Get set to use everything in your membership in 2025
News |

Newsletter: A packed legislative programme

Houses of Parliament in bright sunshine and blue sky.

Get everything you can from your membership

Your events, training and resources

With 40 bills in this week’s King’s speech there’s going to be plenty to keep us busy. Matt Prosser in Solace’s response had this particular observation:

…empowering places must mean proper devolution of power to all areas and not just delegation; it’s absolutely crucial that councils aren’t put on the hook for delivery but left outside the room on strategy… 

Top 4 interesting and useful things for you this week:

  1. NEW Template: Terms of Reference for an AI Governance Board
    This document is based on TOR used by Norfolk County Council.
  2. Your input is essential to our work. With that in mind, please fill in a quick survey on AI about policies, frameworks, guidance and so on.
    It’s all part of our collaboration with the University of Cambridge’s project on ethical uses of AI in local government.
  3. Free, modular Change Agent training with Microsoft returns for 6 weekly sessions starting on Thursday 12 September.
    This course is free for local government staff as it is funded by Microsoft. Please ensure you can attend when signing up and if things change let our team know, and we’ll make the place available again.
    Fit this modular version of the programme into your calendar for 6 weeks on Thursdays:
    • 12 September 09:00 to 16:30 – Skills to change
    • 19 September 09:00 to 13:00 – Productivity, communication and AI
    • 26 September 09:00 to 13:00 – Employee experience, tasks and accessibility
    • 3 October 09:00 to 13:00 – Apps, automation and AI
    • 10 October 09:00 to 13:00 – Data and AI
    • 17 October 09:00 – 16:30 Time to change
  4. Weekly webinars return on Wednesday 11 September with guest hosts from ICS.AI. Watch their February session all about using AI in social care. Then on Friday 13 September make sure you’re Enabling the Security Operations Centre of the future.

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'.

In Your Resource Hub

NEW Template: Terms of Reference for an AI Governance Board

Download the document based on TOR used by Norfolk County Council.
It includes objectives, scope, membership, stakeholders, governance information, an appointed chair, an outline of meetings, quorum, confidentiality, amendment of terms of reference, and a conclusion.

Defining healthcare and wellbeing in connected places

Wellbeing is about how we’re doing as individuals, communities and as a nation, and how sustainable that position is for the future.

Log in to browse the collection

NEW impact case in AI@Socitm

Exploring AI’s potential in local government: Insights from Telford and Wrekin Council’s Customer Services AI Assessment.
Telford and Wrekin Council has been at the forefront of exploring AI integration, championed by Gemma Hancox, their Group Customer Contact Manager.

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

You might have missed…

Watch: The Power of Reflective Practice – an approach that empowers you to learn more effectively, retain knowledge, and apply it with greater impact.

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

Browse the Resource Hub

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

Socitm Says
Browse all episodes of Socitm Says

Is it a benchmark or a survey or both….?

Do you check your ICT services? What do you know about your costs, delivery, performance, user satisfaction, or user skills?

Check your performance against yourself (year on year) or against your anonymised peers. Get the concise overview (plus the data to back it up) you need to create and shape business cases with Socitm’s cost-effective benchmarking.

Get started
Leadership Academy Alumni 2023

Training

Empowering Women comes to Exeter for the first time next week! Institute Director Sam Smith talks about its personal and professional impact.

How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂

Online courses

In-person courses

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 the training team.

Browse all training

Connecting people and places

You can inspire people and places towards lasting change

Start to become more adaptive by taking part in the two-day, in-person Placed-Based Leadership course (running in September and again in November) that will support you:

  • with techniques to manage turbulent times and work with both other leaders and the rest of the workforce;
  • to be inclusive, such as through digital accessibility;
  • to be resourceful, with governance models, decision-making techniques and budgets.

It will cover good practices for digital transformation, including sharing and analysing data and using it ethically, as well as change management tools and techniques.

Register ASAP

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

Free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

July

August

September

November

  • Thursday 21 November Smarter Working Awards Ceremony [Birmingham]

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

Government Business: post-election issue

Immediate Past President Mark Lumley has written about this year’s Digital Trends report in the current issue of Government Business magazine. His article is in the new (well, returning) Government Technology supplement.

What else will you find in there?

  1. Grasping the innovation opportunity in public services – Georgina Maratheftis from techUK (page 77)
  2. DigiGov Expo: a new era of public sector technology (page 83)
  3. Embracing digital transformation: public sector trends for 2024 – Mark Lumley from the London Borough of Hounslow (page 85)
  4. The Procurement Act and the public sector – Andie Brookes, Procurement policy specialist at CCS (page 90)
  5. Future-proofing Welsh high streets – Kiki Rees-Stavros from Trefi Smart Towns Cymru (page 96)
  6. Breaking down digital trust barriers – Chris Dimitriadis from ISACA (page 103)
Browse issue 31.4

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

This week we an all staff, in-person meeting-with-purpose in Milton Keynes. During a conversation about the Euros I mentioned this really interesting (for someone not interested in football) analysis about the psychological safety created for England in penalty shootouts. A good read even for the non footing ballers 🙂

Photo by Linda Gerbec on Unsplash