27.04.15
Nadira Hussain appointed new Socitm president
Socitm has appointed Nadira Hussain, who runs the 'One Oracle' shared service for seven London councils, as the organisation’s new president.
The appointment was confirmed at the Socitm spring conference last week.
Hussain has two decades experience in operational and strategic ICT and corporate services roles within London councils and has been vice-chair of Socitm's London group since 2008.
Speaking to PubliTechnology.net, Hussain said that one of her main focuses during her year in office at the public services IT association would be to promote the role of women within the ICT profession.
She said: “‘Socitm is a great platform for creating a network through which the interests and visibility of women can be advanced in both public and private sectors.
“I will be reaching out to a range of groups to explore what we can do to drive this forward. It is vital to the future of our profession and will benefit everyone.”
Another key focus of her year in office will be to improve service delivery and value for money through sharing services.
Hussain has been in local government since 1994 when she joined the London Borough of Redbridge as a policy development and research officer in social care. She then joined Tower Hamlets as head of customer services ICT, and for the past three years she has been on secondment, first as manager of the Athena pan-London shared services programme, and now in her current role with oneSource.
Outgoing president Nick Roberts told the conference that authorities still have a long way to go in realising the potential of digital services.
He said the key feature in achieving the Digital by Default agenda would be that services are designed by "looking from the outside" at the services, and how people have to navigate them.
"It still feels like we're at an early stage in the journey," Roberts said. "At the moment it requires that in transforming transactions we have to have to make some difficult decisions.
"It covers areas such as which services we need to rebuild, which once give us a fundamental opportunity to change the business, and how we integrate and mesh these together. It's a case of fitting the jigsaw pieces into existing business."
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