Originally formed in 2002 as the Tyne and Wear ICT and e-Government Partnership, NEICT is a strategic partnership of the IT and Digital departments of nine of North East of England’s local government IT departments working together to address emerging policy, technology, market and resource challenges.

Between them they

• support services used by, and manage the data of, 2.6m residents, 1.2m households and 181,000 businesses
• provide services to 1,000 corporate sites and support 30,000 office and remote-based internal users
• support services used by 65.6m visitors
• employ around 1,000 staff
• influence annual spend in the region of £40m on IT goods and services, working with around 3,500 suppliers.

With a full stack of IT and Digital roles, the councils support services from bin collection and social care to business centres and inward investment, city Wi-Fi and ground-breaking 5g investments, through 200-300 line of business applications in each council.

NEICT provides a safe environment for

• sharing and developing expertise, best practice, learning, skills and experience
• developing new and exploiting existing IT infrastructure, applications and developments
• working together to support efficiency and transformation
• maximising opportunities for jointly procuring IT goods and services
• working with other organisations to ensure a co-ordinated approach to regional IT developments and to help shape the use of ICT in the North East for the benefit of the residents, people who work here and those who visit the region

In addition, NEICT operates ISNorthEast, a community of practice for the region’s public sector IT security staff, providing a safe space where they can get together to share knowledge and experience, and also, crucially, alert each other to any threats or vulnerabilities flagged either locally or though their links to regional and national intelligence sources.

Recently, the Partnership has been focussing on bringing together colleagues from non-IT parts of public sector organisations to discuss cyber resilience, business recovery and supply chain risk and meeting with industry to explore how to work together to achieve common goals around people, place, business, connectivity and data in their IT Strategies.

Our local information security network, ISNorthEast Information Security for the North East – the North East’s public sector WARP, and our series of ‘Enabling Safe Business’ events are part of this work.

Partner Representatives
	Simon Roscoe (interim Digital Delivery Lead) Steve Hodgson (Head of Technology)	simon.roscoe@northumberland.gov.uk steve.hodgson@northumberland.gov.uk
	Marion Ingleby	marion.ingleby@durham.gov.uk
	Richard Wright	richard.wright@sunderland.gov.uk
	Joanne Morgan (Vice Chair)	joannemorgan@gateshead.gov.uk
	Jenny Nelson	jenny.nelson@newcastle.gov.uk
	Dave Slater	dave.slater@southtyneside.gov.uk
	Dan Simms (Chair)	daniel.simms@northtyneside.gov.uk
Associate Partner Representatives
	Andy Evans	andy.evans@xentrall.org.uk
Previous Partnership Chairs
	Roy Sheehan	2021-2023
	Neil Arnold	2017-2021
	Phil Jackman	2012-2017
	Tom Baker	2011-2012
	Roy Sheehan	2007-2011
	Alan Holt	2002-2007
Partnership Analyst
	Graham Jordan	grahamjordan@gateshead.gov.uk