Benchmarking: What will you measure and discover in 2025?

Newsletter: Your next People Make Places event is coming

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Your events, training and resources

This is your final newsletter for a few weeks. It’ll be back on Friday 6 September. You and we still have plenty to do. Sort out your training for the new term now. And make sure you’re using your benefits before the end of the calendar and membership year.

Top 7 interesting and useful things for you this week:

  1. NEW blog post: Ten reflections on the Microsoft Crowd Strike Incident July 2024
  2. NEW briefing: Putting place-based data to work: using data to influence decisions
  3. Downloaded your NEW template yet? Terms of Reference for an AI Governance Board
    This document is based on TOR used by Norfolk County Council.
  4. Consequence scanning. Sarah Pena from Swindon shared the document her Emerging Tech team use to identify potential positive, negative, and unintended consequences across various categories like financial, social, environmental, and legal.
  5. Free, modular Change Agent training with Microsoft returns in September. Register now for 6 weekly sessions starting on Thursday 12 September.
    Your input is essential to our work. With that in mind, please fill in a quick survey on AI about policies, frameworks, guidance and so on.
    It’s all part of our collaboration with the University of Cambridge’s project on ethical uses of AI in local government.
  6. Don’t miss leadership training in Birmingham in September ⚠
    Both Place-based Leadership and Empowering Women courses are hosted by Canon (Partner of the Year).
  7. Your input is essential to our work. With that in mind, please fill in a quick survey on AI about policies, frameworks, guidance and so on. All part of our collaboration with the University of Cambridge’s project on ethical uses of AI in local government.

Take care. I hope you’re able to have a great weekend.

Best wishes,

Alex.

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

In Your Resource Hub

NEW Template: Terms of Reference for an AI Governance Board

Download the document based on TOR used by Norfolk County Council.
It includes objectives, scope, membership, stakeholders, governance information, an appointed chair, an outline of meetings, quorum, confidentiality, amendment of terms of reference, and a conclusion.

NEW Briefing: Using data to influence decisions

Putting place-based data to work: using data to influence decisions. Explore how the emergence of data empowers us and our organisations with valuable insights but can also reshape our interconnected global society.

NEW impact case in AI@Socitm

Transforming public services: Oxfordshire County Council’s digital transformation with AI and IoT

Want to add your own content? Let us know on hello@socitm.net or use the contact us form [choose Research as your area of interest].
Help each other connect the dots.

You might have missed…

Watch: The Data Foundations Needed for AI Success

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.

Is it a benchmark or a survey or both…?

Do you check your ICT services? What do you know about your costs, delivery, performance, user satisfaction, or user skills?

Check your performance against yourself (year on year) or against your anonymised peers. Get the concise overview (plus the data to back it up) you need to create and shape business cases with Socitm’s cost-effective benchmarking.

Website accessibility

Check your Silktide Score. If you’re competitive, see where you’re council ranks in the monthly index. It’s not all about being #1. East Devon District Council is up 57 places and into the Top 30. Amazing work!

Leadership Academy Alumni 2023

Training

Don’t let your training points expire! Get yourself onto training for the new academic year now 🙂

How was your course? Tell us about it 🙂

In-person leadership training

Empowering Women
Get to the heart of your strengths, likes, motivations and ambitions. Use the course’s tools, techniques and insights to go back to work with enhanced self-confidence and determination.
Tuesday 10 and Wednesday 11 September | Birmingham | 3 points

Place-based Leadership
The course will refine your leadership approach, enabling you to inspire people and places towards lasting change.
It also covers best practices for digital transformation; including sharing and analysing data, and using it ethically. Plus, change management tools and systems
Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 September | Birmingham | 4 points
Thursday 14 and Friday 15 November | Manchester | 4 points

Top Talent
Leadership training. Develop confidence in your abilities and create impact through action.
Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 October | Durham | 4 points

Online core skills training

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.

What don’t you know?

Survey end users’ skills to prioritise your future training needs. Get started with a user skills survey.

Free Change Agent training with Microsoft

Thursday 12 September Change Agent Reflector with Microsoft | 0 points
This course is free for local government staff as it is funded by Microsoft. Fit this modular training into your calendar for 6 weeks on Thursdays:

  • 12 September 09:00 to 16:30 Skills to change
  • 19 September 09:00 to 13:00 Productivity, communication and AI
  • 26 September 09:00 to 13:00 Employee experience, tasks and accessibility
  • 3 October 09:00 to 13:00 Apps, automation and AI
  • 10 October 09:00 to 13:00 Data and AI
  • 17 October 09:00 to 16:30 Time to change

Please ensure you can attend when signing up and if things change let us know, and we’ll make the place available again.

National conference Sheffield 2024

Events

Member-only meetings

Meet people for catching-up, problem sharing (and solving) and great networking.

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.

Free webinars and events hosted by partners and others

August

September

November

  • Thursday 21 November Smarter Working Awards Ceremony [Birmingham]

December

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

Discover CodeYourFuture

Training for refugees and disadvantaged people

CodeYourFuture (CYF) is a non-profit tech organisation that reduces social inequality by training people from underserved communities in software development, soft skills and career support to launch their careers in tech.

They partner with organisations like yours to offer additional recruitment strategies/opportunities to help fill your tech vacancies.

CYF’s highly committed trainees possess various skills and experience, from entry-level to mid-level, making them excellent candidates for employment.

CFY can fill roles including web developers, cloud engineers DB/SQL developers, system integration, IT support, analysts, power BI tools

Who are the trainees and your potential candidates?

  • 83% live below the poverty line.
  • 78% are from minority ethnic backgrounds.
  • 53% are refugees or asylum seekers
  • CFY’s volunteer trainers are professionals from the tech industry.

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

The cliche of a “quiet” August generally means fewer external interruptions. So, there’s just as much to do but hopefully more time in which to do it. But more time can make it more difficult to manage those self-imposed deadlines. Well, that’s my experience.

Try this episode (and resources) from the Squiggly Careers women: How to add micro moments of motivation into your work