Hong Kong bureaucrats a dating target

HONG KONG (December 31): Hong Kong Public Servants have become hot commodities in the dating market as mainland Chinese opt for a partner with access to the Special Administrative Region’s ‘iron rice bowl’.

The trend, which has been flying under the radar for some time, surfaced with the story of a 33-year-old woman from Jiangsu Province in eastern China who was seeking a Public Servant from Hong Kong with the benefits of a good salary and excellent living and education benefits.

The head of the dating agency where the woman first posted, Tiffany Chan said most of her clients came from the mainland and had specific criteria for their partners, including matching education, income and family background.

“Civil Servants are particularly popular due to their perceived stability and benefits. My clients prefer dating agencies to apps due to privacy concerns,” Ms Chan said.

With the re-opening of the border between the mainland and Hong Kong as pandemic restrictions eased, Ms Chan expected to see a further increase in demand for cross-border nuptials.

Many mainland bloggers also portray the Hong Kong Public Service as a promising career choice.

One of the most regular bloggers shared how he had passed the recruitment examination for the Hong Kong Public Service stating “the end of the universe is the civil service exam”.

This expression is widely used to express Chinese young people’s desire to work for the Government and secure a job for life, or what is colloquially known as the ‘iron rice bowl’.

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Sacked UK official’s orthodoxy rewarded

LONDON (January 1): The top United Kingdom Treasury official sacked by former Prime Minister, Liz Truss for “economic orthodoxy” has been given an award in the country’s New Year’s Honours list.

Sir Tom Scholar, who served as Permanent Secretary in the Treasury from 2016 until September 2022, has received Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, an award given to members of the UK military or Public Service for exemplary service.

Sir Tom’s sacking, just two days after Ms Truss became Prime Minister, was seen as symbolic of her radical approach to economic policy and was criticised in some quarters for depriving the Treasury of institutional memory.

Former Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng’s subsequent ‘mini-Budget’, during which he unveiled large tax cuts without explaining how they would be paid for, triggered turmoil in the markets. Ms Truss later resigned, just 44 days after entering Downing Street.

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PS pay row barrier to Yemeni peace

SANAA (January 2): A dispute over Public Service pay is holding up resolution of Yemen’s civil war which has so far caused 377,000 deaths, displaced four million people and forced 15.6 million into extreme poverty.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels say the matter must be resolved with the internationally recognised Government before they can agree to a permanent ceasefire.

The Houthis have been pushing the Yemeni Government to pay salaries according to a 2022 payroll that contains employees working for Houthi-run State institutions.

The Government has so far responded that it would only make payments to those Public Servants that were on the payroll in 2014 — the year the civil war began.

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PM lashes ‘stubborn bribe-takers’

KUALA LUMPUR (January 1): Malaysian Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim has lashed out at a small number of Public Servants who he says “stubbornly refuse to stop soliciting for and accepting bribes”.

“Corruption must be stopped in its tracks. I will not hesitate to take action against this small number of Public Servants as their action tarnishes the Government's image,” Datuk Seri Anwar said.

He said he would also not allow any negligent action from Public Servants and Cabinet Ministers “that would lead to the destruction of the nation”.

"This is a great slander against Public Servants who have changed their ways. I hope there will be repentance and change or stern action will be taken,” the Prime Minister said.

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Finns back public broadcaster

HELSINKI (January 2); Finns have overwhelmingly supported public broadcaster, YLE with 92 per cent of respondents to a survey saying it had met its obligations very well, well, or relatively well.

This represented an improvement of two percentage points from the 2021 survey.

YLE was lauded particularly for providing domestically-produced content in the mother tongue of the respondents and for making its contents and services readily accessible.

The public broadcaster was also assessed to have succeeded in providing information during crises, servicing special groups and language minorities, and providing reliable information.

The full International PS News service will resume on January 17 

 

 

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Ring out the bad, ring in the worse

The bad news is the International Crisis Group (ICG), an independent body that works to prevent wars and hopefully promote peace, has had a difficult and fraught year.

The worse news is that it expects to be even busier in 2023 as it continues to seek solutions to a series of hot spots, any one of which could explode into a global conflagration to complement the continuing war in Ukraine.

After reviewing the fallout from the Russian invasion of its neighbour, which occupied most of the year, ICG Chief Executive, Comfort Ero and Executive Vice President, Richard Atwood believe the impact of that conflict may will influence a return to hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, with the very real possibility that Azerbaijan may overrun its neighbour.

They believe the military balance is now so totally tilted in Azerbaijan’s favour that its forces could take complete control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, now that Armenia’s Russian backer is distracted in Ukraine.

Iran, rocked by internal protests and ostracized in the West for its military support of Russia, is another potential pressure-point in 2023.

Police and other pro-Government authorities have killed hundreds of demonstrators, many of them young women protesting over the compulsory hijab law, all of which makes the chances of further talks over the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal even less likely.

In this scenario, Israel’s new right-wing Government might decide to take matters into its own hands and strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

With so much going on, the world seems to have forgotten about Yemen, and while major fighting between Houthi rebels and the country’s internationally-recognised Government has ceased, hopes of a broader resolution have dimmed as both sides have used the truce to prepare for further war.  

In the Democratic Republic of Congo the M23 rebel group holds several towns in the eastern part of this vast African nation. It appears to be well-armed and quite capable of extending its influence in 2023.

The waters are muddied by the presence of several other rebel groups, including the so-called Allied Democratic Forces, which is linked to Islamic State, while troops from Uganda and Kenya, invited in by President Félix Tshisekedi, are a further complication.

