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Newsletter: Just published: AI – what local government should know

Illustration of a woman using Generative AI on her computer

Our annual meeting

Your events, training and resources

Before I pick a highlight for you from December’s annual alumni catch-up, here’s something Interesting and Useful I’ve just spotted on LinkedIn [thank you Tass Smith]: Service Design Insider newsletter

Were you at LocalGovCamp this week? Please share your best bits with us 😀

Registration for UKGovCamp (24 January 2024) is open.

So, the highlight from December. Alison McKenzie-Folan’s contribution is one and so is a session about Belbin in Practice. Belbin profiling crops up on lots of Aidan’s training sessions. You might even have your own profile. Using it to better understand your team role is really helpful. It can also give you an insight into guessing what your colleagues’ profiles might be! On Thursday 7 December we will take away the guesswork and show how it can support a whole team.

How did find last week’s reading list? [Scroll down to just below the photo of Lego John Wick.] If you’ve already got all of those on your shelf, what would add? Which book do you hold up to the camera when you’re on a Teams meeting?! Mine is Content Design by Sarah Winters. The blurry cover has popped up too close to the laptop camera more than once.

Our annual meeting/get together is on Thursday 7 December. And we’ll be in Manchester this year. Lots on the agenda. Do hope you might be to join us then to share, laugh, ask questions, and keep in touch.

Remember to join the LinkedIn group, and then let us know how to do this alumni network better .

AI: what local government should know

During a recent virtual roundtable, AI experts and senior local gov leaders met to consider what this rapidly changing environment means for the sector.

Your summary of the key themes discussed is in the Resource Hub.

It includes:

  • awareness of AI within leaders;
  • the ethics of AI, the biases and the unconscious bias;
  • the data breaches that AI might cause;
  • skills and tools and how AI can be used.

Secure, sustainable and cost-effective?

This week’s webinar was a short and stark look into electronic waste, and how we can tackle some of it and at the same time save money.

Short on time? Skip to these highlights (approx. timings):

  • 04:59 Malware/ransomware sadly still a thing
  • 12:26 But there is another challenge coming…Windows 11
  • 17:57 Solution 1: take Windows off the endpoint
  • 20:52 Solution 2: Apps to the cloud
  • 22:34 But what about those desktops…
  • 26:38 The numbers

Play with IGEL’s TCO calculator (mentioned in passing by Simon).

Next week, see how you can improve user experience with AI-driven tools.

Words and sounds

Prefer reading to watching? Look through ‘Give your device a second life‘. It covers that stats and offers ways we can collectively and individually do something.

And you can even listen to a conversation about all this in a short episode of the Socitm Says podcast: Green and sustainable IT. The focus is the global problem of e-waste, IT lifecycle emissions, and the responsible disposal of waste to reduce environmental impact, thereby contributing to achieving net zero targets.

Training

Read about the Leadership Academy experience of alumni annual meeting co-host Graeme Murrell – Top Talent graduate [Class of Manchester 2022]

How was your course? Tell us 🙂

November to December (CPD certified workshops)

Training places are included in your organisational membership – subject to availability and membership level. If you have any questions or would like further information, please email Sara Razon.

On completion of training, don’t forget to claim your CPD points.

Browse all training

Socitm Advisory

Managing a large-scale device roll-out to support digital inclusion

A Scottish council wanted to move away from their national digital learning platform, Glow Connect, to give themselves more control and flexibility. It also wanted to make sure every teacher and pupil had access to a digital device to ‘future-proof digital education’, ensure digital inclusion and improve educational outcomes.

Read more about the project and what happened.

Are you making full use of your membership?

As part of your membership you can receive between 2 and 12 hours of FREE consultancy advice per year. To make use of your inclusive consultancy hours, get in touch or log in to My Account.
Visit Socitm Advisory

Events from Socitm and our partners

Meet up with your Socitm colleagues for great networking opportunities.

Next few weeks or so…

Missed a webinar? Past recordings are available to watch in the resource hub. Also, make sure to check out our regional events. There’s a mix of online and in-person meetings, so please feel free to join any that are outside your area.

Browse all events

How are you using AI?

For your experiments and implementations of AI, how have you adapted the usage policy template? It’s an open document that is a work in progress. If you’ve added to or altered it in a way that would work for teams like yours in other public sector organisations, tell us about it.

With the LGA and Solace, we submitted written evidence to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee’s inquiry into the risks and opportunities presented by large language models.

Browse the resource hub

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

Give Professor Richard Wiseman’s podcast On Your Mind a go. Here’s the start of the description 🙂 Why are some people so happy? How can you tell when politicians are lying? Is it logical to carry a lucky charm? Why do long lists of questions hold our attention? 😉