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Newsletter: President’s Conference over and out

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Your events, training and resources

You were missed in Birmingham. A belated welcome to our new Presidential year with Carol Williams. And Mark Lumley is still part of the Presidential Team as Immediate Past President.

During the gala dinner on Wednesday evening we were raising money for Carol’s chosen charity Capstone Care Leavers Trust.

The Trust awards grants to young people aged between 17 – 25 years who have been in care in England or Wales and are in need. Zoe Greenwood joined us all and shared a video featuring some of the young people that the Trust has been able to help and support.

The JustGiving page remains open for another week. Thank you so much for your support

Congratulations to all the winners of 2024’s Socitm Awards. Maybe your council or colleague was a winner?!

We’ll be uploading presentations from the two days during next week. 

The events calendar continues with:

1. Free training with Microsoft next week

Change Agent Manager offers an overview of the key skills needed to be an effective change agent – with a strong emphasis on the ability to lead change. Register now so you can take part on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 June.

Plus, browse Microsoft’s Digital Skills Training Hours
Sharpen and develop your digital skills via live instructor-led virtual training hours throughout June. Learn about Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot Studios, Forms, OneNote, Planner, Power Apps, Power Automate and more

2. Top Talent training in Essex on 24 and 25 June

Learn how you can better lead teams in this challenging VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) environment. Learning Programme Manager Aidan Matthews will take you through the essentials.

Get in touch with Dominka for all the details.

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

Just Published: Connected Places

This collection will empower you in creating sustainable and connected places built around resilient communities.

It will help you enable digital benefits for all, and generate social, economic, and environmental value

Discover the key components of a Connected Place, their interdependencies and the impact on people and places. All connected by people and data. It’s a map and guide for your work within your communities.

Log in to browse the collection

NEW impact case in AI@Socitm

AI helps Coventry City Council answer more calls while spending less money

Coventry City Council launched their AI assistant, Basil, to deal with an overwhelming number of calls every day and constant repetition of the same queries.

Browse AI@Socitm

You might have missed…

Watch last Friday’s webinar: The Magic of Mentoring

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

Socitm Says: Recruitment and retention
Listen to Matt Lewis (SRS Wales’ Chief Operating Officer) and Sam Hall (Director of Primary, Community Care and Mental Health Digital Services at Digital Health and Care Wales) talk about the challenges they face and tackle with staff recruitment and retention in local government technology services.

Browse all episodes of Socitm Says

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

Leadership Academy Alumni 2023

Training

There are 3 more Empowering Women courses this year. Find the one nearest to you and register.

Watch Institute Director Sam Smith talk about the personal and professional impact of Empowering Women training.

How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂

Virtual workshops

In-person programmes

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

Somerset County Council creating a single digital front door. Somerset Council puts customers first by unifying five separate service organisations and empowering frontline teams.

Somerset citizens used to be served by five separate authorities and multiple contact centres.

Now, consolidated on a Kerv cloud-based solution, a unitary Somerset Council is at the heart of public services delivery. Long, confusing IVR menus have been replaced by nine ultra-efficient digital assistants, halving abandonment rates and getting customers to where they need to be 47% faster.

Read the results
A group of men and one woman dressed in walking gear. They are all standing in a car park with the bottom of a hill in the background behind two minibuses.

The Public Sector Challenge

Local government is always up for a challenge, but the last few years have been more challenging than most. Annually we are asking the public sector to come together by taking on a challenge and by doing so raise money for Cancer Research UK.

This year we’re tackling the Yorkshire Three Peaks – a 24-mile assent in 12 hours on Friday 6 September.

Join over 500 participants from across the public sector (including Socitm).

Donate to the challenge

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

Free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

Missed a webinar? Past recordings are available to watch 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.

Come and say hello

  • Wednesday 19 June Penna’s AI Roundtable with The MJ and Socitm [hybrid]
    Panellists include Nadira Hussain and President Mark Lumley
  • Thursday 20 June: LCG Net Zero 2024 [Birmingham]
    VP Yogita Popat (Director of Culture and Sustainability at the London Borough of Barnet) is on the 14:00 panel Mapping carbon footprint and discovering data-bank building tools
  • 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
Browse all events

LGA/LocalGov Digital Service Standard research

Free learning and development

Created in 2019 by the Government Digital Service, the Service Standard helps teams to create and run great public services. It replaced the previous Local Government Digital Service Standard to create a common standard across central and local government.

The LGA and LocalGovDigital are keen to understand the level of take-up and effectiveness of the Service Standard in councils, and establish a working group to review the findings.

Even if you weren’t aware of the Standard before reading this we’d like your views.

This survey is very short and should only take a few minutes to complete. The survey will close on 28 June 2024.

Complete the survey

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

In Birmingham on Thursday, one of our speakers was Martin Sadler. His talk about ICT in the NHS was lively and eye opening. He also spoke about his book Aspirationally Idle which is available for purchase!

If you weren’t there in person, discover more about his fresh approach to digital leadership.