Socitm President Sandra Taylor starts new leadership role for Worcestershire County Council

14 May 2020 02:48 PM

Socitm is pleased to announce that its President, Sandra Taylor will, from 6 July 2020, join Worcestershire County Council (WCC) as their Assistant Director for IT and Digital.

Sandra has worked for Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council for 28 years and is Socitm’s current president. The Socitm team has been delighted with the support and guidance they have received from Sandra during her presidential year and is looking forward to continuing this relationship in her new role. For Socitm, Sandra leads their policy theme of Leadership, diversity and skills, working with members and partners to develop evidence-based policy thinking and practical guidance.

Sandra’s courage in making this professional change is just the sort of career and leadership development that Socitm supports within its membership and amongst its colleagues. Developing talent, supporting experience and encouraging ideas for digital local government is at the heart of Socitm. Innovation, sharing values, including and valuing diversity lifts all of us. Increasing diversity within all levels of local government, but most especially within executive leadership is always desirable.

WCC wanted to recruit a proven leader in tech-based services with experience in digital, information and data management, and cloud-based services. They needed to have executive-level experience and a background that included large-scale transformation projects. The role of assistant director is a high profile and demanding leadership and management one. “Her colleagues know that Sandra is an ideal fit,” said Nadira Hussain, Director of Leadership development and research at Socitm. “We value greatly the professional and personal input we receive from Sandra. Her perspective and insight are always valuable. I have thoroughly enjoyed working closely with Sandra over the course of the last year to make some tangible progress in developing this theme.  All of us are thrilled to see her take this step from Dudley to Worcestershire and we know that her new colleagues will be excited to see what can be achieved.”

On sharing the news of her successful appointment, Sandra Taylor commented:

“Now, more than ever, any local government authority with the desire to transform its services and its modus operandi must put technology at its heart. This inevitably means giving those delivering the ICT services the remit to help lead the change.

“ICT organisations have implemented changes in a matter of weeks or days that previously took years or months. And, critically, people will now accommodate changes that would have been difficult to even suggest just a few weeks ago. I have a shared vision with WCC, that ICT will underpin transformation and play an even greater part in our future.

“Despite the distressing situation we find ourselves in, I want us to retain the positive traits that have enabled us to achieve so much in the past month. It would be a great loss to simply settle back into the old way of doing things. My vision is to nurture this new-found enthusiasm for change to re-energise the work we must do to deliver better public service outcomes for the people, communities and businesses that we serve within our respective places.”

Worcestershire County Council’s Strategic Director for commercial and change, Andrew Spice said:

“We are delighted to be welcoming someone with Sandra’s skills and experience to join us at a time when digital and technological capabilities will be increasingly key enablers to our success in providing efficient and innovative services to our residents.”

Members and colleagues will be able to read Sandra’s reflections on this most unusual year in Socitm’s annual report, as she hands over the Socitm Presidency to her successor in June.

About Worcestershire County Council

www.worcestershire.gov.uk

The council’s main goal is to ensure that Worcestershire is a fantastic place in which to live and work and making that a reality. An essential part of what we do is to listen to our residents – communities, service users and businesses – and act upon what they tell us is important to them.