UK to introduce duty of candour for civil servants, COP29 vision takes shape: news in brief
Global Government Forum’s weekly roundup of public service news
In this edition:
- UK prime minister to introduce ‘duty of candour’ for civil servants
- Azerbaijan highlights climate finance as a COP29 priority
- US, Canada and UK to collaborate on cybersecurity and AI research
- UK Government Digital Service engages with open banking technology suppliers
UK prime minister to introduce ‘duty of candour’ for civil servants
Keir Starmer has pledged to introduce a new ‘duty of candour’ for civil servants and other public officials, obliging them to be open and transparent when things go wrong.
Speaking at the Labour Party conference for the first time as prime minister, Starmer said that introducing the duty of candour was vital to ensure that governments act honestly.
He said the law was needed after a number of state failures where public servants were not honest. In the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy, 97 people died and it took more than two decades of campaigning by affected families for an independent panel to review the case and reveal the mistakes that led to the crush on the day as well as the subsequent cover-up.
The intention of the duty of candour legislation is to ensure that providers are open and transparent with people who use services. An existing duty in the NHS sets out specific requirements that providers must follow when things go wrong, including informing people about the incident, providing reasonable support, providing truthful information, and apologising.
Starmer said that the duty of candour, which he called a ‘Hillsborough law’, was legislation “that people should never have needed to fight so hard to get, but that will be delivered by this Labour government”.
He added that it was also a law for sub-postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal, who were wrongly prosecuted for theft after a faulty computer system said that money was missing, as well as for victims of the infected blood scandal, Windrush and Grenfell Tower.
“And all the countless injustices over the years, suffered by working people at the hands of those who were supposed to serve them,” Starmer said. “Truth and justice concealed behind the closed ranks of the state.”
The duty of candour will apply to public authorities and public servants, and the bill to establish the legislation will include criminal sanctions, Starmer said.
Read more: ‘Deliverology’ pioneer Sir Michael Barber returns to advise UK prime minister on national missions
Azerbaijan highlights climate finance as a COP29 priority
The COP29 presidency has outlined its priorities and ambitions for the upcoming climate summit taking place in Baku in November.
In a letter to governments, Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s ecology minister and COP29 president-designate, set out a range of initiatives as part of an ‘action agenda’ covering climate finance, energy storage, resilience, water, tourism and more.
“Through the launch of these Initiatives, the COP29 presidency is establishing a range of platforms, partnerships and programmes to enable action before, during and after COP29,” a statement from the presidency said. “Finance, as a critical enabler of climate action, is a centrepiece of the COP29 presidency’s vision, so the initiatives have been designed with a special emphasis on delivering the means of implementation.”
The presidency calls for a new Climate Action Fund capitalised with voluntary contributions from fossil fuel-producing countries and companies, as well as pledges on green energy zones and to significantly increase global energy storage capacity.
A green digital action declaration aims to accelerate “climate-positive digitalisation” and emission reductions in the ICT sector, while a human development initiative calls for investment in education, skills and environmental literacy, including through education standards.
The Azerbaijan government will also be seeking support from countries for new declarations on reducing methane from organic waste, promoting sustainable tourism, and tackling the impact of climate change on water.
As the event approaches, COP29 host country Azerbaijan is under pressure to improve its own climate efforts. Climate Action Tracker, which assesses national climate plans, recently gave Azerbaijan a “critically insufficient” rating, noting that it has weakened its national climate goals, removing its 2030 target altogether, and pledged to increase fossil fuel production.
Read more: Call for Australia to ‘science the sh*t’ out of climate change
US, Canada and UK to collaborate on cybersecurity and AI research
The defence ministries of the US, Canada and the UK have agreed to jointly pursue research, development, test and evaluation technologies for AI and cyber-resilient systems.
The agencies involved include the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK Defence and Science Technology Laboratory, the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Defence and Research Development Canada.
Together, they aim to develop better AI and cyber systems and reduce duplication of efforts.
A joint statement said that all resulting methodologies, algorithms, capabilities and tools created will be exploited by “developing new concepts of operations that focus on real-world challenges”.
Nick Joad, the Ministry of Defence’s science and technology director, said: “Our international research collaborations with both the US and Canada are some of our most vital and enduring partnerships.”
He added: “This agreement cements our collective commitments to advancing emerging cyber security technologies such as cyber security and AI to enhance the defence and security of our nations.”
The collaboration pact aims to meet the challenges presented by the acceleration of AI and cyber technologies in the context of global geopolitical and economic volatility.
The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory will be the lead agency for the UK and Defence Research and Development Canada will be the lead organisation on behalf of Canada.
Read more: Governments urged to get back to basics to stay ahead of cybersecurity threats
UK Government Digital Service engages with open banking technology suppliers
The UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) has published a request for information from payment service providers with a view to potentially procuring open banking technology. The move illustrates the UK government’s growing appetite to embed fintech solutions into its operations.
GDS wants to “understand the market and service offerings for processing credit and debit card payments and pay by bank (open banking) payments”, according to a prior information notice for a payment provider for Gov.UK Pay.
Gov.UK Pay is a digital payments platform that allows public sector services to take payments. Used by more than 1,100 services in 415 organisations, it has processed 90.1 million payments with a combined value of £5.7bn (about $7.6bn) since 2016.
The request for information has been published just over a year after Amanda Dahl, GDS’s deputy director of digital service platforms, highlighted a planned exploration of open banking technology. In a blog post in August 2023, Dahl stated that “later this year we’ll be investigating how GOV.UK Pay might offer open banking, which means that people will have the option to pay for services conveniently using their own banking app”.
The request for information comes after GDS, alongside the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) and Incubator for AI (i.AI), recently moved from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of structural changes following the election of the new Labour government in July.
Read the full story on GGF’s sister title Global Government Fintech: Government Digital Service in UK engages with open banking technology suppliers
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