -- Director of the UN Peacebuilding Support Office.

“It’s really good to see how Apolitical has reacted so quickly to current events. It was amazing to see more than 800 people from around the world brought together to optimise how the public sector responds, in real time, to the rapidly evolving crisis.” -- Head of the Women's Equality Party in the UK

“Eye-opening, mainly due to the diverse backgrounds and as a consequence, the diverse topics they brought to the table through their writing. I would recommend this to any individual working in the public sector to take part!” -- Anonymous public servant

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