The Chancellor’s pre budget statement (and those of the opposition) leaves no doubt that difficult financial times will be experienced by the UK public sector over the next few years. These challenges should be a major spur to all public sector organisations to commit to ICT-enabled transformation of services. In turn this will place the ICT service under an even sharper focus. It will also put even greater pressure on the rest of the organisation to use ICT services much more effectively to achieve such a transformation.

In an effort to make “Learning” more focused on the specific needs of our membership, we have reviewed our course offerings and launched a completely new programme for the next 12 months. The new programme offers a wider range of course, at more locations, and with more detail provided on each, to help you judge better who to nominate for the course, and the likely benefits to be achieved from it.

Recognising that the use of ICT has become critical for service managers outside the ICT service to deliver business systems Socitm is now extending its benchmarking services. The new services include:

• Environmental impact of ICT on the organisation
• Information assurance
• Shared services
• Project and programme management
• Flexible working
• Business continuity
• Business transformation

Features of the new services

"Council’s performance is independently reviewed against peer councils to aid best practice adoption and promote continuous improvement"