This post covers the Midlands local meeting, held in Birmingham on 7 April.
Featured image: Regency Wharf, Birmingham. Source: Barnyz on Flickr
Thinking about technology as thought leaders
If we look at how we live in such an interconnected world, none of us are immune from the challenges and the changes going on around us, be they geopolitical or local, such as bins. Our role is to support our organisations in working in the most efficient manner to tackle these big and small problems.
We are going to talk about AI, a continuing topic for many of us. We live in a space where transformation is happening so much faster than it ever has before, with technologies smashed together in ways we haven’t thought of or considered. We are being looked at as thought leaders in this space and some of today is about us coming together to do that thought leadership – what are we thinking about, how are we tackling the issues, what considerations are we making?
Above all things, it is about the people we serve in our communities and our organisations. I was listening to a speaker a few weeks ago about how we are at a point in time when we potentially have four or five generations in the workforce. They are different in terms of expectations, understanding and uses of technology. How do we manage that?
Tony Colson, Socitm (meeting chair)
This is an edited version of Tony Colson’s introduction to the event. He is also the British Psychological Society’s director of IT.
“We live in a space where transformation is happening so much faster than it ever has before”
Tony Colson, Socitm
Birmingham Foundry aims for agility without talking about agile
Birmingham City Council has saved more than £300,000 by setting up a new team that supports digital transformation, its head told the Socitm Midlands event on 7 April.
Kat Sexton, the council’s head of product, said that Birmingham Foundry aims to complete projects that support services in weeks rather than the months or years that were previously the norm. Since its foundation in April 2024 it has typically delivered projects in 11 weeks, although she said the aim is six to eight weeks. Service departments are asking it for support, whereas previously they might reject plans from the technology function.
The service uses rapid reviews and has cancelled work that is not delivering benefits. Sexton said that the team has avoided adopting agile development, preferring to do whatever works: “We think that’s an agile mindset and we try to use some agile tooling. But we are not forcing agile down people’s throats because it just seems, time and time again, it doesn’t work and people revolt.”
Birmingham Foundry has used artificial intelligence in some of its work, including automated translations using Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI translation service. This project, which took about six weeks to set up, can translate text held within documents then republish them in the same file type.
Sexton said the city council has been spending £350,000 annually on translations and the project initially hoped to cut to nearly zero, but has found that human translators are required for some face-to-face work and remain a better choice for some complex, technical and legal jobs. However, the project has saved a substantial amount as well as providing a convenient new service for staff. The team has also developed an automated process for redacting documents which has helped reduce a backlog which risked the council being fined by regulators.
Birmingham Foundry has worked closely with Birmingham City University, such as by inviting students to contribute to real projects and holding events in the university’s buildings. The project has also hired two of the university’s students, although one has since left.
Sexton said that the city set up Birmingham Foundry to help improve service delivery, at a time when its financial problems mean it is having to reduce spending and tackle severe problems including an ongoing strike by refuse collectors. “We didn’t want it all to be about cuts and slashing and burning,” she said, although the team has realised savings by cutting spending with agency staff. “We are trying to innovate and transform to come out of this a better, more sustainable, more digitally-enabled transformational council that can turn things around and not just slash.”
“We are not forcing agile down people’s throats because it just seems, time and time again, it doesn’t work”
Kat Sexton, Birmingham City Council
Also at the event
Warps act as cyber security Home Guard
Local warning, advice and reporting points (Warps) provide the cyber security equivalent of the Second World War’s Home Guard in supporting local public service organisations and liaising with specialist agencies, NLAWarp programme director Mark Brett told the event. He said that Warps operate in each UK nation and English region, with some covering smaller areas including Kent and Essex: “We are a bit like Dad’s Army,” he joked. Warps vary in operation depending on their membership but all allow participants to exchange views, undertake training and swap information on incidents. Members also receive notifications of warnings from national and international security bodies, in some cases before these are released publicly. Socitm members in the West Midlands can sign up for free to the region’s relaunched Warp as a result of funding from the Cyber Technical Advisory Group, which reports to Socitm’s Nations and Regions Forum.
For more information contact mark.brett@nlawarp.net
Digital inclusion tops choice for regional data project
Socitm members attending the event put digital inclusion top of a list of possible topics for a regional data project, with homelessness and social care commissioning the next most popular. Birmingham-based data management specialist Sentinel Partners is carrying out proof of concept work on the project and chief commercial officer Helena Zaum said that the company could combine data from sources including central and local government, the NHS and police using Office for National Statistics lower layer super output areas (LSOA) with between 1,000 and 3,000 residents. She added that the project will need support from local authorities on information governance and project hosting.