OTTAWA (July 30): Black and other minority groups employed in Canada’s Privy Council Office have experienced racism and discrimination, a new report has found.
The internal Federal Public Service report said there were dozens of examples of racial stereotyping, micro-aggressions, and verbal violence. It described a workplace culture where “such behaviour is regularly practised and normalised, including at the executive level".
The Coalition Against Workplace Discrimination obtained the report using the Access to Information Act. It details barriers for employees of colour at the Privy Council Office, the administrative arm of Government that serves the Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet.
The conclusions were based on group discussions and interviews with employees in 2021 and 2022.
The report contains examples of Black and other minority employees being passed over for opportunities given to white colleagues, and cites the example of Black employees who said they had to intervene with managers who used the N-word "comfortably in their presence".
Managers expressed surprise that the N-word was a "greatly pejorative term for Black people", the report states.
The Coalition said the Government had made an attempt to implement recommendations in the report, but had not gone far enough to address the disturbing findings.
President of the Black Class Action Secretariat, which leads the Coalition, Nicholas Marcus Thompson said many key recommendations from the report still hadn’t been addressed.
He noted the Government had not implemented equitable hiring practices, such as name-blind screening and third-party hiring.
“We are particularly concerned about the lack of accountability measures against leaders who were at the helm while widespread discrimination was a regular occurrence at the Privy Council Office,” Mr Thompson (pictured) said.
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Chatbots soon part of customer service
OTTAWA (July 29): Canadians who need to contact the Federal Government could soon find themselves talking to an employee who's being helped by non-human assistants.
The Government is working on a strategy to use more artificial intelligence in the Federal Public Service, with chatbots one likely possibility.
Chief Data Officer, Stephen Burt said private-sector call centres were using generative AI chatbots to navigate internal data and help employees find better answers faster when customers called in.
"I can imagine a number of similar applications in the Canadian Government context for services we offer to clients, from Old Age Security through to immigration processes," Mr Burt said.
He also said that Civil Servants could use AI to sort through massive piles of Government documents.
"There are a lot of documents with a lot of words on a lot of pages of paper. It's difficult even for folks inside Government to understand in any given situation what is most applicable," Mr Burt said.
“We will be crafting the AI strategy over the coming months, with the goal of launching it next March. The plan is to encourage Departments to experiment openly, so they can see what's working and what's not."
This comes in the wake of a new report warning the United States Government that if artificial intelligence laboratories lose control of superhuman AI systems, it could pose an extinction-level threat to the human species.
In a separate development, Joanna Redden, an Associate Professor at Western University in London, Ontario, compiled a database documenting hundreds of Government uses of AI.
The possible uses range from predicting the outcome of tax cases and sorting through temporary visa applications, to tracking invasive plants and detecting whales from overhead images.
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UK officers get above-inflation pay boost
LONDON (July 30): Most United Kingdom Civil Servants will get a pay rise of around five per cent this year, the Cabinet Office has said.
The Department published the 2024-25 pay remit guidance, which affects lower and mid-rage officers. The guidance confirms that Departments will be able to offer an average pay award of up to give per cent, compared to the inflation rate of two per cent.
Senior Civil Servants are also in line for a pay award of five per cent, although this has not yet been confirmed by the Government. However, the FDA union, which represents the senior Civil Service, is confident the award will be made.
In a statement, the Treasury said the pay awards would cost £9.4 billion ($A18 billion) over what the previous Government had set aside for pay increases.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves said the previous Conservative Government “provided no guidance on what could or could not be afforded to the pay review bodies” ahead of their reviews.
“This is almost unheard of, but that is exactly what they did,” Ms Reeves said.
"The last Government presided over the worst set of strikes in a generation, causing chaos and misery for the British public, and it wreaked havoc on the public finances. Industrial action in the National Health Service alone cost taxpayers £1.7 billion ($A3.2 billion) last year."
The Treasury has confirmed it will scrap the previous Government’s cap on Civil Service numbers in favour of “an approach that ensures Departments consider overall value for money in resourcing decisions".
