Department for Education

SmartSurvey, the UK’s leading provider of digital survey solutions, helped the Department for Education improve the quality and security of their data collection

The requirement

The Department for Education identified that a wide range of internal users were using various tools to collect data. However, most of them were using many different online survey providers, which they setup or procured independently. This meant that there was no way to measure the quality or number of surveys and forms that were being created and sent out, or the amount of money being spent on these tools across the organisation. Also, whether any of those tools were safe enough to use from a data privacy standpoint.

It was clear to Head of Social Research, Vicky Petrie, that their users often had little or no research experience. This caused concern about both the quality of surveys being sent to customers and the security of the data collected. Therefore, they identified the need for an organisation-wide survey platform that would provide a streamlined, secure and cost-effective solution.

The solution

The Department for Education required a solution that allowed them to easily manage their users and monitor the activities across their accounts. It was also important to ensure that quality and brand consistency was being delivered throughout these activities. The department identified that 200 licences were required to allow members of staff to carry out research or some sort of data collection.

The solution for these requirements was the SmartSurvey Enterprise Edition.

Vicky Petrie commented:

We have established a network of social researchers who act as ‘SmartSurvey Champions’ across the department and who offer help and advice to policy teams. To streamline the process, we’ve taken advantage of webinar training provided by SmartSurvey for new users._{Vicky, Department for Education}

SmartSurvey provides a host of benefits including:

• Advanced features, including question logic, pre-population, and email triggers
• The ability to control access and set user privileges
• Fully branded surveys, with custom domain branding
• Various distribution channels, including Email and SMS tracking, and of course Offline surveys
• Powerful reporting tools, including filtering, cross tabulation, and text analysis (word clouds)
• The ability to schedule reports and export them to CSV, Excel, and Word

The Department for Education has introduced an internal approval process for any surveys that are sent outside the department in order to improve quality and eliminate the burden on schools and other organisations.

A key benefit is that SmartSurvey is ISO 27001 certified. Also, all data is encrypted during transit and at rest, and is stored and backed up on UK servers.

Mo Naser, SmartSurvey Sales & Marketing Director, commented:

We work with a lot of government and public-sector organisations who use our platform to simplify the process of data collection. There are a wide range of use cases - the beauty of SmartSurvey is that it can be used for practically anything, from internal to external surveys, for training and employee surveys to customer satisfaction and public consultations. Our offerings are made available on the government’s G-Cloud framework, saving our customers the time and money associated with conducting their own risk assessments and lengthy procurement exercise._{Mo Naser, SmartSurvey}

The results

The Department for Education has allocated 200 user accounts to various teams within the organisation. By using the wide range of features that SmartSurvey has to offer, the organisation has implemented a robust and efficient way to carryout research which, as a result, has improved the overall quality of the data collected.