Peter Ryder, the Socitm President in this new monthly column highlights the latest developments and work of Socitm.
August 2008
My hardest task, on becoming President, was putting a brake on expenditure, which meant freezing many activities and risked losing our Members’ goodwill. Change is always difficult, and the programme of change we’ve been pursuing this year has risked further disenchanting some of our key supporters. My immediate concern was to “bottom-out” the problems faced by Socitm and get to the position where “the only way is up”.
Well, I’m relieved to say that I think we are now passing that point. We are not completely out of the woods, but we have stemmed the financial losses, we have built an excellent core management team, we are developing strategies for successfully managing our businesses, effective partnering and events management and now, as of the August Board meeting, we’re looking forward to joining the 21st century with modern information and systems technology at our disposal!
As I mentioned last month I will, by the end of September, publish an overview of the new Society structure, including an illustration of the relationships between the new constituent parts. This will mark a new phase in reviving the Society’s fortunes, fully re-engaging with our membership and activities programme, starting with the National Advisory Council on 23rd September.
The last month was, again, busy. Socitm’s engagement with Government has been multifarious. We are now starting to work effectively with Government Connect, which will have a workshop at the October Conference to present and discuss the help that will be provided to Councils to achieve the Code of Connection. We are working with the DCSF on Employee Authentication. We are helping OGC Buying Solutions develop requirements of, and negotiate, a new public sector contract with Microsoft. Your help is needed! Please see the survey at the end of this report. The DCLG has asked us to help with development of, and local government engagement with, pan-Government strategy. I attended the Greening IT Launch (and Socitm is now supporting a survey by “Local Government IT in Use”, which should have hit your mail-boxes last week).
The Socitm reorganisation continued. Meetings I’ve attended in furtherance of our exploration of the best ways to work with partners have been with the BCS, NCC, MDA, Gartner and Kable; Adrian has also been involved in others. We have started reviewing the business relationship with the Insight service. Socitm Consulting is now operating in accordance with a new MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) whilst we continue to negotiate the legal minutiae in order to put a new contract in-place, but we can be confident that benefits from the new relationship are now starting to accrue, and will be fully evident in our next financial year.
Steve Jones joined the Socitm Board of Directors at its August meeting. Steve has extensive experience in our industry that includes board positions with major technology companies and company start-ups that will further boost our business skills and commercial capability. Steve takes-on the Information Technology and Systems portfolio.
We are arranging, as soon as possible, for the whole board to attend training on Directors’ roles and responsibilities to ensure we all are fully aware of our responsibilities and the commitment required. I am keen, also, for new Non-Executive Directors who are voted onto the Board as members of the President’s Team to sign protocols that set-out the Society’s expectations of them in their new roles. A short training session for Directors, to ensure that we are all able to use the “GovX” system that’s key to management of our business between meetings, will follow our September meeting.
Adrian Hancock and David Goddard, assisted by Steve Jones, have worked long and hard on developing Socitm’s CRM and CMS requirements and in researching the market and I’m delighted to say that Adrian’s excellent paper on new systems requirements has now been approved by the Board. These will enable dramatic improvements in our membership administration facilities and our web presence. (Perhaps we’re making Steve’s new job too easy!!)
The Board agreed splitting Socitm Limited into two Divisions, each with its own Board. The Membership Benefits Division will focus on ensuring the Society’s work fully reflects our members’ aspirations and requirements. The Services Delivery Board will focus on the efficient delivery of Socitm services and maximising the commercial returns to be invested in Member Services.
David Houston and Adrian, assisted by Bernard Gudgin, have been working on the new membership system proposals to be put to the EGM at the October Conference. Following enthusiastic Board discussion, they’ve been asked to do a little more “tweaking” of the plan, but we’re confident of making a very effective proposition to the membership.
Sweyn Hunter, the Orkney Islands Council IT Manager, was the first to respond to my July “mini-competition”, and wins a bottle of wine that I hope to deliver personally at a forthcoming Scottish regional meeting. The GMIS Conference was held in New Jersey, the most densely populated of the United States, but where there are more black bears per capita than in any other state.
And now for some heart-felt requests…
1. Many thanks to the few Socitm members who have already completed my survey of Members’ interests. I’m really keen to understand whether, and how, members may be able to engage in the Society’s business. If you haven’t yet contributed, please do so now.
2. Socitm is currently engaged with OGC Buying Solutions in investigating public sector requirements for a UK public sector licensing agreement with Microsoft. Please can you assist by completing our short survey on Microsoft contracts? We will e-mail respondents with a summary of the results when the survey has ended.
3. Please support my night sleeping rough for charity in aid of “Byte Night” the IT industry’s annual fund-raising event for NCH (National Children’s Home).
As ever, I shall be delighted to receive feedback at president@socitm.gov.uk
This month’s “Socitm advertorials”…
Bookings for Socitm 2008 are looking very healthy so book now to avoid disappointment. There are some new items to add since the programme was published in July including:
• Key CIO Issues in 2007/08: presented by Mike Lafford, Group VP Gartner Executive Management
• A workshop on Aspire
• A workshop Government Connect
NI14 and the ‘avoidable contact’ issue will feature in two sessions; Peter Coates from Sunderland will answer the question: Service orientated architecture – a necessity to tackle ‘avoidable contact’? while Socitm Insight’s Martin Greenwood will be talking about avoidable contact in his session Better customer access and service, better taxpayer value.
Socitm Insight’s event on Web 2.0 (a curtain-raiser for its forthcoming report on the topic) is shaping up to be a sell out, so book now to secure your place.
The launch event for Socitm Insight’s new Channel Value Benchmarking Service is on 17 September. This new Service is linked to the Website Take-up Service and GovMetric as part of the Customer Access Improvement Service. It is designed to help local authorities identify the costs of providing access to services through their web, phone and face-to-face channels, to compare these with those of other, similar organisations, to ensure best value in future provision and to identify potential savings through active channel management. To find our more contact insight@socitm.gov.uk
Socitm Consulting are running two new courses in September and October on the government IT profession. Use the links to find out more:
IT Profession - Management Overview – 11 September & 8 October
IT Profession - Techniques for Line Managers – 18 September & 15 October
There’s still time to enter the Socitm travel award, the Graham Williamson Challenge, which this year is being sponsored by Microsoft.. The award provides up to £5000 for a person starting out in a career in ICT to fund the travel and associated costs of taking up a short work-related trip abroad. Entries close on 1st September 2008. Members are asked to pass the details to staff in their organisation who they feel may be interested and benefit from this great opportunity.
