Sensors to monitor UK office working

LONDON (21 December): The United Kingdom Ministry of Justice has signed a £4 million ($A7.2 million) deal with a United States company to provides sensors to monitor the occupancy of Government office space. 

The technology will report on whether desks and meeting rooms are occupied or not and the numbers of people leaving or entering part of a building.

Departments have been collecting data on attendance at their headquarters since February as part of a Cabinet Office push to get Public Servants back to offices in greater numbers when COVID-19 restrictions came to an end.

The Departments have used methods such as WIFI and computer log-ins associated with location, as well as swipe pass entry data, space or desk booking systems and manual counts.

The contract with FM:Systems states that it covers the provision of  “a web-based reporting solution to measure and report on desk and room utilisation”. 

It says this will be provided by a physical sensor recording heat and motion, with the sensors then sending this information to the cloud where an agreed set of reports provide the occupancy data.

The contract further states that the sensors must be capable of reporting whether desks, touchdown spaces and meeting rooms are occupied or not, as well as recording the number of people entering and leaving an enclosed work area.

Union leaders have criticised the use of technology to monitor the occupancy rates of Government offices.

Head of the Public and Commercial Services union, Mark Serwotka described it as a worrying, Big Brother-style development that could be used to victimise his members who worked from home rather than in the office.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said the technology was not a tool for monitoring individuals’ office attendance.

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Malaysian Government sacks PS head

KUALA LUMPUR (December 20): The Malaysian Government has confirmed it has sacked Director-General of the Public Service Department, Mohd Shafiq Abdullah.

Chief Secretary to the Government, Zuki Ali said the decision was made after exhausting all procedures to protect the public interest, and was made after consultation with the Attorney-General's Department.

The sacking comes barely 10 months after Mr Mohd Shafiq was appointed.

He was involved in controversy in August after an Immigration Officer complained that Mr Mohd Shafiq had berated him in public. A Government committee was later formed to carry out an investigation into the incident.

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Liberian wage rise plea slapped down

MONROVIA (December 24): Liberia’s Director General of the Civil Service Agency (CSA), James Thompson has lashed out at Public Servants calling for a pay rise, saying the Government does not exist just to pay their wages.

He said people should be more focused on how Liberia could move forward instead of politicising everything.

“There are other important matters that equally have the Government’s attention rather than listening to cries about Civil Servants’ pay,” Mr Thompson said.

Public Servants in Liberia are among the lowest paid in Africa with some earning as little as US$50 ($A75) a month, leading to some employees at the Ministry of Information launching a protest in support of a pay rise.

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Union to challenge hybrid work ruling

OTTAWA (December 24): Canada’s largest Public Service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, says it will challenge the Federal Government’s hybrid work plan before the country’s Labour Board.

This follows Treasury Board President, Mona Fortier’s announcement that all Federal Public Servants will be returning to their offices for at least two-to-three days a week in the New Year.

The union, which represents 165,000 Public Servants, said it was opposed to a “one-size-fits-all approach” and it was seeking to ensure remote work was a part of the next collective agreement.

That agreement is under negotiation now, and the Alliance said making changes to working conditions while bargaining was happening was against the law.

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Backflip on key PNG Government job

PORT MORESBY (December 23): Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, James Marape has restored the position of Chief Secretary to the Government, saying it would increase scrutiny of the country’s Public Service.

The position was abolished in 2020 in pursuit of what Mr Marape described as a “flatter” Public Service. He has now more or less accepted that decision was a mistake.

He said the new Chief Secretary to the Government, Ivan Pomaleu “will ensure that the Public Service is effectively functioning and Heads of Departments and Agencies are delivering according to key result areas”.

“I want to appeal to each and every one of you to do what is right for the country. We need to rise above petty issues, personal interests, fortnightly pay, and see the next generation,” the Prime Minister said.

The full International PS News service will resume on January 17 

 

 

 

 

Canadian Government orders hybrid work

OTTAWA (December 18): After weeks of indecision, the Canadian Federal Government has told its employees they must work at least two-to-three days a week in person, or between 40-to-60 per cent of their regular schedule.

The decision prompted an angry response from Public Service unions, which have been pushing to give most of their members the choice of where they worked.

President of the Treasury Board, Mona Fortier said the decision was necessary to create a common approach to remote work in the Federal Public Service.

"In-person work better supports collaboration, team spirit, innovation and a culture of belonging," Mr Fortier said.

"We've now seen there needs to be greater fairness and equity across our workplaces and we need consistency in how hybrid work is applied across the Federal Government."

The one-size-fits-all hybrid model will come into full effect on March 31. To allow for a smooth transition, the Government will use a phased introduction beginning on January 16.

President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, Jennifer Carr said workers had been doing their jobs effectively from home and she was not satisfied by the reasons given for the mandate.

She also said her union had been given a one-hour notice of the announcement.

"To hear the Minister say the decision was about serving Canadians, and not providing specific examples, is one of the things I find kind of disingenuous," Ms Carr (pictured) said.

“Our members are also taxpayers and want the most efficient use of Government money,” she said, alluding to past discussions around saving money by having public sector employees work from home. 

President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, Chris Aylward echoed Ms Carr, saying members had shown they could work remotely.

"We see this as a poorly planned and knee-jerk reaction from the Government that doesn't have the best interest of workers or Canadians at heart, and it's completely at odds really with the direction this Government has been moving towards on remote work," Mr Aylward said.

