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Newsletter: So close to the bank holiday weekend – you’ve nearly made it

Easter Simnel Cake With Marzipan Icing and Decorations

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Your events, training and resources

Just published: AI@Socitm

Unlock AI excellence
AI@Socitm is a dynamic hub of resources to help you get to grips with implementing AI responsibly and securely.
In each theme you’ll find research, webinars, impact cases, relevant upcoming Socitm events and training, external training, and external links:

Want to add your own content? Let us know on hello@socitm.net or use the contact us [choose Research as your area of interest] form.

Let’s help each other connect the dots.

ICYMI We are accepting nominations for Socitm Awards 2024

This year’s awards are a little different. The categories have been expanded and we have new judging panels for each one.
Nominate your own team and projects and then nominate someone else’s work that’s impressed you in the past 12 months. It’s a short submission form (with a max of ~500 words) so share the great work you’ve done and seen.

Plug for the events schedule 🙂

It’s not always easy to travel so keep an eye on the webinar schedule (which are mostly weekly – they are taking a break for the school holidays in England) as there’s a variety of topics covered there. And in the list below you’ll see online events from partners and things that I spot that I’m sure you’ll find relevant and useful. If you’re running something that you want to share with members tell me and I’ll add it in.

Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend. And an even better Bank Holiday weekend next week!

Best wishes,

Alex.

Your Resource Hub

From Digital Trends 2024: Community resilience

Stronger IT intrusion detection, and a better educated workforce have all helped organisations to prevent, detect and deal with cyber risks.

2024 will see a significant change in this agenda for public services, with a focus on the contribution of digital and IT to the mitigation of a community-wide risks, as public services operate in a connected system of inter-dependent services, communities, geographies, and infrastructures.

Protecting this wider system is key to the resilience and functioning of public services.

Read more

You might have missed…

Green and sustainable IT: Give your device a second life
In net zero we considered how local authorities can help to decarbonise their areas. This briefing focuses on IT lifecycle emissions and the responsible disposal of electronic waste to reduce environmental impact, thereby contributing to achieving net zero targets.

The world produces around 50 million tonnes of electrical and electronic waste a year, worth over $62.5 billion, making it the fastest growing waste stream worldwide – the UN calls it a tsunami of e-waste.

Website accessibility

Log in to check your Silktide Score and to complete your Digital Accessibility Maturity Assessment.

Accessibility Week returns in May. Details of the daily sessions will be shared as soon as they’re confirmed.

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.

Local Digital evaluation study update

Understanding the needs of local government

We are asking all councils in England to complete the Local Digital evaluation survey (even if you’ve taken it already) to ensure that we have a comprehensive set of responses from across local government.

The survey, covering digital and cyber posture takes up to 30 minutes to complete and can be submitted by anyone from your council. We particularly encourage participation from digital and cyber staff.

Completing it will provide a useful opportunity to benchmark your digital and cyber readiness. Like last time, we will publish findings from key survey questions, allowing your council to compare its responses with those across the sector.

Take the survey

Training

Leadership Advocate Irene Docherty has recently completed the Empowering Women course:

“I was able to take time to reflect on my values and biases and to challenge my own thinking. The realisation that we all shared many views, issues and aspirations was eye-opening.”

Read all about it her new Q&A. How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂

March’s virtual courses

  • Thursday 28 March: Change Agent Reflector: Time to change (part 6 of 6)

April’s CPD-certified virtual workshops

May and June’s in-person and virtual 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

Events

Member-only meetings

Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.

Free webinars and events from Socitm and our partners

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 8 and Thursday 9 May: DigiGov Expo [London]
    Join Nadira Hussain, Mark Lumley and Sam Smith on Wednesday
  • Tuesday 21 May: LGPN North [Manchester]
    Join President Mark Lumley for the roundtable discussion Empowering communities: technology for public good
  • Tuesday 21 May: PublicTechnology Live 2024 [London]
    Incoming President Carol Williams is a panellist for Are times too tough for local government transformation?
Browse all events

President’s Conference

Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 June in Birmingham

Socitm Awards 2024 are live
Awards celebrating local and regional government success are handed out to winners at the gala dinner on the evening of the first day of President’s Conference. This year that will be on Wednesday 12 June.
Log in to your account on socitm.net to see what is included in your organisation’s membership for the annual conference.

Register now

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

Spotted this (from Microsoft’s Stuart Ridout) on LinkedIn. If you’re using or trialling Copilot this might come in handy. Let me know.

“If you’re struggling with sharing #Copilot and AI prompts in your organisation I have GREAT NEWS! Erik Olsson and I are pleased to release #PromptBuddy onto GitHub as sample code for Power Apps. This is a great app that is FREE, takes no time to set up and that your users can get value from immediately.

Files at https://github.com/stuartridout/promptbuddy

Demo and install video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4h-GIOqULw

Prompt Buddy allows you to share your organisation prompts and build upon the great prompts that are already available in-app in the Copilot experience or in Copilot Labs.”