You still have time to get the joining details for tomorrow (Friday 26 September) afternoon’s 1pm webinar:
In your membership: content and people
- Watch: Securing AI
- 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? Preventing credential theft: Guidance for local authority help desks
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
- Wed-15-Oct | 13:30 to 17:00 | M365 Copilot for Information Managers
- WeChange.AI Framework for Change Socitm-only pricing.
Drop into Socitm in Yorkshire and Humber on Thu-2-Oct on Teams to hear more about it’s working for Norfolk.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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 26 September: Key strategies for modernising your threat detection
To identify and stop cyber-attacks as early as possible, you must move towards adopting a proactive approach to detection and response. Enhance your current capabilities and meet both existing and new requirements of the NCSC’s Cyber Assessment Framework.
- 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
- Wednesday 8 October | The path to smart spaces: Practical insights from public sector leaders
- Wednesday 15 October | Transforming operations with AI: 3 practical use cases
- Wednesday 22 October | Beyond the £45 Billion: How AI can actually deliver the productivity everyone’s talking about
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
- Wed-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
- 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.
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
A few things I’ve been doing and looking at this week:
- My colleague shared the site Positive News with us last week. Finally got round to looking at it and found this great article/interview Life after: Being a leader in the far right.
- Catching up on all of last week’s Squiggly Careers Sprint x AI. Started on Monday and then failed to do anything for the rest of the week. Sigh.
- The strategy is enquiry: making gov strategies more meaningful
H/T Dave Briggs’s Localise newsletter (scroll down for the subscribe form) which also has a good piece in there about a user-centred design workshop at Luton.
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Alex.
