Using cloud technologies can not only reduce your costs, it can also enhance operational efficiency and citizen outcomes.

Newsletter: Learning, unlearning and relearning

Authors and contributors: Alexandra Murphy

Keep getting everything you can from your membership

Your events, training and resources

Are you reading this on Friday morning? Round about late morning, CEO Nadira and Institute Director Sam will be running a workshop at today’s Solace Summit in Manchester.

Follow along in your own time with the questions they’ll be posing delegates.

Membership

Details about next year’s memberships are being sent out now. Make sure you’re getting everything you can from and with Socitm in 2025.

You’re invited to Members’ Connection Hour (from 13:00) on Thursday 31 October.

Keep on using Socitm as part of your work creating positive and lasting change in your place.

Here’s another top 5 of useful things for you this week

  1. A data for AI taxonomy
    The ODI’s developed a taxonomy of the data involved in developing, using and monitoring foundation AI models and systems.
  2. Joined a training course this year? Save the date of Thursday 28 November for 2024’s (online) alumni day. The agenda is underway and will be launched soon. Prep your Christmas sweater and get ready to cheer yourself and what you’ve achieved this year.
  3. For Digital Leaders Week there’s an AI for Business Report in The Times.
    It includes a piece by Professor Alan Brown, in which he urges digital leaders to overcome their fear of AI and take a more measured approach to implementation, saying “the race to AI transformation is a marathon not a sprint”.
  4. Don’t forget your free 90-minute training workshop: Simplify Your Tasks: Copilot Basics for Microsoft 365 Users. You have not missed it, the workshops run again on Wednesday 6 November and Wednesday 4 December.
  5. Worthwhile read from our colleagues at Socitm Advisory: Do you really need a CRM system?

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

Best wishes,

Alex.

black keyboard with red lighting

MHCLG launches the Cyber Assessment Framework for local government

The MHCLG Local Digital team has launched the CAF for local government – to provide a clear cyber security standard for the sector.

Working with councils and cyber security experts, they have adapted the National Cyber Security Centre’s CAF into a tool to help you:

  • Assess the current cyber resilience of your organisation.
  • Identify and mitigate vulnerabilities that could disrupt important services.

English councils can now access the initial stages of the CAF. You can start using the tool, while they continue to develop it based on your feedback.

Simple Socitm logo surrounded by drawings of headshots with different coloured hair

Membership in 2025

The pressure you’re under to do more with less and less is intense. But your Socitm community is here to support you and help.

Connect: tap into our network of professionals to solve your wicked issues, find solutions and share best practice.
Learn: develop you and your team with our CPD-certified training.
Explore: access practical resources to drive your decision making and avoid reinventing the wheel.

The pressure you’re under to do more with less and less is intense. But your Socitm community is here to support you.

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 in AI@Socitm

Read: Moving past genAI’s honeymoon phase: Seven hard truths for CIOs to get from pilot to scale

You might have missed…

Watch: Get cyber secure with governance, risk, and compliance
Public sector organisations are a high-value target due to their reliance on digital systems and sensitive data. Listen to Phoenix explain how effective governance and compliance frameworks, such as Cyber Essentials and ISO, provide a structured approach to managing risks and enable effective incident response.

For ease of viewing, the recordings are divided into easy to navigate chapters, with subtitles and transcript available via the video player toolbar.

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

Your next free training with Microsoft

09:00 to 16:30 | Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 November

Get the knowledge and confidence you need to lead change. Change Agent (Manager) with Microsoft is back next month! Save your seat now 🙂

..At times my brain hurt, being introduced to untapped resources which were at my fingertips at once was overwhelming. But I am becoming more comfortable now. Just want to get into some real application
Delegate on yesterday’s final day of Change Agent Reflector.

Over 2 days, this course will give you with an overview of the key skills needed to be an effective change agent – with a strong emphasis on the ability to lead change.

Monday 25 November: Day 1 focuses on how to understand and lead your teams through change. Attendees learn about key areas such as learning styles and the importance of a growth mindset.

Tuesday 26 November: Day 2 is technology focused and introduces you to a wide range of Microsoft technologies helping you understand the tools at your disposal – discover existing use cases and details of how to further your learning journey.

You do not need to be a Socitm member to attend this course


Accessibility and inclusion

Check your Silktide Score. If you’re competitive, see where you’re council ranks in the index for October. It’s not all about being #1. Rochdale is up 156 places to 22!! Incredible. Congratulations Rochdale.

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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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

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.


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.


National conference Sheffield 2024

Events

Member-only meetings

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

President’s Conference 2025

Key date for your 2025 calendar: Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 June 2025
Make sure this is in your diary so you can join everyone back in Birmingham for your annual members’ conference.

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.


Mostly free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

October

November

December

Come and say hello

Impera from data to impact

Citizen-Led Impact: Empowering Communities

Redefining Engagement and Shaping Policymaking using data, insight and community with NILGA

This week our colleagues at Impera Analytics took their Citizen-Led Impact (CLI) training to Northern Ireland. The 2-day course brought together delegates from councils across Northern Ireland, aiming to transform their approach to community engagement.

CLI is a model that places citizens at the heart of policymaking. Unlike traditional top-down approaches, CLI empowers individuals to contribute their unique insights and lived experiences to the decisions that affect their lives.

techUK For what comes next. Local Public Services Committee Procurement Survey (Customers).

Local Government Procurement Survey

techUK is keen to understand how you find current procurement processes, what good looks like, and how industry can better fulfil requirements.

The survey is open until Friday 8 November and is designed for those working in local government and managing any tech/ IT procurement.

It’s been created by the procurement workstream of their Local Public Services Committee. You can find more info about the survey.

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

Something that cropped at last week’s conference day in London was ‘unlearning’. One of the panellists on the No Wrong Door Open Innovation Challenge mentioned it. So as it was kicking around in my head, this LinkedIn post from Race Equality Matters jumped out from my feed. It chimes with what he was saying and with a lot of what gets covered on the online core skills courses led by Aidan.

  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! ↩︎