London, United Kingdom, June 01, 2020 --(PR.com)-- A new award “ Best IT team during Covid19” was announced today which aims to celebrate the impressive contribution of IT teams to business continuity during the coronavirus lockdown. Launched by membership organisation CITF, submissions are invited from today until 30 June and the winner will be announced at CITF’s Real IT Awards which will be held online on 17 July.

Technology departments have been one of the unsung heroes of the UK’s coronavirus lockdown. In a matter of days after the 23rd March lockdown announcement, IT teams in organisations of all sizes and across industry swung into action and provided the technology and services which allowed their colleagues to keep being productive. Thousands of businesses have managed to transition to an entirely new way of working thanks to the efforts of technology teams.

Running since 2004, the Real IT Awards are the UK’s most prestigious independent technology awards, and every year they aim to celebrate outstanding technology projects, teams and innovations. To acknowledge that IT teams have played an invaluable role in smoothing business response to the lockdown, CITF chose to create a new award category this year to recognise IT teams that have gone "above and beyond" when it comes to helping their organisations keep working in unprecedented conditions.

IT departments and business leaders are invited to submit or nominate applications via the Real IT Awards website before the 30 June deadline. CITF’s panel of peers and senior technology and business leaders will then review submissions. Judges will be looking for impressive stories supported by solid metrics that show:

What the team did that delighted customers (internal or external)
How the team rose to these unprecedented times and delivered solutions that helped their company to continue working seamlessly
How they fostered extraordinary team work to accomplish everything they did

The final winners will receive a Real IT Awards certificate and recognition from industry peers.

Joanna Poplawska, CEO of CITF explained why the new award was created: “The fantastic work that technology teams do often goes unrecognised, and this is especially so during the coronavirus lockdown. IT teams have pulled out the stops to keep their organisations working, and so we wanted to celebrate the impressive work that they have done.”

Poplawska noted that a wide variety of submissions will be considered: “We are open to submissions from any industry or sector and are interested to hear about all kinds of response to the lockdown. Our judges are looking for examples of responses which had measurable impact and which tell a compelling story”. She added that “we’d love to hear about creative responses to the lockdown, or examples of technology departments whose work was especially impactful.”

The Real IT Awards will be happening virtually this year and will be on the Real IT Awards website from 13 – 17 July from 4pm each day. In 2020 the award’s charity partner is the NSPCC.