See how to unlock the potential of your technology (with WeChange.AI)
News |

Newsletter: Socitm wrapped

Authors and contributors: Alexandra Murphy

Keep getting everything you can from your membership

Your events, training and resources

The 2024 schedule is done. Unless you’re reading this on Friday morning. You can still join this afternoon’s webinar at 1pm! It’s a good one to end with, as it’s about user engagement on your websites. And we all have websites and website users.

Thank you for being part of the Socitm community this year. We’ve picked a few of our highlights below, but it’s the lovely things you tell us about at meetings and conferences that mean the most. The things about the people you’ve met and the ideas and connections you’re going away with.

You’re the key part of this community. Telling us what you need and then running with the resources and platforms we can create for you. Let’s get together and do it all again next year.

This week there’s a top 5 (in no special order) of useful/interesting things for you

  1. Andrew Boxall (Microsoft Change Agent maestro) shared this list of M365 Agents on LinkedIn. Fits in really well following on from last week’s workshop with AvePoint (Stay Ahead: What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot).
    • 1.1 Supplementary point here: dates for the first Change Agent course of 2025 were confirmed this week. It’ll be an intensive one (aren’t they all?!) over 2 days on Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 February. Register to make sure the dates are in your diary ASAP. Really get to grips with the M365 tools you already have and put them to better use.
  2. My pick from the events list this week is something I don’t think we’ve touched on since Accessibility Week. AI – What impact does it have on Digital Accessibility?
  3. Submissions for talks for March’s Public Sector Innovation Week are open. We know you’ve got some good ones. We’ve seen great presentations at local meetings all year.
  4. Come along with us on the next Public Sector Challenge. Register by Wednesday 25 December (!) to join the London Bridges Walk) on Saturday 18 January.
  5. Earlier this week, techUK published their Round-Up of November’s Digital Ethics Summit 2024.

Take care. I hope you can 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 Year in Review 2024

It’s no Spotify unwrapped. It’s our highlights, many of which have happened because of becoming a charity in February this year. We hope they tally with at least some of yours.
Here’s to more good things in 2025. Let’s keep on together.

NEW in AI@Socitm

Event: Local Government AI Summit 2025 from 09:30 on Thursday 23 January
Join the second, annual national learning and information sharing event co-designed with local authorities.

You might have missed…

Watch Preparing for the Procurement Act 2023

Chaired by our Institute Director Sam Smith, with guests Lisa Stubbs (Head of Open and Transparent Contracting) from the Cabinet Office and Mark Reddy (Global Director Growth – Finance Spend and Governance) from OneAdvanced.

Lisa and Mark really know what they’re talking about.

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.

Listen now: Using social progress index data podcast

This episode of the podcast is a comprehensive exploration of data, the social progress index (SPI), and how one size does not fit all when trying to use it in your local authority. 

Central and local government veterans William Barker and Michael Green are asked questions by David Ogden. Listen to their conversation for ways to use SPI data to impact your strategy and activities.

Discover more about Place Insight. It’s a data tool available to members (from next year) at a member-only rate from our colleagues at Impera Analytics. It’s based on a Social Progress Index (listen to more about that in the above newest episode of the Socitm Says podcast).

Read about: Creating a Data-Driven Future for Brent using the Social Progress Index

Listen to all episodes of Socitm Says Podcast. Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

More procurement support in 2025

Are you ready?

If you had to miss Wednesday’s meeting about Preparing for the Procurement Act 2024 you can catch up with the recording (above) and the useful resources here:

The procurement theme continues in January with a 3-part series about social value.

With the Crown Commercial Service we’re looking into social value from your perspective, for your suppliers, and then we’ll all meet at the beginning of February to discuss it together as a complete procurement community.

  1. 09:30 to 11:00 Wednesday 22 January Maximising Social Value for the Public Sector (for your suppliers)
  2. 09:30 to 11:00 Wednesday 29 January Increasing Social Value in Procurement Practice (for you)
  3. 09:30 to 11:00 Wednesday 5 February Social Value Procurement Solutions and Shared Experiences

Accessibility and inclusion

Check your Silktide Score. If you’re competitive, see where you’re council ranks in the index for November. It’s not all about being #1. This month there’s a completely new entry and they’re straight in at #27: good job Ribble Valley Borough Council!

