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 reports from the ODI – thanks for highlighting these Martin Ferguson (Emeritus research fellow)
- Watch GenAI customer service front door: From pilot to proven practice
- Your next virtual events
- Wed-19-Nov | What you didn’t know Microsoft could do: A live demo of modern finance for the public sector
- Wed-26-Nov | How do smart spaces and IoT drive smarter services?
- Wed-3-Dec | 09:30 to 11:00 | Maximising social value in procurement.
- 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
- Socitm in the North East | Wed-3-Dec in Durham
- Did you miss this? Humanoid ethics. Policy for local government.
- 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.
You’ve got v. 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: alumni day
Celebrating your impact in 2025 | Fri-28-Nov | 11:00 to 13:00ore skills (on Teams)
Members’ open courses have concluded for 2025, which means it’s time to reflect on what you’ve learned this year 🙂 Drop in to share what you’ve done this year – or to find out what you missed so you can catch-up in 2026.
- From army brat to IT boss: marching through life’s firewalls
Rehana Ramesh (Director of ICT, Digital and Customer Services at Hackney) will share her powerful personal story of leadership, growth, and transformation through >20 years in local government. - Spotlight on Talent: A new perspective of team empowerment
Ben Marston (Director of ICT and Digital Transformation at Sheffield) was inspired after attending our Top Talent course. So much so he put his whole team through it. Hear first-hand the impact it’s made. - The webinar follow-ups for The Autistic Brain and The Female Brain
Ask the question there wasn’t time for. - Plus: The Great Socitm (Almost) End of Year Quiz; Alumni Voices: Stories that Inspire; and Thank You Awards.
Personalised training
Do you have a favourite course? We can personalise it for your team and deliver it in house. Please just ask us about it on hello@socitm.net.Completed a Leadership Academy course? Join the Alumni Group on LinkedIn.
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 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. |
- Wed-26-Nov | How do smart spaces and IoT drive smarter services? Insights from and for public sector IT leaders
Explore the art of the possible, including how you can turn your network into a value-generating asset that not only supports public services, but frees up IT resources too. Join to hear real examples and practical ideas that can help you plan for smart space and IoT integration to help build a more responsive public sector. - Tue-9-Dec | Navigating LGR: Challenges, opportunities and innovation
Explore the complex landscape of Local Authority mergers, with guest speaker Pam Duke – who brings firsthand experience from a transformative five-year restructuring initiative involving six district councils. - Thu-11-Dec | Accessibility in Power BI
Visualisation tools such as Power BI are an invaluable tool in allowing decision makes to access the data within their organisation. But the very nature of these tools makes it difficult to make them fully accessible. Norfolk County Council’s Evy Coe will explain their recent work in assessing how Power BI reports are affected by this challenge.
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.
Socitm at 40: From legacy to leadership
President’s Conference | Tue-9 and Wed-10-Jun | London SW6 1UD
Registration opens soon for next year’s annual conference. Come along and enjoy the haircuts and fashions from the past 40 years as we continue to search for what works best now and next for our local public services. There might even be birthday cake!
Partners’ events and updates
- 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 - Fri-21-Nov | 14:00 to 16:00 | Electronic Patient Record / Digital Patient Record Community of Practice (CoP)
Join the first open to all CoP meeting (and guest speaker CEO Nadira Hussain) for anyone working in health and care, NHS, private or a supplier, to scope out what matters to you.
- 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]
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:
- Trustee Jonathan Stephenson (Chief Executive of Brentwood Borough and Rochford District Councils) was a guest on a recent episode of The Truth About Local Government podcast – Beyond Boundaries: Leadership, Culture and the Future of Local Government. Listen and/or read
- Phil Rumens (formerly West Berkshire) from the GDS has written about (and is asking for your support with): Sourcing the stack for local government technology.
- Read this new report from the Ada Lovelace Institute:
The dilemmas of delegation. An analysis of policy challenges posed by Advanced AI Assistants and natural-language AI agents.
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 Rupert Britton on Unsplash