Share: Ireland 2021 - From Response to Recovery

Sam Smith, Assistant Director of IT & Digital Services, Cambridgeshire County & Peterborough City Councils and Chair

President Sam Smith (Assistant Director of IT & Digital Services for Cambridgeshire County & Peterborough City Councils) will guide us through conversations, so we can share experience and knowledge, and take away tips and ideas for ourselves and our teams. Sam will also share her perspective about moving on beyond pandemic response.

Sam Smith,  Assistant Director of IT & Digital Services, C ambridgeshire County & Peterborough City Councils | Martin Ferguson, Director of Policy & Research

Join our keynote guest to consider our routes to recovery. Our experiences and responses have been local. Your path to recovery will build on local strengths and will support more place-based thinking and approaches. Be inspired to have the confidence to take solutions and give them your local twist.

Faith La Grange, Director of Local & Regional Government, Microsoft UK | Ellen Wilson, Sustainability and Smart Cities Lead, Microsoft UK

Kevin White, Head of Digital Accessibility, Scottish Government

Whether it is an enterprise level product or a campaign website, accessibility is often included as part of the requirements. So why are there still so many inaccessible digital services? This workshop will outline why this is a problem and explore how we as purchasers can improve things.

Grab a tea or coffee, take a breather and the opportunity to virtually mingle and network.

Anne Jones, Web Officer, Hinckley and Bosworth Council

Council websites are now required to be WCAG 2.1 AA, in order to comply with Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Making your council website accessible though can be challenging:

• You may be just a small team, with very little budget
• You may work with colleagues who are not be fully on board with web accessibility; they may not understand why it matters
• Your website may rely on third party applications which aren’t completely accessible

In this session, I’d like to share how our approach to making our site accessible, before opening up a discussion to find out what other organisations are doing, so as a group we can come up with suggestions for best practice.

James Sawkins, ICT Analyst, Shetland Islands Council

How to get ahead in accessibility. Equality of access to services and information is essential for our communities. Everyone’s shop front is their website, and we must make sure everyone can get in and find what they need. Meet the Shetland Islands Council. They have taken forward a new website to improve their accessibility and continue to use their accessibility report to improve. They will share with us, what they learned through their new website project – and indeed how they will continue to improve their accessibility.

Dan West, Chief Digital Information Officer, Department of Health Northern Ireland

Join Dan West as he will talk about how digital has enabled Health and Social Care during the pandemic, and focus on sustaining post-pandemic digital adoption as we move from response to recovery. Dan will provide insights and key steps the Health and Social Care system in Northern Ireland can, and is, taking to ensure the success of digital transformation. He will also discuss putting people, place and communities are at the heart of this journey, and look at some of the challenges we face as we move of the new way of working and sustaining the benefits of a remote workforce

Aidan Matthews, Learning Programme Manager, Socitm

Creating an environment that supports and encourages learning and reflection is key in helping us develop professionally. Come and learn from Aidan about the online programmes he is running to support members in working remotely and managing and leading their teams. He will share his insights from training and coaching members, and help us blend together our remote working skills for whatever the future office is.

Phil Cracknell, IP Performance

Gary Forsythe, Systems Engineer, Veeam

The war on ransomware is real. Organisations need to have a strong, multi-layered defence and strategy to address ransomware. Veeam will provide organisations with practical steps they can take to protect data and avoid being in a situation where data loss or ransom payment are their only options.

Dave Sanderson, Regional Director, Socitm (Chair) | Rory Hopkins, Head of Information Systems, Kildare County Council | David Kelly, Digital Portfolio Manager, Belfast City Council

When you sit back and think about it, we all have access to a lot of resources. Sometimes we need to review and reconsider what we have and how we are using it. There are resources, people, enthusiasms and skills within our teams and organisations that it’s easy to get complacent about. Making better and difference use of people and things can lead to better productivity and better wellbeing.

Sam Smith, Assistant Director of IT & Digital Services, Cambridgeshire County & Peterborough City Councils and Chair