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Newsletter: Still so much to do

Authors and contributors: Alexandra Murphy
Desk in a home office. The screen has the words 'Do More' in capital letters on it.

Keep getting everything you can from your membership

Your events, training and resources

This year really isn’t letting up, is it? There’s still a huge amount to do before we get to “let’s circle back to this in the New Year” season. And maybe you never get to that season.

We can help with some of it. When you’re sat at your desk feeling stuck or exasperated or puzzled. Socitm is your nice virtual colleague. We have people and resources to make it a bit easier.

Make sure you’re getting everything you can from and with Socitm now and next year. Our Members’ Connection Hours at 11am on Friday 29 November and 1pm on Friday 13 December will help you do this.

We’re of course happy to arrange individual meetings with you or your leadership teams. Or invite us to your meeting! If you’d prefer any of these let us know and we’ll get that sorted out.

This week there’s a top 7 (in no particular order) of useful/interesting things for you

  1. Read about: Designing a user-centred cyber assessment service for local government
  2. Valuable guidance from the ICO (that we sincerely hope you never have to use): Communicating with empathy after a data breach
  3. Just published: Privacy Enhancing Technologies – cost-benefit awareness tool
  4. Fab list of resources about designing forms shared by Greenwich’s Eleanor Dean on LinkedIn.
  5. Nadira was a panellist at yesterday’s LGC Summit in Leeds. Here’s something she wrote about the panel topic of Reimagining local government through advanced technologies [Behind the LGC £paywall I’m afraid]
  6. Gone with 2 picks from this week’s events list. One has the excellent title Best kept secret: unlocking the hidden value of your data. The other is super practical: Streamlining starters and leavers across the public sector. Both stood out.
  7. From The Independent: New personal independence payments tool launched for claimants as hundreds of millions goes unclaimed.

Take care. I hope you can have a great weekend.

Best wishes,

Alex.

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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.

Your membership advantage
Illustration of a woman reading an oversized book, entitled, 'Local gov's big book of ideas'.

In Your Resource Hub

JUST PUBLISHED: a new policy focus blog post

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

Research from Digital Health Check: Which councils are using chatbots in 2024?

You might have missed…

Watch Telford and Wrekin Council: A case study in AI-enhanced customer service

Check your email newsletter for a link to feedback form. For each complete form ICS.AI receive they’ll make a donation to Telford Crisis Support.

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.

In this 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).

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

Free training with Microsoft in November

09:00 to 16:30 | Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 November

Get the knowledge and confidence you need to lead change. Change Agent (Manager) with Microsoft is back this month! Save your seat now 🙂

..At times my brain hurt, being introduced to untapped resources which were at my fingertips at once was overwhelming. But I am becoming more comfortable now. Just want to get into some real application…
Delegate on last month’s Change Agent Reflector.

Over 2 days, this course will give you with an overview of the key skills needed to be an effective change agent – with a strong emphasis on the ability to lead change.

You do not need to be a Socitm member to attend this course

Claim your free training

Local Government CX Roundtable

Empower Your Agents With AI | 11:00 to 12:00 | Thursday 21 November

AI is rapidly transforming contact centre operations, making them more efficient and cost-effective and helping to reduce workload and stress levels for human agents.

However, with AI moving so fast, it’s important you’re investing in the right tools for your agents. In Kerv’s roundtable, they’ll be covering how your council can empower people with AI whilst providing an efficient, fast customer service.

  • Hear how your agents can utilise AI features to help them manage their workload and drive efficiency.
  • Discover best practices when deploying chatbots and real-life examples of how to use automation successfully.
  • Hear how Walsall Council (recently awarded Most Improved Council 2024) have deployed AI agent assist in their contact centre operation and the positive effects this has had on both their agents and customer experience.
  • Hear from West Lindsey District Council on their future AI ambitions and why agent assist features in their plans.
Reserve your free seat

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. Bassetlaw District Council is up 58 places to 23! Excellent work.

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.

Thursday 21 November 16:00 to 17:00
Work harder or Work smarter? How to Optimise Your Accessibility Strategy

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 12 November Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | 1 point

Help your colleagues at Oxfordshire County Council
They’re keen to understand what wellbeing initiatives work for your organisation. Oxfordshire is always striving to improve and one of their key values is always learning. They’d like to learn from you!
Please respond to the survey which will take just a couple of minutes to complete. Thank you for your participation

Find your Silktide score
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Training

The rest of the Leadership Academy courses are fully booked! Thank you for your enthusiasm. Get planning for next year.

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.

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.

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.

Your local public service community will be getting together with guests from the Linked Organisation of Local Authority ICT Societies (LOLA). LOLA is an international organisation of which Socitm is one member. And the only one from the UK.

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

November

December

Come and say hello

Local Government Association logo

Unlocking Digital Excellence Programme

A pilot training programme for ‘non-digital’ local government senior managers.The LGA, working with Apolitical, has launched a first-of-its-kind training programme on digital excellence specifically for local government to pilot with 30 local authority senior managers across England.

Unlocking Digital Excellence will help you to develop the skills and knowledge senior managers in councils need to apply digital principles and lead teams that can deliver according to best practices around data, AI, and user-centred design.

The pilot programme is designed for senior managers in non-technical roles and will run from Monday 2 December 2024 to March 2025.

Expressions of interest need to be submitted by Wednesday 20 November 2024.

This programme is funded by the UK Government and free for English council staff.

Read more and submit your application

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

Today’s episode for the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage is called The Cyber Codebreakers (they’re at Bletchley Park) but it’s largely about cyber-attacks.

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash