Event round-up: Key highlights from techUK’s North East digital workshop
The event informed suppliers of the regions strategic priorities, helping to foster greater collaboration by identifying opportunities towards achieving the North East’s digital goals together.
The day kicked off with a presentation from Dan Simms, Chair, NEICT Partnership and CIO, North Tyneside Council who gave an overview of the North East local government strategic priorities. This included the vision for data, connectivity, place, business, joint working and people. This was followed by a panel discussion with all the ICT/Digital council leads across the region – Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland. An open and vibrant discussion covering everything from joint working to standards and procurement to social value.
It was fantastic to have the North East councils come together and speak so openly as a collective on their digital ambition and share their key asks to industry. The tech industry then had the opportunity to shape thinking around the digital ambition when we broke into roundtables to interrogate the 6 pillars further. Attendees had the chance to rotate twice and feedback to the whole group key points of the discussion.
A recurring theme was what does social value mean and look like in local digital delivery and we hope to explore this in the follow-up session. It was refreshing to see such collaboration between councils in the region and with industry and techUK looks forward to continuing to work with the North East ICT partnership in helping to make their digital ambition a reality.
Get in touch if you’d like techUK to facilitate a digital ambition workshop for your region. You can view all the ways techUK can help public sector with their market engagements on page 16 of our Local Public Services Innovation report.
Georgina Maratheftis
Georgina is techUK’s Associate Director for Local Public Services
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