However, Mayor of Ottawa, Mark Sutcliffe applauded the decision, saying it was critical to the local economy.

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Audit finds boom in Scottish office staff

EDINBURGH (December 19): An audit of Scottish Public Servants has found a huge rise in the number who are office-based, but a fall in police and fire-fighter posts.

The analysis of official figures, carried out by the Opposition Scottish Labour Party, shows an increase of 3,710 jobs in the Public Service compared to 2021. The figure amounts to a 15.8 per cent increase on the previous year.

It is starkly contrasted by other public sector areas, particularly in front-line and emergency services, where there has been a decrease of 2.3 per cent in police and fire services in the same time.

Numbers in the reserved Public Service and further education also decreased over this period.

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Concern over military’s use in strikes

LONDON (December 19): About 1,200 members of the United Kingdom military and 1,000 Public Servants are to be drafted in to cover for striking ambulance and Border Force staff over Christmas.

Some 10,000 ambulance staff in England and Wales will be on strike on 21 and 28 December in a pay dispute.

Unions say military staff are not sufficiently trained to take on ambulance roles, but Minister for Health, Steve Barclay said his number one priority was keeping patients safe.

However, Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Tony Radakin has warned against viewing troops as "the go-to option” when it came to covering strike action.

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Digital monitor for Nigerian staff

ABUJA (December 18): The Nigerian Federal Government has urged Public Servants to improve their output at work as it finishes plans to monitor their performance digitally.

Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Folashade Yemi-Esan said the end-to-end automation process would be deployed to track performance.

“I regret that the Public Service has been tagged as redundant, ineffective, inefficient and not meeting up to its standards — so the narrative has to change,” Dr Yemi-Esan said.

She said the digital evaluation would replace the replace the annual performance evaluation system “to ensure that employee performance is linked to institutional goals and objectives”.

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Shake-up of poorly managed bureaucracy

DOUGLAS (December 17): Reforms to the top job in the Isle of Man's Public Service have been put forward to improve how senior officers are held to account.

The Council of Ministers has proposed renaming the Chief Secretary's post to Chief Executive, while giving it new performance management powers.

It comes after an independent review found "a management vacuum" where under performance had not been tackled well, within the self-governing island.

Chief Minister, Alfred Cannan said the change was needed as performance management across the Government was "just not strong enough".

The full International PS News service will resume on January 17 

 

 

‘No limits’ on Norway's public data gathering

Norway’s Police Intelligence Agency (PST) has been given permission to store all comments written on public platforms for five years and maybe more.

Following the announcement by Minister of Justice, Enger Mehl, human rights advocates condemned it as having a “chilling effect” on the public debate, while provincial data authorities claimed it would result in “limitless gathering” of potentially sensitive information.

Ms Mehl (pictured) said the PST needed to monitor and store what was written on public platforms in order to chart and uncover potential threats to Norwegian society.

“We face new and unknown threats that it is important for the PST to be able to pick up, for example, development of a violent climate of extremism,” Ms Mehl said at a press conference.

“The PST has to follow the internet, where potentially dangers players are.”

She said the Government wanted to make sure the PST was able to uncover new threats, and follow developments in extremism, espionage and possible terrorism.

Officials at Norway’s Data Protection Authority, Datatilsynet were both sceptical and critical.

Authority Director, Line Coll said the move involved limitless collection of information about Norwegian citizens’ activity on the internet, which could give the PST an intimate glimpse into everyone’s lives.

“It overlooks the fundamental principles of privacy and lacks control mechanisms that would preserve our human rights in a satisfactory manner,” Ms Coll said.

Head of the PST, Hedvig Moe said the new law would not involve any massive surveillance.

“We won’t be reading folks’ email or invade sites that are password-protected,” Ms Hedvig said.

The PST had wanted to store data for 15 years but the Government reduced that to five.

The proposal is likely to win majority support in Parliament, since Opposition parties were poised to offer PST even broader authority to store information from open sources.

More Public Service News at World PS News | PS News

Canada achieves Public Service gender parity

 

Less than one in three senior Public Servants across the Governments of G20 countries are women, the Global Government Forum’s latest edition of its Women Leaders Index has found.

Only one G20 country, Canada, has reached gender parity in the top five grades of its Public Service (at 51.1 per cent), with four more are within 10 percentage points of doing so.

However, there has been improvement – the G20 mean (29.3 per cent) has increased by 1.6 percentage points since the last Index in 2020 and by six points since the first one 10 years ago.

Those leading the G20 pack behind Canada are Australia and South Africa, which tie in second place, followed by the United Kingdom and Brazil, with Mexico and the European Commission tied in fifth place.

Mexico has increased the representation of women in Public Service leadership positions the most of all G20 nations, by a dramatic 24.3 percentage points over the past decade, while South Africa has made the most improvement in the two years since the last Index — a jump of 7.2 points.

Bringing up the G20 rear are Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, China and Turkey, in which representation of women in the senior Public Service is between 2.5 per cent and 11.7 per cent.

Countries including Germany, Italy, France and the United States reside in the middle of the G20 ranking, with women accounting for between 32 per cent and 38 per cent of top roles.

Though the G20 has traditionally been the main ranking in the Women Leaders Index, it also analyses representation of women in the highest grades of national Public Services in European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

Latvia, where women account for 56 per cent of the top tiers of its Public Service, tops the OECD ranking, while six more — Sweden, Iceland, New Zealand, Greece, Canada and Slovakia — have reached or exceeded gender parity.

More Public Service World News at World PS News | PS News