Sorted for next week’s trip to Cardiff for Socitm Cymru? Pretty certain you’re ready to explore how digital innovation is transforming communities and empowering future-ready public services. Still haven’t got your delegate pass? You’ve got time. Register online or email hello@socitm.net to get that out of the way.
Keep getting everything you can from your membership.
In your membership: content and people
- Use your last 2 points to join the final leadership course of 2025:
Place-Based Leadership | Mon-26 to Tue-28-Oct | Birmingham
Challenge your thinking so you can hone your skillset to inspire people and places to be better through effective and lasting change. - NEW and recent events in the calendar
- Fri-24-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | Lunchtime learning: How to be a great mentor
Whether mentoring for the first time or looking to enhance your approach, get practical insights and tools to help you succeed - Wed-29-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | The new leadership team: How HR + IT can jointly build your future workforce
The future’s not replacing staff with machines. It’s about pairing human talent with digital assistants so your people can focus on work that makes the biggest difference in your communities - Thu-30-Oct | 11:00 to 12:00 | Members’ Connection Hour
Making the most of membership in 2026 - Fri-14-Nov | Zero Trust in the AI era. Moving to a SASE architecture
Protect yourself from the risks associated with AI tools so you can use them productively without compromising security.
- Fri-24-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | Lunchtime learning: How to be a great mentor
- Meet members and collaborate at local meetings
- Did you miss this? Digital Twins: Practical steps for implementation
Browse your members-only resource hub.
You will need a user account on socitm.net to access member-only resources. Let us know if need any support.
What’s in your membership?
- Accessibility testing with Silktide
- Benchmarking
- Conferences, meetings and webinars
- Courses
- Innovation session/lab with Civiteq
- IT policy audit [Essential+/Enhanced/Executive] from PPS
- Resources
Member-only discounts for
- Place Insight: your own social progress index
- Courses with the IT Management and Leadership Institute, Leadership Through Data, and QA
- Mon-27 to Fri-31-Oct | 13:30 to 17:00 | M365 Information Architecture
- WeChange.AI‘s Framework for Change. Watch WeChange in 3 minutes 🙂
We calculated the £value of your Socitm membership so you don’t have to.
Keep getting all you can from membership: log into your account.
In your membership: Courses
Leadership
| Course | Location | Dates | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Place-based Leadership | Birmingham | Monday 27 and Tuesday 28 October | 2 |
Core skills (on Teams)
| Course | Dates | Time | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| How to be an effective coach | Thursdays 16 and 30 October | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Introduction to emotional intelligence | Tuesday 4 November | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Equality, diversity, and inclusion | Wednesday 12 November | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
Registering for training
Read your guide to using training points. Log in for the current number of available points. Don’t have enough or you’ve run out? Let us know.
Things happen. If you can’t make the date of your training course let us know ASAP and we’ll get you onto the next suitable one available. And your training points will transfer with you.Please note: non-attendance without letting us know will mean training points getting deducted from your organisation’s annual total.
In your 2025 membership: benchmarking
Complimentary use of 1 module
Choose from: cost, delivery, performance or user skills.
With all the financial challenges facing the sector, use the cost module this year to baseline your transformation work.
Find out what you can do and how in the Benchmarking Services Help Centre, then claim your module.
In your membership: events
Lunchtime webinars from 13:00 to 14:00
| Wednesday 15 October: Transforming operations with AI: 3 practical use cases Netcall’s Mark Gannon, former CIO with some of the UK’s largest councils, will showcase AI-powered virtual assistants, advanced summarisation tools, and Intelligent Document Processing. |
- Wednesday 22 October | Beyond the £45 Billion: How AI can actually deliver the productivity everyone’s talking about
- Friday 24 October | How to be a great mentor
- Wednesday 29 October | The new leadership team: How HR + IT can jointly build your future workforce
- Fri-14-Nov | Zero Trust in the AI Era – Moving to a SASE Architecture
Meetings
- FULLY BOOKED Wednesday 23 October | 09:30 to 11:00 | Reorganise to realise: Making LGR work for you and your partners (with CCS). Email us to be added to the waiting list.
