Keep getting everything you can from your membership this year and next.
2026 membership details have been put together and sent out. You have everything you need to renew. Still unsure? Email Director of Member Services dave.sanderson@socitm.net.
We calculated the £value of Socitm so you don’t have to.
In your membership: content and people
- Read and use LOLA’s paper (mentioned at June’s President’s Conference): Humanoid ethics. Policy for local government.
- Watch The new leadership team: How HR+IT can build your future workforce
- Your next virtual events: cyber security week
- Wed-12-Nov | 13:00 to 14:00 | Round-the-clock defence: Why managed detection and response matters
- Fri-14-Nov | 13:00 to 14:00 | Zero Trust in the AI era – moving to a SASE architecture
- Meet members in person and collaborate on solutions together:
- Socitm in the East | Thu-20-Nov in Huntingdon
- Socitm in London and the South East | Tue-25-Nov in Hackney’s Tomlinson Centre
- Public Sector ICT Conference | Tue-25-Nov in Belfast
- Socitm in the North East | Wed-3-Dec in Durham
- Did you miss this? All the new case studies in AI@Socitm
- Share what works for you: Your experiences and perspectives matter, and by sharing them you’ll help spark conversations and inspire others across our community.
- Limited seats now available for December’s procurement roundtable
Reserve yours now before it fills up again.
Very little time left to use 2025’s complimentary benchmarking module.
Email benchmarking@socitm.net to start cost, delivery, performance, or user skills. You’ll need to pay for benchmarking in 2026.
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 2026 membership?
- Conferences, courses, meetings and webinars
- 2-hour virtual innovation session: talk with sector experts from Socitm to discuss a project or strategy on a topic of your choice.
- IT policy audit with PPS [Essential+/Enhanced/Executive]
- Resources
- Website accessibility testing with Silktide
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
- WeChange.AI‘s Framework for Change. Watch WeChange in 3 minutes 🙂
Keep getting all you can from membership: log into your account.
In your membership: Courses
Core skills (on Teams)
| Course | Dates | Time | Training points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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.
Share what’s working for you
If you were at an in-person event, 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.
In your membership: events
Lunchtime webinars from 13:00 to 14:00
| Wednesday 12 November | Round-the-clock defence: Why Managed Detection and Response matters. Organisations like yours are frequently the target of ransom and extortion by malicious actors. Yet it’s often difficult to respond due to a perfect storm of dwindling security budgets and the challenges of retaining skilled cyber talent. Come along to better understand how MDR can perfectly compliment your existing in-house cyber security capability to meet your business needs, protect your reputation, and achieve compliance. |
- Friday 14 November | Zero Trust in the AI era – Moving to a SASE architecture
Join Abzorb for a walkthrough of Cisco’s SASE solutions, which bring together core security features such as DNS filtering, secure web access, firewall-as-a-service, data loss prevention, and access controls. All delivered via the cloud. - Wednesday 19 November | What you didn’t know Microsoft could do: A live demo of modern finance for the public sector
See how you can close your books faster, cut manual effort, and finally get clear, real-time financial control. No theory. No jargon. Just a practical walk-through of what’s possible when modern finance meets intelligent automation. - Wednesday 26 November | How do smart spaces and IoT drive smarter services? Insights from and for public sector IT leaders
- Tuesday 9 December | Navigating LGR: Challenges, opportunities and innovation
- Thursday 11 December | Accessibility in Power BI
Meetings
- Friday 28 November | 11:00 to 13:00 | Alumni Day
- Wednesday 3 December | 09:30 to 11:00 | Maximising social value in procurement. A practical workshop for public sector buyers.
Partners’ events and updates
- Tue-11-Nov
- 10:00 to 14:00 | Accessibility in Design [Cardiff]
- 11:30 to 12:30 | Microsoft Local Government Adoption & Change Group covering New Outlook
- 14:00 to 15:00 | Cyber Incident Response: What Really Happens in the First 48 Hours – A First-Hand Account
- Wed-12 to Thu-13-Nov | 08:45 to 18:00 | TechShare Pro 2025 [London]
- Thu-13-Nov
- 09:30 to 14:20 | Public Sector Digital Transformation 2025
Our colleague Ben Bennetts from Impera Analytics is part of the data debate at 09:55. - 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
- 09:30 to 14:20 | Public Sector Digital Transformation 2025
- Thu-13 to Fri-14-Nov | COSLA Conference and Exhibition 2025 [St Andrews]
- Tue-18-Nov | 14:00 to 15:30 | C-TAG Workshop: Securing your email domain
- 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). - Wed-19-Nov | 11:00 to 12:00 | Proactive cyber defence with AI-driven threat intelligence
- Wed-19-Nov | 08:15 to 17:00 | Digital Scotland 2025 [Edinburgh]
- Wed-19-Nov | 18:30 to 20:30 | Power Platform User Group Wales [Cardiff]
- Thu-20 to Fri-21-Nov | ADEPT Autumn Conference [Manchester]
President Kurt Frary (Norfolk) is on Friday’s agenda: Developing a digital workforce - Mon-24-Nov | 12:00 to 16:00 | AI in Local Government Fair [Cambridge]
The fair brings together council staff from across Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, and Greater Manchester with University of Cambridge AI researchers. - Mon-24-Nov | 12:30 to 14:00 | Strengthening inclusive leadership
- Wed-26-Nov | 14:00 to 15:00 | C-TAG Workshop: MTA-STS
- Wed-26 to Thu-27-Nov | Local government innovation hackathon on homelessness and rough sleeping [Birmingham]
- Wed-26 to Fri-28-Nov | 11:00 to 12:30 | AI, Automation and Bots4Good 2025
- Thu-27-Nov | 10:00 to 15:00 | Cloud Endpoint Connect [London]
- Thu-27-Nov | 10:30 to 12:00 | APSE Southern Innovation, Digital Transformation, and AI Network
Dave Sanderson will share details of Socitm’s Corporate Policy on GenAI - Wed-3-Dec | 10:00 to 12:00 | Microsoft Innovation and Collaboration Forum
- Wed-3-Dec | 13:00 to 15:00 | Dolenni Digidol: Celebrating the impact of our future leaders [Llandudno]
A few eclectic but practical highlights from Issue 32.6
Why are renewables the smartest investment the public sector can make?
Meeting the green jobs challenge
Sound foundations
FM leaders spotlight significant challenges from upcoming council devolution
How effective procurement can deliver value across the public sector
Procurement unlocked: Agile. Intelligent. Human.
From bollards to benches: designing safer, smarter cities
Why local roads need long-term investment
Management Consultancy Framework
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:
- Browsing the Copilot [public sector] Persona Library
- Searching the content from October’s Major Cities of Europe Conference for presentations from colleagues:
- Kurt’s slides – Digital Trends and Connectivity is Rubbish
- Yasmine’s slides – AI governance in the local public sector
- Get Tech Certified. From now till 31 December 2025, all civil and public servants can access over 200 free learning and certification pathways – from beginner to advanced – across key digital and technology areas.
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend when it arrives.
Best wishes,
Alex.
Start creating positive, lasting changes in the place you live and work
Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash