Keep getting everything you can from your membership
Your events, training and resources
We’re getting there. It’s Advent and the season of ‘let’s circle back to this in the New Year’ is almost here. But first, next week. It’s the final one of your members’ events calendar this year, as well as one of the busiest and best of the year ????
You’ve got a great mixture of things to choose from: preparing for February’s Procurement Act; tidying and streamlining your customer services with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre; improving user engagement/experience for your websites).
Are you putting together a case for training in 2025? Don’t forget that your membership includes courses. Build in a course with Socitm to your plan. Invest in yourself to continue developing and keep competitive for the next challenge.
This week there’s a top 4 (in no special order) of useful/interesting things for you
- Listen to Grant Hulley’s (Lead IT specialist at Maldon District Council) experience of undertaking the CAF as part of Local Digital’s recent pilot.
- My pick from the events list this week is BCS’s webinar Where are we now with AI in healthcare – the promise and the reality? Stuff this week made this leap off the page for me.
- Last month’s LocalGov Drupal Week is now a YouTube playlist.
- Congratulations to Sarah Peña [Wokingham] who’s been included in Computing’s Tech Women Celebration 50 2024 list!
Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend.
Best wishes,
Alex.
Membership in 2025
The pressure you’re under to do more with less and less is intense. But your Socitm community is here to support you and help.
Connect: tap into our network of professionals to solve your wicked issues, find solutions and share best practice.
Learn: develop you and your team with our CPD-certified training.
Explore: access practical resources to drive your decision making and avoid reinventing the wheel.
The pressure you’re under to do more with less and less is intense. But your Socitm community is here to support you.
- Prices are frozen for 2025
- NEW Limits lifted: everything will be available to everyone in your organisation
- NEW Resources: including AI-focused and (upcoming) cyber content
- NEW Member-only rate for Impera’s Place Insight
- NEW for 2025 ONLY Use one benchmarking module [cost, delivery, performance, user skills] free-of-charge
In Your Resource Hub
RECENT Digital twin technology and place-based services (Part 2)
Technological and financial challenges of implementing digital twins in place-based services
RECENT Local impact, global change: net zero initiatives for our communities
As we navigate through the challenges of climate change, it’s imperative to take proactive steps to ensure a sustainable future
NEW in AI@Socitm
Case study: Learnings and reflections from Ealing Council’s GenAI trial
You might have missed…
Watch Making Progress with Digital Transformation in a Manageable Way and/or Stay Ahead: What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter for a bit more about this Wednesday’s M365 Copilot webinar.
For ease of viewing, the recordings are divided into easy to navigate chapters, with subtitles and transcript available via the video player toolbar.
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.
In next month’s Members’ Connection Hour you’ll learn 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).
The new Procurement Act is coming…
Are you ready?
Your Socitm team is working with colleagues from the Cabinet Office and CCS to get you great and pertinent content and people to support your readiness for Monday 24 February 2025.
Preparing for the Procurement Act | 10:00 to 11:00 | Wednesday 11 December
We’re getting buyers and suppliers together (with the Cabinet office and OneAdvanced) to run through the basics, get practical tips, and to address our common concerns.
Have a read through this white paper ahead of the meeting, so you can be up to speed on the day.
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? New last week: Input modalities
Next website-related webinar
13:00 to 14:00 on Friday 13 December: How Continuous Optimisation Enhances User Engagement for Your Websites
Digital Accessibility Maturity Assessment
Hassell lnclusion’s DAMA is a comprehensive self-assessment of your current level of digital accessibility maturity.
Hassell Inclusion's next webinar
16:00 to 17:00 on Thursday 19 December How to meet the accessibility needs of an increasingly diverse workforce
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 course
09:30 to 12:30 on Tuesday 28 January | Introduction to Emotional Intelligence | 1 point
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
- Monday 24 and Tuesday 25 February | Top Talent | Yorkshire | 4 points
- Thursday 27 and Friday 28 February | Place-based Leadership | London | 4 points
Online core skills courses
- Tuesday 21 January Managing and Motivating Hybrid Teams | 1 point
- Tuesday 28 January Introduction to Emotional Intelligence | 1 point
- Tuesday 4 February How to be an Effective Coach) | 1 point
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.
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.
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
Events
Member-only meetings
Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.
- Friday 13 December Members’ Connection Hour on Teams
- Friday 7 February In person meeting for Scotland [venue TBC]
- Friday 7 February Choosing and using your benchmarking module on Teams
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.
Your local public service community will be getting together with 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
- Wednesday 11 December Preparing for the Procurement Act
- Thursday 12 December Introducing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Centre
- Friday 13 December How Continuous Optimisation Enhances User Engagement for Your Websites
- Wednesday 22 January Maximising Social Value for the Public Sector (Supplier perspective)
- Wednesday 29 January Increasing Social Value in Procurement Practice (Local authority perspective)
- Wednesday 5 February Social Value Procurement Solutions and Shared Experiences
- Tuesday 11 February Using Intelligent Automation to Meet the Challenges Facing Local Government
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.
Mostly free webinars and events hosted by partners and others
December
- Tuesday 10 December
- 13:00 to 14:00 AI Driven Public Sector: Supercharging Efficiency and Citizen Services
- 17:00 to 20:00 LOTI Local Gov Innovation Networking Event [London]
- 18:00 to 19:00 Where are we now with AI in healthcare – the promise and the reality?
- Wednesday 11 December
- 09:00 to 17:30 Manage IT LOLA Conference 2024 [Antwerp]
- 09:15 to 10:00 Thinking through local green growth
- 11:00 to 12:30 C-TAG Workshop: Securing your email domain
- Thursday 12 December
- 12:00 to 13:00 The Pirate Code and Ninja Stealth: Delivery Effective Change Leadership
- 13:00 to 14:30 Transform Government Contact Centers with AI
January
- Thursday 9 January LGA Local Government Finance Conference 2025 [London]
- Monday 13 January Making use of logic models: practical training for local economic growth
- Thursday 23 January
- 09:30 to 13:00 Local Government AI Summit 2025
- 10:00 to 12:00 Using your estate to transform your local public services
February
- Tuesday 4 February Public Sector Cyber Security Scotland 2025 [Edinburgh]
- Wednesday 5 February Chief Data and Analytical Officers Network Annual Conference 2025)
- Thursday 6 February Public Sector Cyber Security Conference 2025 [London]
- Thursday 6 to Friday 7 February Solace East Midlands Conference [Nottingham]
- Thursday 13 to Friday 14 February Solace Wales Conference [Cardiff]
- Tuesday 25 February Cyber Security 2025 [Glasgow]
Come and say hello
- Wednesday 11 December Manage IT LOLA Conference 2024 [Antwerp]
Members of the President’s and Leadership Teams will be with international colleagues hearing about best local government practice from Belgium, Canada, New Zealand, Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK, and USA.
What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Staying ahead with the newest features and updates from Microsoft Ignite and Copilot Wave 2.
Wednesday’s webinar hosted by Chris Casingena and Zoe Grant from AvePoint really helped clarify the many things we’ve all seen (on LinkedIn and elsewhere) about Wave 2 and Ignite. There are just so many! And it’s good know where to start.
Chris made an v. interesting observation [Chapter: Business chat] about prompting and delegation – getting to grips with prompting seems to take longer for people who don’t already regularly delegate stuff. Seems like a small thing, but it really isn’t! It’s really key thing for people to be mindful of (for themselves and others).
There was also a great note in the chat about not seeing Copilot as a “status symbol”. It’s useful to bear in mind that not everyone needs M365 Copilot however much we might want to just have the new shiny thing. And I immediately recognised this in myself!
A couple of other things that grabbed people’s attention during the session were:
- Training+: on-demand digital training content for all M365 users
- tyGraph: analytics for how your organisation is using M365 (+Copilot)
You might also like to catch up with the first part of the series Simplify Your Tasks: Copilot Basics for Microsoft 365 Users and/or to read AvePoint’s AI and Information Management Report 2024.
Get in touch with Zoe with any and all questions 🙂
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
Wednesday’s Liz Mollie newsletter has the fab subject of ‘Give yourself the gift of garbage time‘.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash