The 2010 Civil Service Awards were launched on Monday night by cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell. Speaking to an audience of permanent secretaries and other senior officials, Sir Gus urged civil servants to enter.

“It’ll be tremendous; a great boost to morale in what will be a very difficult year, so please let’s make this incredibly special,” he said.

He specifically focused on internal communications workers, saying to them: “Please, this year more than any other, all the people in the audience from internal comms, get out there and generate the nominations.”

Nominations for the awards close on Friday 6 August, and civil servants across the country are being encouraged to put forward entries in 14 categories. The cabinet secretary noted that the past year has been a challenging one, and said he expected a large number of entrants.

“If, in a year like this, we haven’t got some unbelievably good nominations, I’ll be really surprised,” he said. “There are magnificent examples every day of civil servants doing great things.” He particularly highlighted civil servants working in Afghanistan, and Jobcentre Plus staff who won last year’s special award.

The awards are to be held in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in early November. Explaining the choice of venue, Sir Gus said: “Well, we’ve done Lancaster House, we’ve done Banqueting House; how do you top that? Of course, the answer is that Her Majesty kindly lends us her residence and that we do it in Buckingham Palace.”

The Queen visited the Cabinet Office this week to thank the civil service for their work during the transition from the Labour government to the coalition. The cabinet secretary said she was “very pleased about the way the transition was managed, which allowed us constitutionally not to get the Queen involved, which was very important”.

Civil servants from across the Cabinet Office, as well as permanent secretaries from all government departments, were in attendance for the first ever visit by the Queen to the Cabinet Office. She also sat in on the weekly meeting of permanent secretaries while they discussed issues across government.

Written by Joshua Chambers, CSW