08 Apr 2024

Event round-up: Key highlights from techUK’s North East digital workshop

On 20 March, techUK together with North East IT council leads and Marra hosted a workshop convening the digital and IT leaders across the region with tech suppliers.

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.

North East local government digital workshop-pic1.jpg

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.

North East local government digital workshop-pic2.jpg

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

Associate Director, Local Public Services, techUK

Georgina is techUK’s Associate Director for Local Public Services

Georgina works with suppliers that are active or looking to break into the market as well as with local public services to create the conditions for meaningful transformation. techUK regularly bring together local public services and supplier community to horizon scan and explore how the technologies of today and tomorrow can help solve some of the most pressing problems our communities face and improve outcomes for our people and places.

Prior to techUK, Georgina worked for a public policy events company where she managed the policy briefing division and was responsible for generating new ideas for events that would add value to the public sector. Georgina worked across a number of portfolios from education, criminal justice, and health but had a particular interest in public sector transformation and technology. Georgina also led on developing relationships across central and local government.

If you’d like to learn more about techUK, or want to get involved, get in touch.

Email:: [email protected]
Phone:: 020 7331 2029
Twitter:: @GeorginaMarath
Website:: www.techuk.org/
LinkedIn:: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgina-maratheftis-0a002a102/

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Local Public Services Programme

techUK's Local Public Services Programme provides the forum for local public services to engage with industry to better understand the innovations out there, horizon-scan how the technologies of today and tomorrow can re-imagine local public services and solve some of the most pressing challenges our communities and places face. It also helps connect suppliers with each other, identify new business partnerships to help grow an ever thriving local government ecosystem.

Learn more