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India seeks AI answer to exam fraud
NEW DELHI (July 27): India’s Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) is calling for tenders to implement digital biometric technologies, aimed at bolstering measures against impersonation, cheating, and fraud in its examinations.
This move comes in the wake of controversy involving trainee Indian Administrative Service officer, Puja Khedkar, who allegedly manipulated her identity to sit for a Civil Services exam.
In response, the UPSC has issued a show-cause notice seeking the cancellation of her appointment.
The new measures will include fingerprint authentication, facial recognition, and live artificial intelligence-based CCTV surveillance.
The UPSC, which conducts 14 major examinations and numerous recruitment tests and interviews annually across a wide range of venues, will implement the technology in a bid to ensure fair and secure examinations for the up to 1.2 million candidates annually.
The UPSC’s security measures will focus on biometric authentication, as well as QR code scanning to prevent impersonation. Hand-held devices with QR code scanners will be deployed at each examination venue.
Additionally, a web server will facilitate real-time attendance monitoring with GPS coordinates and time-stamps for each enrolment, ensuring compliance with the examination schedule.
In a statement, the UPSC said candidates’ data will be downloaded to hand-held devices two days before each examination.
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German Ministry takes aim at Islamic Centre
BERLIN (July 25): The German Interior Ministry says it has banned the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH) for pursuing radical Islamist goals and acting as a representative of the Iranian Government.
In a statement, the Ministry said the Centre supports terrorism and spreads aggressive anti-Semitism.
It said searches had taken place at 53 properties in eight German States. In addition to the Hamburg Centre, authorities had also banned nationwide sub-groups in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin.
According to the investigation, the IZH was acting as a representative of the Iranian regime and sought to bring the Islamic revolution to Germany.
“The investigations clearly prove that the IZH does not merely act religiously. Rather, as a representative of the Iranian ‘supreme leader,’ it consistently and categorically fulfils the political guideline of exporting Islamic revolution,” the statement said.
Authorities also said the IZH supported and promoted the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli stance of the militant group, Hezbollah, despite its activities being banned in Germany since 2020.
Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser said the Centre’s Islamist ideology was “directed against human dignity, against women’s rights, against an independent judiciary and against our democratic State”.
The ban results from an investigation by Germany’s Intelligence Agency, which has been observing the Hamburg Centre for decades.
In the past the IZH has said it “condemns every form of violence and extremism and has always advocated peace, tolerance and inter-religious dialogue”.
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Former bank chief targets Japan’s gender gap
TOKYO (July 26): A former Executive Director of the Bank of Japan is turning her attention to shattering glass ceilings in other organisations with a plan to tackle deep-rooted gender inequality from the bottom up.
While the common path for Japanese bureaucrats after leaving the public sector is to take up a job at a major corporation or think tank, Tokiko Shimizu (59), is launching her own consultancy to focus on bringing more women into science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields, beginning at high-school level.
Ms Shimizu, who left the Bank of Japan in May, said Japan was lagging behind many other countries in closing the gender gap.
"Japanese women are not less talented than men. I can help fill that gap because women have a lot of potential,” Ms Shimizu said.
Through her consultancy, EmEco (short for Human Empowerment Ecosystem), she aims to speak to high school and college students directly to generate awareness of opportunities for females in STEM and liaise with companies to make sure those women are firmly connected into their recruitment pipelines.
Ms Shimizu herself is a role model, having worked her way through Japan’s bureaucracy after graduating with an urban engineering degree from the University of Tokyo, a rare trajectory in a country that is one of the worst-ranked for gender equality among developed countries.
Japan ranks at the bottom for women graduates entering the STEM field among OECD countries, but data from the group shows that 15-year-old Japanese females score among the highest in the world for mathematics and science.
Nevertheless, gender bias is so entrenched in Japan that in 2018, medical schools were found to have been manipulating admissions scores so as not to recruit women.
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Excess baggage: Finns’ recycling failure
HELSINKI (July 25): A deal sealed in 2016 between Finland’s Ministry of the Environment and the Finnish Commerce Federation to reduce the annual consumption of plastic bags to no more than 40 per capita by the end of 2025 is probably unattainable, the Ministry says.
