Get to London for your next conference day (People make) Sustainable and Innovative Places on Thursday 10 October
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Newsletter: Collaboration

Authors and contributors: Alexandra Murphy
Group of people sitting in a circle of chairs. They are all leaning forward and holding out one arm into the middle, showing support for one another.

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Had a chance to look through the new People Make Places manifesto? It’s a prospectus for mission-led government; looking in particular at the government’s five missions to rebuild Britain.

But it’s not just Socitm’s missions in there. You’ll find helpful examples of where this work is already taking place. And if yours is not there tell us about it and we can add it in.

Got a top 4 of interesting and useful things for you this week:

  1. We’ve been collaborating ourselves this week with the LGA and iNetwork on statements relating to software, AI and cyber security. Read our joint statements in response to DSIT’s call for views on:
  2. Canon hosted this excellent webinar last week. An ethical hacker tells you (mostly) how he hacked a law firm (they did ask him to!)
  3. Don’t forget your first key date for next year: put President’s Conference in your calendar for Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 June 2025. We’ll be back in Birmingham again.
  4. Download Five Steps to Building Job Families

Take care. I hope you’re able to have a great weekend.

Best wishes,

Alex.

Illustration of a woman reading an oversized book, entitled, 'Local gov's big book of ideas'.

In Your Resource Hub

NEW People make places

Planting the flag for mission-oriented innovation in public services

NEW (and a reminder) in AI@Socitm

Join the Copilot Innovation and Collaboration Sub-Group (part of Microsoft’s monthly Local Gov Innovation and Collaboration Forum). It’s co-chaired by Andy Kennell (Somerset) and Tony Ellis (Buckinghamshire). They meet monthly with a core agenda of ROI, where to start your CP journey, social care, integration to back-office systems, and governance.

Want to add your own content? Let us know on hello@socitm.net or use the contact us form [choose Research as your area of interest].
Help each other connect the dots.

Browse the Resource Hub

You will need a user account on socitm.net to access member-only resources. Let us know if need any support.

Socitm Says
Browse all episodes of Socitm Says

Accessibility and inclusion

Check your Silktide Score. If you’re competitive, see where you’re council ranks in the monthly index. It’s not all about being #1. Neath Port Talbot Council is up 52 places to get into the Top 12. Amazing work!

Digital Accessibility Maturity Assessment
The DAMA is a comprehensive self-assessment of your current level of digital accessibility maturity.

PAUSE
Creating fair and equitable organisations and services is everybody’s responsibility. Take time to reflect and review on your approach and identify where there may be gaps in the way in which you do things. Pause – reflect – act

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Join us London at Socitm's next conference...Sustainable and Innovative Places. 10 October 2024.

(People make) Sustainable and Innovative Places

09:30 to 16:00 | Thursday 10 October | London W8 5SY

If you can remember Give us a Clue or have ever played charades, we’re not sure how you’d demonstrate ‘conference’ or ‘report’. Similar to ‘play’ or ‘book’ perhaps? Anyway, sort of in the spirit of the game People Make Places is now a President’s Conference, a national conference day and a report.

Timed for the start (this past weekend) of the Labour Party Annual Conference our Institute has published People Make Places: an prospectus for mission-led government.

Make Britain a clean energy superpower
It’s this mission in particular that we’ll all be focussing on in 13 days. Sustainability and innovation are already underway all over the place. Yet it’s still tricky. You’re balancing so many demands how do you fit them all in?

Meet your peers, academics, start-ups and big tech. We’ve even secured speakers from Bloomberg Associates who are coming from New York.

Register for the conference
7th Digital Leaders Week UK. 14 to 18 October 2024. Be part of the UK's national week accelerating digital transformation.

Dive into all things digital and AI. Whether you’re exploring Generative AI, learning about AI for Good, mastering data-driven decision-making, or championing digital inclusion, there’s something for everyone!

With >150 expert speakers, you’ll get access to thought leaders shaping the digital future. Best of all? Every event is completely free.

Submit a talk
Got an online talk that you’d like to share? Then the organisers would love to hear from you.

Learn more

Training

Don’t let your training points expire! Get yourself onto training for the new academic year now 🙂

How was your course? Tell us about it and be a training champion 🙂

In-person leadership training

Place-based Leadership
Are you leading a department/service but want to do more and do it better? Give yourself that challenge on:
Thursday 14 and Friday 15 November | Manchester | 4 points

Top Talent
Do you want to lead a department/service? Top Talent will help get you there.
Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 October | Durham | 4 points

Online core skills courses (with some 2025 dates)

Your annual membership includes training1
Want to spend some training points but not sure how? Don’t have enough or you’ve run out? Let us know.

Your guide to using training points

What don’t you know?

Survey end users’ skills to prioritise your future training needs. Get started with a user skills survey.

Browse all training

Free training with Microsoft

  1. TechHer is designed to inspire curiosity and excitement about technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, data, low code/no code app creation and security.
    The sessions are aimed at women in the public sector, who do not necessarily have a technical background but are keen to gain confidence to learn more.
    In 1 hour a week over 5 weeks, via Teams, these live and engaging sessions aspire to ignite your interest and build your skills to a fundamental level
  2. Microsoft Learn AI Skills Challenge opened this week and is running until Friday 1 November. Master cutting-edge AI tech such as Copilot, GitHub, Azure, and Fabric. Engage in 6 curated topics, interactive community events, and expert-led sessions to deepen your understanding. Go further in a selection of the topics to earn a Microsoft Applied Skill to showcase your technical knowledge to potential employers
Socitm infographic - benchmarking 2024

Better data improves everything

You want evidence to support your business cases, and insight into positive changes you can make. Get a concise overview of your service coupled with data to support it.

Don’t get beaten by a lack of data

With benchmarking you can compare the size, performance and cost-efficiency of your ICT. Leaving you free to concentrate your efforts for improvement. Or make a case for improved funding.

Benchmarking in pictures
National conference Sheffield 2024

Events

Member-only meetings

Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.

Free webinars and meetings hosted by Socitm

Missed one? Recordings of Socitm webinars are available in the Resource hub.
Webinars are open to anyone in the public sector, membership is not necessary, so please do share them with your network.

Browse events

Mostly free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

October

November

  • Wednesday 13 to Thursday 14 November LGC Summit [Leeds]

December

Come and say hello

Challenges for the cities of the future

Socitm is collaborating with our long-term partner, Major Cities of Europe, on a survey to discover the emerging technologies, methodologies and applications currently being addressed by local governments.

We want to better understand the challenges, opportunities and issues which need addressing to move towards the places of the future.

The survey will also help to clarify the role that Socitm and MCE, as networks of digital and ICT professionals, can play in these scenarios together with their suppliers.

The results will be available in a document to be shared with those who completed it. This survey will take you around 30 mins to complete (you don’t have to do it all in one go).

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Complete the survey

Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…

Eavesdrop on 20 conversations about kindness and its vital role in work culture and leadership.
Find plenty to listen to in the Talking Kindness Podcast Summit.

  1. Log in to your user account for an up-to-date number of available training points on the day that you check. Your colleagues could have already used some! ↩︎