LONDON (May 11): Senior United Kingdom Civil Servants are to have their pay linked to their performance in a move criticised as divisive by a leading union.
Cabinet Office Minister, John Glen said a trial of performance-related pay for some senior officers would begin later in the year.
Mr Glen (pictured) said the reforms would make pay more attractive for people hired from the private sector, without raising base salaries in the bureaucracy.
However, General Secretary of the FDA, the union representing senior bureaucrats, Dave Penman, said the move would not solve the problem of low pay in the Civil Service compared with the private sector, and would just worsen the gap between internal and external hires.
“Once again, we have Ministers fiddling while Rome burns. Rather than address the fundamentals of a broken pay system, with pay rates for existing Civil Servants half of what they could get in the private sector, we have Ministers focusing on micro-management and widening the gap between external hires and internal staff,” Mr Penman said.
“If the Government wants a world-class Civil Service, capable of meeting the challenges of the next decade, tinkering with a broken system won’t work.”
Mr Glen said the trial would be limited to certain senior Civil Service staff who would be rewarded for delivery of the projects they managed.
Mr Penman has also called on Ministers to stop undermining officials with attacks in the right-wing press and instead deliver the stability that Departments and Agencies needed.
He told the union's annual conference that policies, such as demanding all officials attend their workplaces three days a week and seeking a return of the Civil Service headcount to 2019 levels, were damaging and unsupported by evidence.
Mr Penman said Ministerial attacks on the Civil Service in the media, most recently Mr Glen's claims in the Evening Standard newspaper that officials had been languishing in lockdown habits for too long, were damaging morale and recruitment.
"What message does that send to Civil Servants working on average an extra day a week in unpaid overtime? What message does it send to those that Ministers say they want to attract to the Service with the skills we desperately need, but aren’t prepared to pay for?" he asked.
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Reform Bill meets Senate opposition
BUENOS AIRES (May 13): Argentine President, Javier Milei’s reform program hangs in the balance as he prepares to get his ‘Ley de Bases’ legislation through an Opposition-controlled Senate.
Debate has begun on the sweeping package of deregulatory economic reforms which have already passed the Lower House Chamber of Deputies
Tensions ran high after Senators from the Unión por la Patria Party proposed the Bill be quashed, declaring its text differed from what the Lower House had approved. Presidential Spokesperson, Manuel Adorni admitted as much, with a final text only just circulated in time.
If any part of the Bill is rejected or amended, it must return to the Chamber of Deputies for further consideration.
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Hackers gain access to student data
HELSINKI (May 13): Finland’s capital of Helsinki has reported that the data of up to 120,000 students, parents and other personnel attached to the city administration’s Childhood and Education Division has been hacked.
The information consists of the usernames and e-mail addresses of nearly 40,000 city personnel, as well as the addresses and personal identity codes of roughly 80,000 students, parents and staff members.
Chief Digital Officer, Hannu Heillinen said hackers gained access to content on network drives holding tens of millions of documents, some containing information such as customer fees for early-childhood education, student welfare-related information requests, details of special needs assessments, and medical statements.
“It is also possible that the perpetrator has accessed data on persons under a non-disclosure restriction,” Mr Heillinen said.
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‘Russian Law’ passes Georgian Parliament
TIBILISI (May 14): Georgia's Parliament has voted through a divisive ‘foreign agent’ law that has resulted in weeks of mass street protests.
However, the legislation is almost certain to be vetoed President Salome Zourabichvili, which means it must be returned to Parliament for an override vote.
Critics say the Bill, which they call the ‘Russia Law, could be used to threaten civil liberties as it requires NGOs and independent media that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from foreign donors to register as organisations "bearing the interests of a foreign power".
Similar legislation in Russia has been used by the Kremlin to clamp down on dissidents.
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Bureaucracy ‘not up to major reforms’
BELFAST (May 14): The interim leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party says there is insufficient expertise within the Province’s Civil Service to deliver needed public sector reform.
Gavin Robinson drew attention to comments from senior Civil Servants appearing before the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 Inquiry, which he said had been “contemptuous towards elected representatives”.
Mr Robinson said improving the lives of people in Northern Ireland required political vision and ambition, coupled with expertise and capacity from Civil Servants.
“Whilst most Civil Servants are striving to achieve the very best for the public, comments from some senior figures have not only been contemptuous towards elected representatives, but highlight a continued lack of expertise within our local Civil Service to deliver the ambitious reforms that schools, roads and hospitals require,” Mr Robinson said.
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Ukrainian conflict training in troubling times
KYIV (May 15): The first group of Ukrainian Civil Servants and Local Government officials have complete a program on Conflict Management in Public Institutions, developed locally with the support of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The program consisted of an online course and a three-day on-site practical training event focused on officers acquiring practical skills to analyse conflicts, plan conflict resolution efforts, conduct interviews with parties to the conflict and seek common ground.
Head of the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service, Nataliia Aliushyna said the officers were working in a stressful reality with many different challenges.
“Public service is part of society and it is important for us to be able to control our emotions and resolve conflicts emerging around us. The knowledge obtained during the training course will help us ensure a psychological balance at the workplace," Ms Aliushyna said.
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Iranian offer to dissident US students
TEHRAN (May 9): The Vice President of Shiraz University of Technology in southern Iran says the university will offer scholarships to students in the United States who have been expelled for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses.
Mohammad Moazzeni said students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion could continue their studies at Shiraz University and urged other Iranian universities to make similar offers.
Since April 18, more than 1,000 people have been arrested on over 25 campuses in the US. Pro-Palestinian protesters have also gathered on university campuses in Australia, Canada, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Mr Moazzeni accused Western police of "autocratic methods" and said they had used "a lot of violence in order to contain this raging movement”.
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Kenyan village elders may join bureaucracy
NAIROBI (May 14): More than 45,000 village elders could soon be absorbed into the Kenyan Civil Service if plans mooted by the Government see the light of day.
Principal Secretary of the Interior, Raymond Omollo has invited Kenyans to give their views on the proposal following the National Assembly’s approval of a Bill sponsored by Member of Parliament, Mwengi Mutuse that recognises village administrative units with payments to village elders.
Mr Omollo said the elders provided crucial services to the public for free, contrary to provisions in the Constitution on fair labour practices.
Kenyans have until June 6 to submit their views and written memoranda on the proposed legislation and the National Government’s Village Administration Policy.
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Council to ban ‘confusing’ apostrophes
LONDON (May 10): In another example of the drift towards a post-literate society, North Yorkshire Council in the United Kingdom says it will ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems.
In a statement, the Council said the punctuation point can affect geographical databases, and all new street signs would be produced without one, regardless of previous use.
Meanwhile, the UK’s Ordinance Survey is adding thousands of local nicknames for cliffs, caves, sandbanks, coastal car parks and buildings to its database so that emergency services know where they are going when called to an incident.
Examples are Stinky Bay referring to Pentire on the North Cornwall coast; Sausage Island for a popular rock on the coast of north-west Wales, and Crazy Mary’s Hole, a deep ravine in Pakefield, Suffolk, said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman whose husband was lost at sea.
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