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

Authors and contributors: Alexandra Murphy
Kier Starmer standing behind a podium with a sign on it reading 5 Missions for a Better Britain.

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In perfect time for the start of the Labour Party Annual Conference this weekend, our research team has published their People Make Places manifesto. It’s a prospectus for mission-led government. Looking in particular at the government’s five missions to rebuild Britain, through our own missions of:

  • place-based leadership 🎏
  • practical placemaking 🧰
  • connected places 🏘️

But it’s not just Socitm’s missions in the prospectus. You’ll find helpful examples from local government of where this work is already taking place.

While this email version of this newsletter is being sent and read, Socitm HQ will be hosting our Partner Day 2025. So if we’re looking at 2025 with our partners, it must nearly be time to look at membership packages for 2025 too. Watch this space!

Only a top 3 of interesting and useful things this week:

  1. The extra session of the popular Managing and Motivating Hybrid Teams training is almost full! Register ASAP to join Aidan on Wednesday 20 November and Tuesday 3 December.
  2. Your first key date for next year: put President’s Conference in your calendar for Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 June 2025.
  3. Read your new briefing yet? Digital twin technology and place-based services Come along to next month’s conference day with questions for us and Middlesex University’s Dr Homeira Shayesteh. You haven’t?! Well, this is your homework.

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'.

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

In Your Resource Hub

NEW People make places

Planting the flag for mission-oriented innovation in public services

NEW in AI@Socitm

Report: Harnessing the Power of AI for the Public Sector

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 AI@Socitm

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

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

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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

Log in
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 spaces left)

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
Superimposed of a photo of the Houses of Parliament at night are the words: TechHer for Government. Autumn 2024. Creating opportunities for women to learn and develop skills in technology.

Free TechHer training with Microsoft

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

Register now

(People make) Sustainable and Innovative Places

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

Have you heard and/or read anything about the No Wrong Door Innovation Challenge? Whatever you know (or don’t) is fine. Some of the finalists will be joining everyone next month. They are all start-ups tackling problems through technology and collaboration. And if they can, so can we.

You’re already motivated to do your best for your team and community. Give that motivation an extra boost with some start-up re-inspiration and reinvigoration.

Go back to your colleagues with your own (or borrowed) new perspective for your service and your communities.

Register now
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

September

October

November

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

December

Come and say hello

  • Tuesday 24 September: DigiGov Expo [London]
    Join Nadira Hussain, President Mark Lumley and Sam Smith
    • Nadira is chairing the Citizen Experience stream. In which, at 15:25, Mark (Director of ICT and Digital at London Borough of Hounslow) is a panellist on Data-Driven Collaboration: Transforming governance through strategic partnerships and enhanced data sharing
    • Sam is a panellist in the GovICT stream at 15:10 for Driving Transformation through an Effective Strategy: The pillars needed to achieve success
  • Thursday 14 November LGC Summit [Leeds]
    Join Nadira Hussain for the panel discussion: Reimagining local government through advanced technologies.

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

Great resources here from Amazing If: How to create your post-summer reset

“Time off gives you the space to slow down. Ideally, we come back to work energised and ready to grow. However, returning to daily pressures and demands can result in development being deprioritised and the opportunity for learning getting missed.

To overcome this challenge, Helen and Sarah share 4 ideas for action to make career development easy and unmissable.”

Photo from the Institute for Government.

  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! ↩︎