Even though you were unable to get to Cardiff for Tuesday’s conference, Socitm Cymru is coming to you in the form of extra content from Board Trustee Dylan Roberts for his presentation: The future of applications and data integration in local government and the NHS
Watch on YouTube and/or read his notes.
Keep getting everything you can from your membership this year and into 2026.
In your membership: content and people
- Share what’s working for you
If you were at Socitm Cymru this week, that thing you’ve been working on (or have already done) might have been exactly what the person next to you needed to fix a problem or project they’re working on.
The next best virtual alternative is sharing that thing in a case study or blog post. Your experiences and perspectives matter, so please share them with members. - New and recently added events
- Fri-24-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | Lunchtime learning: How to be a great mentor
Whether mentoring for the first time or looking to enhance your approach, get practical insights and tools to help you succeed - Wed-29-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | The new leadership team: How HR + IT can jointly build your future workforce
The future’s not replacing staff with machines. It’s about pairing human talent with digital assistants so your people can focus on work that makes the biggest difference in your communities - Thu-30-Oct | 11:00 to 12:00 | Members’ Connection Hour
Making the most of membership in 2026 - Fri-14-Nov | Zero Trust in the AI era. Moving to a SASE architecture
Protect yourself from the risks associated with AI tools so you can use them productively without compromising security. - Fri-28-Nov | 11:00 to 13:00 | 2025 alumni catch-up [info TBC]
- Fri-24-Oct | 13:00 to 14:00 | Lunchtime learning: How to be a great mentor
- Meet members and collaborate at local meetings
- Did you miss this? Digital Twins: Practical steps for implementation
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 [England-only]
- Courses with the IT Management and Leadership Institute, Leadership Through Data, and QA
- Mon-27 to Fri-31-Oct | 13:30 to 17:00 | M365 Information Architecture
- WeChange.AI‘s Framework for Change. Watch WeChange in 3 minutes 🙂
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
Core skills (on Teams)
| Course | Dates | Time | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction to emotional intelligence | Tuesday 4 November | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
| Equality, diversity, and inclusion | Wednesday 12 November | 09:30 to 12:30 | 1 |
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
| Wednesday 22 October | Beyond the £45 Billion: How AI can actually deliver the productivity everyone’s talking about Freshworks will demo real reform scenarios – from automated onboarding for transferred employees, to intelligent offboarding processes. See how to proactively gather insights that help you manage workforce transitions at scale. Whether you’re preparing for organisational mergers, managing workforce transitions, or simply need to do more with less, discover how the right AI can transform your employee experience from reactive to remarkable. |
- Friday 24 October | How to be a great mentor
Whether you’re mentoring for the first time or looking to enhance your approach, this session will offer practical insights and tools to help you succeed. - Wednesday 29 October | The new leadership team: How HR + IT can jointly build your future workforce
The future of public service isn’t about replacing staff with machines. It’s about pairing human talent with digital assistants (that take care of the repetitive admin) so you can focus on work that makes the biggest difference in your communities. - Friday 14 November | Zero Trust in the AI Era – Moving to a SASE Architecture
Protect yourself from the risks associated with AI tools so you can use them productively without compromising security.
Meetings
- FULLY BOOKED Wednesday 23 October | 09:30 to 11:00 | Reorganise to realise: Making LGR work for you and your partners (with CCS). Email us to be added to the waiting list.
- FULLY BOOKED Wednesday 3 December | 09:30 to 11:00 | Maximising social value in procurement. A practical workshop for public sector buyers. Email us to be added to the waiting list.
Partners’ events and updates
- Tue-21-Oct
- 14:00 to 15:00 | Microsoft Copilot Chat Tuesdays
- 14:00 to 15:30 | Procurement Act Peer Support Group: The Competitive Flexible Procedure
- 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. Use SOCITM100 for your free ticket.
- Wed-22-Oct | 10:00 to 11:00 | From business process to business impact: infusing AI into Microsoft business applications
- Thu-23-Oct
- 10:00 to 11:00 | AI starts with data. Building the foundation for intelligent business applications
- 10:00 to 11:00 | Baked in, not bolted on: embedding digital inclusion
- Wed-5-Nov | 10:00 to 12:00 | Microsoft Innovation and Collaboration Forum
- Wed-12 to Thu-13-Nov | 08:45 to 18:00 | TechShare Pro 2025 [London]
- Thu-13-Nov
- 12:30 to 15:30 | Local Gov London Roundtable: Talking IT challenges – led by Tanium’s Senior Security Advisor Dan Jones (previously Head of Cyber at the MOD) [London]
- 13:00 to 14:00 | Breaking Bias with Belbin
- Tue-18 to Wed-19-Nov | 08:45 to 17:00 | LGPN South [Heathrow]
Full of your Socitm community: CEO Nadira Hussain, Emeritus President Mark Lumley (Hounslow), VP Yogita Popat (Barnet), LSE Chair Rehana Ramesh (Hackney), VP Kevin Taylor (Suffolk), and Trustee Jonathan Stephenson (Brentwood and Rochford). - Mon-24-Nov | 12:00 to 16:00 | AI in Local Government Fair [Cambridge]
- Wed-26 to Thu-27-Nov | Local government innovation hackathon on homelessness and rough sleeping [Birmingham]
| Collaboration is something we all talk about as being the key to success, and sharing ideas and connecting with peers is always important but in reality, with the everyday juggle of life how often do we get round to this? November’s lunchtime roundtable will be an intimate, informative discussion around 3 main topics with the conversation being led by Tanium’s Senior Security Advisor Dan Jones (previously Head of Cyber at the MOD). |
- Cyber resilience and risk mitigation in local government:
- Particularly risks in mobilisation, disaggregation, and integrations.
- Digital foundations:
- Tackling legacy, technical debt and shared services, budget pressures, and cost-effective digital transformation.
- Smart operations:
- Automation, efficiency and workforce enablement, automating manual tasks and workflows safely, reducing people hours and reallocating to high value initiatives, workforce transformation and digital skills.
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
A few of the things I’ve been looking at (and sharing with colleagues) this week:
- So You Want to Be a Director of Technology in Local Government? Here’s What You Need to Know
- A simple call to action to senior leaders around the cyber threat: Ministerial letter on Making cyber security a board responsibility.
- It’s official, I’m an uncertainty avoider. How about you?
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Alex.