- Wednesday 3 December | 09:30 to 11:00 | Maximising social value in procurement. A practical workshop for public sector buyers
Conference
Sessions and speakers include:
- An opening keynote address from Cardiff Council’s chief exec Paul Orders
- The future of apps and data integration in local government and the NHS with Dylan Roberts, CDIO of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health.
- Embracing serverless to enhance service: Nickki Johns, Head of Digital at the Vale of Glamorgan Council
- Sarah Day from ADSS Cymru will talk about why digital matters for the future sustainability of social care services.
- Neath Port Talbot’s CDO Chris Owen will be chairing a discussion with CDPS, NLAWARP and the WLGA.
- Councillor Dimitri Batrouni from Newport City Council asks, ‘Is Wales doing enough in the data and AI space?’.
Partners’ events and updates
- Mon-13 to Fri-17-Oct | AI Week 2025
- Tue-14-Oct | 14:00 to 16:00 | Public sector buyers showcase: AI for eDisclosure and eDiscovery
- Wed-15-Oct | 09:30 to 13:00 | CX and AI Strategy Event 2025 [Leeds]
- Thu-16-Oct | 10:00 to 11:00 | AI aggregation for codeless intelligent workflow
Download NDL’s Comprehensive Overview of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Services in 2025
Everything you ever wanted to know about AI but were afraid to ask. - Tue-21-Oct | 14:00 to 15:30 | Procurement Act Peer Support Group: The Competitive Flexible Procedure
- Wed-22-Oct | 09:00 to 16:00 | GovTech Show 2025 [Manchester]
VP Alison Lincoln (Blackpool Council) is talking at 12:30 about Rethinking Recruitment in Local Government Digital Services - Thu-23-Oct | 10:00 to 11:00 | Baked in, not bolted on: embedding digital inclusion
- Mon-3 to Tue-4-Nov | The Future of Localism [St Andrews]
- Wed-5-Nov | 10:00 to 12:00 | Microsoft Innovation and Collaboration Forum
- Fri-7-Nov | 10:00 to 15:00 | AI workshop for councillors: Explore AI and Innovation [Towcester]
Institute Director Sam Smith is one of the speakers/panellists - Wed-12 to Thu-13-Nov | 08:45 to 18:00 | TechShare Pro 2025 [London]
- Tue-18 to Wed-19-Nov | LGPN South [London]
Full of your Socitm community: CEO Nadira Hussain, Emeritus President Mark Lumley (Hounslow), VP Yogita Popat (Barnet), LSE Chair Rehana Ramesh (Hackney) and VP Kevin Taylor (Suffolk) - Mon-24-Nov | 12:00 to 16:00 | AI in Local Government Fair [Cambridge]
| Collaboration is something we all talk about as being the key to success, and sharing ideas and connecting with peers is always important but in reality, with the everyday juggle of life how often do we get round to this? November’s lunchtime roundtable will be an intimate, informative discussion around 3 main topics with the conversation being led by Tanium’s Senior Security Advisor Dan Jones (previously Head of Cyber at the MOD). |
- Cyber resilience and risk mitigation in local government:
- Particularly risks in mobilisation, disaggregation, and integrations.
- Digital foundations:
- Tackling legacy, technical debt and shared services, budget pressures, and cost-effective digital transformation.
- Smart operations:
- Automation, efficiency and workforce enablement, automating manual tasks and workflows safely, reducing people hours and reallocating to high value initiatives, workforce transformation and digital skills.
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
A few of the things I’ve been looking at (and sharing with colleagues) this week:
- Really nice case study from partners HSO about working with Amnesty International.
- Found this originally on WiredGov: Introducing the GOV Reuse Library, a new cross-government initiative designed to help teams work smarter, faster, and more collaboratively by reusing proven digital service components.
- Join the Ada Lovelace Institute Oversight Board. They’re looking to appoint 4 new members to build a diverse board with a range of skills and backgrounds. Applications close on 29 October.
- From yesterday’s Change Agent chat: Stop using AI for these 9 work tasks – here’s why. It’s a clickbait-ey headline, but worth looking through in the light of this one: Consultants Forced to Pay Money Back After Getting Caught Using AI for Expensive “Report” 😀
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Alex.
