You still have time to get the joining details for tomorrow (Friday 19 September) afternoon’s 1pm webinar: Securing artificial intelligence
In your membership: content and people
- Watch: The Autistic Brain
- Preventing credential theft: 5 action points for help desk staff
- Meet members and collaborate on solutions together at your next local meeting.
- Explore how digital innovation is transforming communities and empowering future-ready public services | Tue-14-Oct in Cardiff
- Public Sector ICT Conference | Tue-25-Nov in Belfast
- Did you miss this? Cyber security guidance for public sector practitioners
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
Extra member-only discounts
- New for 2025-26 WeChange.AI Socitm-only pricing.
- Place Insight: your own social progress index [England-only]
- Socitm pricing on courses with the IT Management and Leadership Institute, Leadership Through Data, and QA
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 | 4 |
Core skills (on Teams)
| Course | Dates | Time | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| FULL Introduction to emotional intelligence | Monday 22 September | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Managing and motivating hybrid teams | Tuesdays 30 September and 21 October | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Equality, diversity and inclusion | Tuesday 7 October | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Introduction to emotional intelligence | Tuesday 4 November | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
Digital skills (on Teams)
| Course | Dates | Time | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Change Agent | Thursday 9 and Friday 10 October | 09:00 to 16:30 | 0 |
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
Friday 19 September: Securing artificial intelligence
Run through key steps to ensure your AI adoption’s not only transformative for your organisation, but secure and ethical.
- Wednesday 24 September | How technology drives smarter outcomes
- Friday 26 September | Key strategies for modernising threat detection
- Wednesday 1 October | Future-proofing your infrastructure. Strategic connectivity for smarter public services
- Friday 3 October | Your slides are not the presentation. How to stop excluding people every time you share your screen
Meetings
- Tuesday 30 September | 10:00 to 11:00 | LGR insights for districts and boroughs
- Tuesday 7 October | 13:00 to 14:00 | LGR insights for districts and boroughs
- TWed-3-Dec | 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
- Tue-23-Sep | 11:00 to 12:30 | C-TAG Virtual Workshop: Securing your email domain
- Wed-24 to Thu-25-Sep | 09:30 to 16:30 | DigiGov: Citizen Experience [London]
- Thu-25-Sep | 10:00 to 11:00 | Inside cyber attacks: the real impact of ransomware in 2025
- Mon-29-Sep | 13:00 to 14:00 | Building confidence in AI for the public good
- Tue-30-Sep | 10:00 to 17:00 | AI Talks
- Wed-1-Oct | 10:00 to 12:00 | Microsoft Innovation and Collaboration Forum
- Wed-1-Oct | 17:00 to 19:00 | Dolenni Digidol: One year on – celebrating the impact of ‘Leading modern public services’ [Carmarthen]
- Mon-6-Oct | 11:00 to 12:30 | C-TAG Virtual Workshop: Securing your email domain
- Tue-7 to Wed-8-Oct | 10:00 to 15:15 | HETT 2025 [London]
- Wed-15-Oct | 09:30 to 13:00 | CX and AI Strategy Event 2025 [Leeds]
- Wed-15-Oct | 13:30 to 17:00 | Course: M365 Copilot for Information Managers
- Tue-14-Oct | 14:00 to 16:00 | Public sector buyers showcase: AI for eDisclosure and eDiscovery
- 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-3 to Fri-14-Nov | The Future of Localism [St Andrews]
- 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 - 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)
AI Ethics and Safety in the Public Sector
Our colleagues from AI@Cam are exploring how local authorities can be supported to ensure AI systems in the public sector are developed and used safely.
Their survey aims to understand a) AI use across the UK, b) associated ethical and safety issues, c) understanding of AI ethics and safety, as well as d) governance capacity for AI. This study is part of a research project being conducted by the University of Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin University, and University College London.
Government Business Magazine
President Kurt Frary kicked off our quarterly meeting yesterday with a reminder that his role at Norfolk includes fire and rescue services. Inevitably, when browsing this current issue the fire safety article leapt out first: Fire safety in the public sector.
Browse the whole of issue 32.05
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
A few things I’ve been doing and looking at this week:
- Found this report (can’t remember where) GenAI on the rise: UK public sector’s AI appetite and attitudes revealed in survey
- Saw this mentioned on LinkedIn: Microsoft’s Office apps now have free Copilot Chat features. It is M365 business users so I’m not sure if will you include you?? Haven’t noticed it yet on mine.
- I know all is not rosy at the Alan Turing Institute, but over the Ada Lovelace Institute they’ve published their 2025-28 strategy.
Shared this bit from the Director’s note with colleagues:
“We have all heard the familiar refrain that the AI ‘revolution’ will improve people’s lives by making public services easier to access, solving societal problems and boosting economic growth. Yet for all the hopes poured into AI technologies, they rely on and are limited by the quality, provenance and partiality of the data they are built on.
AI is sometimes portrayed as a free lunch – despite the hundreds of billions invested in it. But there are no magic beans and no crystal balls, and competing visions are jostling for dominance. We are seeing countries bet on the promise of Artificial General Intelligence even as scientists and other experts cannot agree what the path to get there would look like, and indeed whether it is even achievable.“
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Alex.