It released figures which showed that Fins were still consuming an average of 55 bags per capita in 2022.
The 40-bag target was set by the European Union, which has the option to initiate an infringement proceeding against member States that fail to reach the target. The proceeding could initially lead to a formal notice and ultimately to a fine.
Finns buy more than 350 million plastic shopping bags a year and consume another roughly 350 million produce bags.
An Environmental Advisor to the Ministry, Taino Nikula said Finland had already received a provisional notice from the EU Commission on its lack of progress toward waste management targets.
“We’ve had challenges reaching the recycling goals along the way,” Mr Nikula said.
Unlike Austria and Germany, Finland has not taken legislative action to curb the consumption of plastic bags.
The suppliers committed to the green deal have instead sought to reduce consumption with information campaigns, charging for plastic bags and removing free produce bags from the end of checkout counters.
Despite the measures, 90 per cent of bags bought at grocery shops are made from plastic, according to the figures produced by public broadcaster, YLE.
One of the supplementary measures that has been floated is lowering the price of paper bags. A ban on plastic bags, however, is widely regarded as a last-resort measure.
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UK union calls off strike after new offer
LONDON (July 25): A strike by security guards and cleaners who work at the United Kingdom Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been cancelled.
The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union, which represents workers at the Department, said it had suspended the industrial action after “intensive talks with management and the Government resulted in an improved offer”.
The union said it felt there was now room to potentially negotiate a final deal.
The PCS is seeking a pay increase to £17 ($A32.77) an hour, plus improved terms and conditions which it says would move its members towards alignment with other Civil Servants employed by the Department.
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Russian bank seeks to ward off stagflation
MOSCOW (July 27): Russia’s Central Bank has raised its key lending rate to 18 per cent, its highest level in more than two years, in an effort to stem soaring inflation largely brought on by spending on the war in Ukraine.
The move is intended to impede inflation by increasing the cost of borrowing and encouraging savings.
Head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina admitted that pro-inflationary risks associated with sanctions had materialised, while reserves of labour and production capacity were almost exhausted.
“This is a stagflation scenario, which can only be stopped at the cost of a deep recession. Today's additional tightening of our policies will prevent such a scenario,” Ms Nabiullina said.
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Jordanian officers granted right to moonlight
AMMAN (July 29): Jordanian Prime Minister, Bisher Khasawneh says the Cabinet will amend Civil Service rules to permit public sector employees to work outside official hours.
The amendment includes guidelines ensuring that employees' productivity is not affected, conflicts of interest are avoided, and neutrality in granting work permissions is maintained.
The Prime Minister said that allowing public sector employees to work outside official hours would lead to an exchange of benefits and expertise.
“The Government benefits from experiences gained by Civil Servants working in private sector companies, while retaining these talents as part of our pursuit of digital transformation,” Mr Khasawneh said.
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President wants better training for teachers
CAIRO (July 28): Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el Sisi says he wants to develop the State education system, with an emphasis on enhancing teachers’ capabilities and skills.
This follows a meeting with Minister of Education, Mohamed Abdel-Latif and Director of the Egyptian Military Academy, Ashraf Salem Zaher at which the President was informed of the training and qualifications of educators.
A statement following the meeting said Mr El-Sisi was also updated on the efforts of State Agencies to enhance and develop the mechanisms for selecting and preparing educational staff in schools.
“President El-Sisi emphasised that the State gives priority to improving all aspects of the education system, especially the human element, through effective selection and training, both technical and personal,” the statement said.
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Maldives’ Civil Service rules under review
MALE (July 25): The Maldives Civil Service Commission is calling for public comments on proposed amendments to the Civil Service Regulations that are aimed at strengthening and streamlining Government services.
In a statement, the Commission said it hoped to adopt modern technology to help the bureaucracy speed up services.
“In order to achieve this, we are currently working on amending the Civil Service Regulations. The general public should make submissions by August 31,” the statement said.
The Civil Service Regulations have been amended a number of times over the years, but this is the first time the public have been invited to provide input.
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