Get everything you can from your membership
Your events, training and resources
While we all take in the General Election results, we want to thank you for your hard work and time in administering this democratic function. It’s a challenging process but we’ve seen the phenomenal work from members over the past six weeks.
Collaboration and passionate engagement with your places and across the local government community will support the good work we at Socitm see all the time.
The theme of this year’s President’s Conference, ‘people make places’ holds true. And we stand with you as the transformation, evolution and refinement of local public services keeps on going.
Top 3 interesting and useful things for you this week:
- We greatly value your input and invite you to participate in a quick survey on AI. Check your newsletter email for the survey link.
The aim is to find impact cases for AI@Socitm and assist our collaboration with the University of Cambridge‘s project on ethical uses of AI in local government. - Free, modular Change Agent training with Microsoft returns in September. Register now for the 6 weekly sessions starting on Thursday 12 September.
This course is free for local government staff as it is funded by Microsoft. Please ensure you can attend when signing up and if things change let our team know, and we’ll make the place available again. - Weekly webinars returned last week. In this mini season (before their summer break) you can learn how to:
Take care. I hope you’re able to have a great weekend.
Best wishes,
Alex.
In Your Resource Hub
NEW Connected Places: Energy and environmental sustainability
Foster awareness and education about sustainable practices to empower residents to make informed choices to minimise their ecological impact and promote individual and community resilience.
NEW impact case in AI@Socitm
From Aberdeen City Council: AB-1 handles queries on refuse collection, school term dates and council tax.
Their helpful chatbot can now answer twice as many queries. Aberdeen became the first local authority in Scotland with a virtual assistant when it launched its AB-1 chatbot with Microsoft in 2020.
You might have missed…
Watch: An easy way to manage your report-it process
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.
AI could save 4 hours weekly of admin time
The potential uses of AI in the public sector are remarkably broad.
But one area of immediate and remarkable promise lies in reducing administrative burden for everyone – from office-based council staff to frontline social workers.
‘Harnessing the Power of AI for the Public Sector‘, featuring recent research from Goldsmiths, University of London (in collaboration with Microsoft) finds significant gains in efficiency are possible. Due to both the scale of the admin burden on workers and the time savings AI could deliver.
Training
Empowering Women comes to Exeter for the first time this month!
Institute Director Sam Smith talks about its personal and professional impact.
How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂
Virtual workshops
- Thursday 12 September Change Agent Reflector
This course is free for local government staff as it is funded by Microsoft. Please ensure you can attend when signing up and if things change let our team know, and we’ll make the place available again. - Tuesday 17 September How to be an Effective Coach | 1 point
- Tuesday 5 November Managing and Motivating Hybrid Teams | 1 point
- Tuesday 12 November Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | 1 point
- Tuesday 19 November Introduction to Emotional Intelligence | 1 point
In-person courses
- Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 July Empowering Women | London | 3 points
- Thursday 25 and Friday 26 July Empowering Women | Exeter | 3 points
- Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 September Place-based Leadership | Birmingham | 4 points
- Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 September Empowering Women | Midlands | 3 points
- Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 October Top Talent | North East | 4 points
- Thursday 14 and Friday 15 November Place-based Leadership | Manchester | 4 points
Training places are included in your organisational membership – subject to availability and membership level. If you have any questions or would like further information, please email the training team.
TechHer is an initiative designed to inspire curiosity and excitement about technologies such as cloud, AI, data, low code/no code app creation and security.
The Teams sessions (1 hour per week over 5 weeks) are aimed at women without a technical background and are keen to gain confidence to learn more.
Connecting people and places
The two-day, in-person Placed-Based Leadership course refines your approach, so you can inspire people and places towards lasting change
“This course is for leaders who want to stretch their thinking, grow their network and access valuable time-saving resources.”
Aidan Matthews, Socitm’s Learning Programme Manager
The group is intentionally kept small. This size gives you personalised support and an intimate learning environment, allowing for deep, meaningful discussions and the opportunity to form strong networks with fellow leaders.
Events
Member-only meetings
Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.
- Wednesday 31 July: Members’ Connection Hour
- Friday 23 August: In person meeting for Scotland in Perth
- Thursday 10 October Sustainable and Innovative Places in London
- Local meetings start again from August. Find your nearest one.
Free webinars and meetings hosted by Socitm
- Wednesday 10 July The evolution of AI and learnings so far
- Friday 12 July The power of reflective practice
- Wednesday 17 July The data foundations needed for AI success
- Weekly webinars return on Wednesday 11 September with guest hosts from ICS.AI. Watch their February session all about using AI in social care.
Free webinars and events hosted by partners and others
July
- Monday 8 July What does ‘good’ look like? The National Library of Wales
- Wednesday 10 July
- 13:00 to 14:00 Dementia – AI and simple tech tweaks to help
- 17:00 Campws Digidol – Leading modern public services [Carmarthen]
- Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 July Smart Places & Smart Communities 2024
- Thursday 11 July
- 13:00 to 13:45 How to build a disability inclusive workplace
- 16:00 to 17:00 Data-centric AI webinar: the data scraping challenge
Complete the ODI’s AI Data Sharing Survey (by Friday 5 July)
- Monday 15 July
- 10:00 to 11:00 A Taster of… Managing Stakeholder Relationships for Inclusion
- 11:00 to 12:30 The first year: what the new Government should do on data and AI
- Tuesday 16 July
- 11:00 to 12:00 Automated rent arrears income collection software that just makes sense
- 14:00 to 15:00 VMware pricing: Understanding local government impacts
Complete the LGA’s call for views
- Wednesday 17 July
- 10:00 to 16:00 LGAi Summer Summit [London]
- 11:00 to 12:00 APIs for the public good
Complete UK Authority’s survey: How do we unlock the full value of APIs for the public good?
- Friday 19 July Set your data free
- Thursday 25 July LGA/LocalGovDigital: Service Standards Workshop [Birmingham]
September
- Tuesday 10 September Building the smarter state [London]
- Friday 13 September Northern WARP Annual Conference [Manchester]
- Tuesday 17 September Smarter Working Live
- Wednesday 18 September Smarter Working Live) [Birmingham]
- Tuesday 24 to Wednesday 25 September: DigiGov Expo [London]
Missed a webinar? Past recordings are available to watch 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.
Come and say hello
- Tuesday 24 September: DigiGov Expo [London]
Join Nadira Hussain, President Mark Lumley and Sam Smith- Nadira is chairing the Citizen Experience stream. In which, at 15:25, Mark (Director of ICT and Digital at London Borough of Hounslow) is a panellist on Data-Driven Collaboration: Transforming governance through strategic partnerships and enhanced data sharing
- Sam is a panellist in the GovICT stream at 15:10 for Driving Transformation through an Effective Strategy: The pillars needed to achieve success
VMware pricing: Understanding the impact
Crown Commercial Services (CCS) is currently negotiating an MOU with VMware that will dictate savings.
To ensure that local government needs and priorities are shaping this negotiation, the LGA is asking all affected customers to please participate in a call for views of council experiences.
The call for views shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to complete
If you’d like more information, join the LGA and CCS from 14:00 to 15:00 on Tuesday 16 July. The session will focus on council experiences as well as sharing more information on VMware changes, routes to market and commercial guidance that’s available.
For more information, please email cyberanddigital@local.gov.uk
Thank you for reading (or scrolling) this far! Just one more thing…
After the election campaign, enjoy (unless you’re a vegan or vegetarian) this palate-cleansing 13-minute podcast about a Big Duck… Check out the (safe for all dietary preferences) photos 🙂