To the north, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are having no success in beating back Islamic insurgents in fighting that has killed thousands and driven more than two million people from their homes.

Add Haiti, wracked by political and gang violence since the murder of President Jovenal Moïse in July 2021, and the perennial flashpoint of Taiwan, which could easily boil over into a confrontation between China and the United States, and there is little to cheer about now the New Year celebrations are over.

Despite all this, Ukraine continues to be front of mind. President Vladimir Putin’s once proud boast that his forces would be in Kyiv in three days and conquer the entire country in 17, have been carefully filed away by the Kremlin, and with Western-armed Ukraine on the offensive, there is little chance of the conflict ending any time soon.

In desperation, Putin has tried to re-portray the war as between Russia and the West, with Russia’s very survival at stake. This may pave the way for a full-scale mobilisation in 2023, a risky move that could easily backfire, considering the chaos that followed a partial mobilisation of 300,000 conscripts during the year.

The real danger is the war taking on a momentum of its own, with neither side able to control an escalation towards an all-out conflict, rather like what occurred in the fateful summer of 1914.

I believe Putin is beyond hope, but the West must never cease its attempts to convince other influential figures in the Kremlin that while any threat to Russia itself is a nonsense, attempts to expand its territories beyond current borders is, and always will be, unacceptable.    

 

President powerless to prevent fraud

MOGADISHU (December 26): Two-thirds of the 5,000 Somali Federal Government employees are not reporting for work, despite drawing their salaries paid by the World Bank, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has admitted.

Addressing Government officials at the Presidential Mosque, Mr Mohamud (pictured) said these ‘ghost’ Public Servants were resulting in the loss of millions of US dollars provided by international partners — including funds from the United States and United Kingdom – to support Somalia State-building.

“There are more than 5,000 Public Servants registered in our biometric system, but only 1,500 of them report for work every day. Where are the rest? They do not exist or they do not live in the country,” Mr Mohamud said.

“However, they are still paid. They are thieves and their superiors who accepted this scheme are also thieves. They are simply stealing public money.”

In 2014, the World Bank reengaged in Somalia for the first time in 23 years to provide public financial management, capacity building and Budget support.

Using biometric identification, the Bank created a new project called Recurrent Cost and Reform Financing, which pays thousands of Public Servants.

However, several reports have warned that lack of transparency and limited supervision could lead to donor funding ending up in private individuals’ pockets. 

Mr Mohamud surprisingly admitted that some senior Government officials had been travelling to perform Hajj — the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims — with stolen public money.  

“These officials bought plane tickets with the money they stole from the Government and travelled to perform Umrah or Hajj,” he said.

Somalia, along with Syria, is ranked next-to-last in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perception of public sector corruption in 180 countries around the world.

According to the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, corruption in Somalia is further exacerbated by the absence of a functional Central Government, a lack of resources and administrative capacity, weak leadership structures as well as a limited ability to pay public officials.

Mr Mohamud said his Government was trying to do something about stopping the problem of corruption in the country but it remained very weak.

“We are not happy with it,” he said.

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 No let-up in Britain’s industrial unrest

LONDON (December 30): The General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union has warned the United Kingdom Government that “coordinated and synchronised” strike action across the country would significantly escalate throughout January.

Mark Serwotka was speaking as his members employed in passport control for the Border Force set up picket lines at Britain’s largest airports.

Mr Serwotka pointed to a series of possible fresh strikes with half a million teachers balloting for strike action, as are firefighters, while junior doctors could also vote for a strike in protest of pay offers that do not match cost-of-living pressures.

“I think it is only a matter of time before all the unions recognise the Government is the cause of these disputes, so we will work closer together, and I think we will see action that is coordinated and synchronised, and escalating,” Mr Serwotka said.

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Canadian Province fights to preserve wage cap

TORONTO (December 30): The Government of the Canadian Province of Ontario is appealing a court decision that struck down a law limiting wages for public sector workers.

In the notice of appeal, the Government argued Justice Markus Koehnen erred in ruling that its legislation infringed the applicants' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining and was thus unconstitutional.

Groups representing several hundred thousand public sector employees had challenged the constitutionality of the law, passed in 2019, which capped wage increases at one per cent per year for three years.

The Government had argued the law did not infringe constitutional rights, saying the Constitution only protected the process of bargaining, not the outcome, and the legislation was a time-limited approach to help eliminate a Budget deficit.

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Nigerians urged to join corruption fight

ABUJA (December 26): Nigeria’s top corruption fighter has called on the general public to help weed out fraud in the Federal Public Service.

Chair of the Anti-Corruption and Transparency Unit at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Stella Igwilo said corrupt practices her Agency had uncovered included falsification of age, bribery, nepotism, embezzlement, influence-peddling and abuse of public office.

“The unit will interface with the members of the public to reduce the effect of corruption, ensuring good governance for effective service delivery,” Ms Igwilo said.

“This initiative shows we are committed to the total elimination of corrupt practices, and will work with all parties to achieve this.”

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Bureaucracy ‘serves people — not parties’

SUVA (December 30): Fiji’s new Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka says the nation’s  Public Servants must help him as they have helped the last elected Government for the past eight years.

Mr Rabuka said Public Servants committed themselves to work for the people when they entered the bureaucracy.

He also had a word for MPs, saying they stopped being politicians when they were declared Members of Parliament — “they become servants of the people just as Public Servants have always been”.

“Once you get into Parliament, you stop being a member of a party, you become the voice of the people,” Mr Rabuka said.

The full International PS News service will resume on January 17 

 

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