Follow Silktide’s YouTube series: What in the World is WCAG?

Digital Accessibility Maturity Assessment
Hassell lnclusion’s DAMA is a comprehensive self-assessment of your current level of digital accessibility maturity.

Accessibility-themed webinars
Thursday 19 December | 16:00 to 17:00 | How to meet the accessibility needs of an increasingly diverse workforce
Thursday 30 January | 16:00 to 17:00 | Trends in Digital Accessibility 2025
Friday 5 February | 13:00 to 14:00 | AI – What impact does it have on Digital Accessibility?

PAUSE
Creating fair and equitable organisations and services is everybody’s responsibility. Take time to reflect and review on your approach and identify where there may be gaps in the way in which you do things. Pause – reflect – act

Next core skills course
09:30 to 12:30 on Tuesday 28 January | Introduction to Emotional Intelligence | 1 point
Find your Silktide score
""

Training

Your training calendar for 2025 is live and you start you can start booking your places, to work with your personal learning and development plan, now.

In-person courses

Online core skills courses

Your annual membership includes training
Get your guide to using training points. Don’t have enough or you’ve run out? Let us know.
Log in to your user account for an up-to-date number of available training points on the day that you check.

Any questions, just ask us.

How was your course? Tell us about it and be a training champion 🙂

What don’t you know?

Survey end users’ skills to prioritise your future training needs. Get started with a user skills survey.

Browse all training
Socitm infographic - benchmarking 2024

Better data improves everything

You want evidence to support your business cases, and insight into positive changes you can make. Get a concise overview of your service coupled with data to support it.

NEW for your membership (in 2025 ONLY) Use one benchmarking module free-of-charge. Choose from: cost, delivery, performance or user skills.

Don’t get beaten by a lack of data

With benchmarking you can compare the size, performance and cost-efficiency of your ICT. Leaving you free to concentrate your efforts for improvement. Or make a case for improved funding.

Read more about what you can do and how in the Benchmarking Services Help Centre.

Next benchmarking webinar: 13:00 to 14:00 on Friday 7 February Choosing and using your benchmarking module: an introduction
Benchmarking in pictures
National conference Sheffield 2024

Events

Member-only meetings

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

President’s Conference 2025

Key date for your 2025 calendar: Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 June 2025
Make sure this is in your diary so you can join everyone back in Birmingham for your annual members’ conference.

You’ll be joined by members from the UK and guests from the Linked Organisation of Local Authority ICT Societies (LOLA). LOLA includes organisations from Australia, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, UK and USA. Socitm is the only UK member.

Create connections with people from outside the UK and Europe to bring best practice from wherever you find it to your team, place, and community.  

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

Mostly free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

January

February

March

Incident Response Webinar

11:00 to 12:00 | Thursday 23 January

Crayon UK is partnering with WithSecure™ for an insightful webinar on incident readiness and response.

In today’s digital landscape, being prepared for cyber incidents is crucial.

A study by the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology recently published a report in summary showing:

  • Half of businesses (50%) and around a third of charities (32%) report having experienced some form of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months. 
  • This is much higher for medium businesses (70%), large businesses (74%) and high-income charities with £500,000 or more in annual income (66%).
  •  By far the most common type of breach or attack is phishing (84% of businesses and 83% of charities).
  •  This is followed, to a much lesser extent, by others impersonating organisations in emails or online (35% of businesses and 37% of charities)
  •  And then viruses or other malware (17% of businesses and 14% of charities).

What to expect:

  • Expert insights from WithSecure™ professionals
  • Best practices for incident readiness
  • Strategies for effective incident response
  • Interactive Q&A session
Get better prepared for cyber incidents

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

Yesterday’s FEDIP Pirate Code and Ninja Stealth webinar had some great examples of good and bad ways to handle change. Plus, lots of Lego! While we wait for the recording and slides (not available at the time of writing) take a look at the source inspiration for the webinar’s title:

The Change Ninja and Be More Pirate.

Photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash