South

The past year has been very challenging for all those directly involved in Socitm's governance and organisation, yet it continues to be my privilege to have served as your chair during this period.  Many changes have occurred within the Society over this time and our region has been well represented in the decision-making for these changes.  The National Council, now replaced but instrumental in agreeing scope for change, has been well served by Ken Boxhall (Events), Jos Creese (Insight), Janet deRochefort (Performance Management Group), Bernard Gudgin (Retired Members), David Bryant (Subscribers) and myself.  I have also represented our region on the small Planning and Urgency Committee that took the lead with the organisational review and took actions necessary to secure the long-term future of the Society.

Through this review it became clear that Socitm's focus towards local public sector IT managers, rather than the much larger Government IT professional community, has been holding it back, limiting it's members' influence and impact, and skewing the focus of the services it should provide to its members and their organisations.  The Socitm AGM in April signalled a change in direction that will have wide ranging ramifications for the Society and our region over the coming year.  Whilst I don't anticipate any immediate changes to the general regional structure, the services available to us, the membership we consist of and the focus we have will begin to evolve to take in a wider audience and to support us not just in the work we are doing but also in developing us as professionals.  During these changes it will be important for the region to engage and ensure the Society continues to meet members' and their organisations' needs and the committee must be active in ensuring this.

Locally over the last year, we have held three regional meetings and one professional development day.  In September we explored the issues of Web 2.0 and virtual worlds versus live video technologies and mapping this to the green agenda, a fascinating debate and all webcast, a first for a region.  January saw us focus on regional activity from SECE, SEEDA and Fire services, whilst our Professional Development Day explored progress with the Government IT Profession, SFIA, Aspire and issues around implementation of skills management.  This June's agenda on the future of secure communications has proved particularly pertinent after a top secret national security document was left on a train and found its way to the BBC (and hopefully nowhere else).  I hope you will agree this has created a varied and interesting agenda with content useful to a range of colleagues.

Regional meetings have suffered a little with poor attendance and it has been difficult to gauge what the drivers have been for this.  The PDD in particular took much organisation with a poor turn out, yet being highly valued by those attending.  Does this mean that it was not valued at all by all those not attending, did it simply clash with other activities, or was it too poorly communicated?  It is important for the committee to organise events that are of interest and add value to the majority and this requires members' feedback and engagement so I ask the question; why are some meetings poorly attended and how does the committee find out what Members want?  We would like to know and all comments welcome.  One option is to send out a questionnaire to all Members, but we all know how popular they are!

I had high hopes that we would be able to generate a shared regional space on GovX where we could engage information and generate discussion.  So far unfortunately this has been too onerous a task with unclear interest and outcomes.  Feedback will drive whether we revisit this again or not as the technology is in place to achieve this.

I must take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the committee who have engaged on various activities to ensure we are able to hold events of this calibre and also feed into Socitm's change agenda on your behalf.  The committee of Marilyn Rogers (secretary), Ken Boxhall, Tim Dawes, Martin Green, Bob Thomas, Richard Wilkinson, and Debbie Wisdom has been increased to include Bernard Gudgin ahead of the PDD and have all contributed much time and energy in keeping South region alive and engaged with Socitm activities and the change agenda.  Bernard in particular did an excellent job organising the PDD for which I am very grateful.  I must also extend huge thanks to Richard who has hosted committee meetings for much longer than I have been involved and has represented the region at SIAG and reported back meticulously.  Richard is stepping down now and I hope we can replace him with someone equally enthused and knowledgeable.

Finally, as always I can report that our business and financial plan came in on target and we achieved the sponsorship required to make the standard regional events cost neutral to the Society.  My thanks as always go to our sponsors for making that possible.

Nick Roberts

Chair, Socitm South Region