Coffee and tea and service design
Your events, training and resources
Weren’t able to join last week’s alumni coffee hour catch-up? You missed Tass Smith from Warwick talking about redesigning their noise nuisance service. It wasn’t a formal presentation and instead a conversation between Sam and Tass. If have something similar that would fix someone else’s wicked problem, or kick start a re-design project, let us know. Sharing in the coffee hour is laid back and we’re not a tricky or judgey audience. We’re all keen to learn from, and support, you.
We were left with a (short) reading list and a shameless plug.
- Shameless plug first: You’re v. welcome to join the LocalGov Application Managers’ Network (LGAMN) that Tass co-founded with fellow alumna Iftaz Hussain.
- Short reading list, second:
- The Agile Comms Handbook, by Giles Turnbull
- Design. Think. Make. Break. Repeat. As well as a book, this site has a HUGE amount of resources
- How to Design Services That Work, by Lou Downe [I added this one.]
Our annual meeting/get together is on Thursday 7 December. And we’ll be in Manchester this year. Lots on the agenda. Do hope you might be to join us then to share, laugh, ask questions, and keep in touch.
Remember to join the LinkedIn group, and then let us know how to do this alumni network better .
Last week 9 simple rules for leadership in turbulent time were published. The rules are based on work from Gloucester’s MD Jon McGinty, that he presented during the Executive Education Programme in Digital Transformation for UK Local Government.
- Borrow and collaborate: Local government is great at creativity and innovation but tends to reinvent things. Never be afraid to borrow great ideas.
Discover the other 8 simple rules
Read the report from the Modernising Service Delivery conference day earlier this month. Everyone not there missed a tremendous set of project presentations from the June Empowering Women cohort.
Unleash the potential of your data
On Wednesday AWS and special guest Kimberley Hose (Head of Business Intelligence) from Glasgow City Council explored the art of the possible with AI and data.
Short on time? Skip to these highlights (approx. timings):
02:54 Stories around data and AI transforming lives
12:13 GenAI will transform the way you work
14:37: Key trends reshaping UK local authorities
23:37 Emerging risks and challenges with genAI
26:26 Framework for adopting AI responsibly
32:45 Conversation with Kimberley Hose from Glasgow CC
48:23 Kimberley’s Top Tips
You might also find the Swindon case study webinar helpful.
Next week it’s back to just the one webinar on Wednesday 25 October:
Secure, sustainable and cost-effective at the same time? But desktop virtualisation, cloud PCs and the right endpoint are helping organisations like yours deliver a modern, secure workspace.
BarNET ZERO Challenge
This week VP Yogita Popat (Assistant Director for Sustainability for Barnet) and her team launched their BarNET Zero Challenge. They are asking the people of Barnet to be part of the solution to shape a sustainable future.
The competition revolves around addressing 5 critical sustainability challenge areas, developed from insights gathered through Barnet’s Citizens’ Assembly discussions on climate change and biodiversity.
Get inspired for your own net zero activities. How do you engage your communities? Share your initiatives with the Socitm community.
Podcast Socitm Says: new episode
Green and sustainable IT focuses on the global problem of e-waste, the IT lifecycle emissions and the responsible disposal of waste to reduce environmental impact, thereby contributing to achieving net zero targets.
Training
Read about the Leadership Academy experience of alumni annual meeting co-host Graeme Murrell – Top Talent graduate [Class of Manchester 2022]
How was your course? Tell us 🙂
October to December (CPD certified workshops)
- Thursdays 2 and 16 November: How to be an effective coach
- Tuesday 7 November Introduction to Emotional Intelligence
- Friday 1 and Tuesday 12 December: Managing and motivating remote teams
- Tuesday 5 December Introduction to Emotional Intelligence
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 Sara Razon.
On completion of training, don’t forget to claim your CPD points.
Socitm Advisory
Implementing and embedding successful business change
Socitm Advisory was asked by a department of a large national charity to conduct an independent review of their recent change programme. The objective was to identify actions that would help embed the changes, highlight any lessons learned (to inform how to approach future change programmes), and remove duplication in the team’s work striving for a more joined-up approach.
Read the whole case study.
Are you making full use of your membership?
As part of your membership you can receive between 2 and 12 hours of FREE consultancy advice per year. To make use of your inclusive consultancy hours, get in touch or log in to My Account.
Visit Socitm Advisory
Events from Socitm and our partners
Meet up with your Socitm colleagues for great networking opportunities.
Next week or so…
- Wednesday 25 October: Secure, sustainable and cost-effective at the same time? Impossible, right?
- Wednesday 1 November: How to improve customer experience with AI-driven tools
- Thursday 2 November: Data, AI and the Scottish Public Sector [Edinburgh]
- Wednesday 8 November: Local meeting – Yorkshire and Humber
- Friday 17 November: Access for All: Northumberland County Council’s journey to inclusive documents
- Wednesday 22 November: Benchmarking – A participant’s perspective
- Friday 24 November: Local meeting – London and South East
- Tuesday 28 November: Local meeting – Socitm Central collaboration
Missed a webinar? Past recordings are available to watch in the resource hub. Also, make sure to check out our regional events. There’s a mix of online and in-person meetings, so please feel free to join any that are outside your area.
How are you using AI?
For your experiments and implementations of AI, how have you adapted the usage policy template? It’s an open document that is a work in progress. If you’ve added to or altered it in a way that would work for teams like yours in other public sector organisations, tell us about it.
With the LGA and Solace, we submitted written evidence to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee’s inquiry into the risks and opportunities presented by large language models.
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
It’s one of the short episodes of Radio 4’s More or Less. Harvard professor Claudia Goldin is only the third woman to win a Nobel Prize for economics. In just over 12 minutes, Tim Harford discusses her work showing how gender differences in pay and work have changed over the last 200 years and why the gender pay gap persists.