by Upali Athukorala
Former Senior Assistant Secretary
(Foreign Relations) Ministry of Labour

The Cabinet of Ministers, at its meeting on 28th October 2024, granted its concurrence to implement the project titled “Social Dialogue for Peace and Crisis Prevention in Sri Lanka,” which is technically supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and financially backed by the Peace Building Fund of the UN Secretary-General. This initiative, implemented across the public, private, and informal sectors, is a collaborative effort involving the ILO, UNFPA, and UNESCO. The project builds upon the public sector initiative to introduce a Dispute Prevention and Resolution Mechanism in the Public Service, initially approved by the Cabinet of Ministers on 23rd November 2023 (Cabinet Paper No. 23/2138/605/068). The current Cabinet decision reinforces this earlier approval, highlighting the government’s commitment to fostering peace and social cohesion through inclusive dialogue and effective dispute-resolution mechanisms. This Article focuses only on the public sector initiative

The Public Service

The 2016 Public Sector Census reported Sri Lanka’s public sector workforce at approximately 1.4 million, which has grown to around 1.6 million according to the 2023 Budget speech. This workforce is critical in maintaining socio-economic stability and ensuring the delivery of essential goods and services to citizens. However, its efficiency is constrained by several challenges. Outdated and inefficient systems reduce productivity, while the limited adoption of modern technologies hinders the timely and quality delivery of services. Additionally, significant skill gaps and inadequate employee training limit their ability to meet the evolving demands of the public sector. Adversarial employee-management relations further complicate the situation, with employees feeling excluded from key decisions on pay and working conditions. This exclusion has resulted in frequent strikes and work stoppages. Such disruptions, coupled with perceived inequities and inconsistencies in employment practices, undermine morale, trust, and the overall functionality of the public service. Collectively, these issues impair the sector’s ability to deliver public goods and services effectively, negatively affecting citizens’ lives and the country’s development. Moreover, as Sri Lanka embraces open economic policies, the private sector is positioned as the engine of growth, fostering innovation, investment, and employment. A robust and efficient public service is essential to implement these policies effectively and create an environment that enables the private sector to thrive.

How to Address the Issues: A Three-Pronged Approach

Workplace Cooperation Through Social Dialogue

Sri Lanka’s current initiative to transform adversarial management relations hinges on implementing a multi-tiered social dialogue system. The country is making significant strides toward promoting workplace cooperation by providing platforms for dialogue at the workplace, sectoral, and national levels. These platforms enable public sector employees and management to engage in less aggressive, more collaborative processes, ultimately improving service delivery.

At each level, whether through workplace forums, sectoral dialogues, or national forums, the objective remains the same: to ensure that public service delivery is not disrupted by disputes while also addressing the concerns of public sector employees in a peaceful, democratic manner. Adopting these practices aligns with international standards, particularly those set by the International Labour Organization (ILO), and positions Sri Lanka as a country that respects and upholds labour rights while ensuring effective governance.

A comprehensive social dialogue framework is being proposed to address this gap, covering the entire field—from individual workplaces to ministries and national-level forums. These forums will allow employees, directly and through their representatives, to engage with their public service employer through information exchange, consultation, and negotiation processes, aiming to improve productivity and regulate changes to pay, as well as terms and conditions of employment.

Workplace forums promote open dialogue and collaboration between management and employees. They provide a structured environment where workplace issues can be discussed and concerns addressed, fostering mutual understanding. Such dialogue strengthens the working environment and contributes to the country’s social and economic development by encouraging transparency and cooperative problem-solving.

Training initiatives such as the Training of Trainers (ToT) programme are crucial at the workplace level. These programmes equip senior officials with the skills to lead dialogues and mediate disputes. By developing trainers with expertise in conflict resolution, the public sector can prevent conflicts from escalating into strikes or work stoppages. These workshops empower management and employees to engage in constructive conversations, focusing on mutual understanding and problem-solving.

At the sectoral level, forums are being introduced in historically contentious areas such as health, education, and transport. These forums consist of representatives from management and employees, often from trade unions, and are designed to address sector-specific issues. By institutionalising regular communication in these key sectors, the government aims to reduce the risk of adversarial relationships leading to disruptions in essential services.

At the national level, Sri Lanka is promoting national forums that bring together representatives from different public sector bodies, trade unions, and stakeholders. These national-level dialogues address systemic issues affecting employee-management relations across the public service and discuss implementing national policies to enhance workplace cooperation and service delivery.

The dialogue framework connects the National Public Service Dialogue Forum (NPSDF) with the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service Commission, ensuring that the decisions made by the forum are aligned with government policies and implemented effectively (See Figure 1). These two institutions play a critical role in translating the outcomes of sectoral councils and workplace forums into actionable strategies, particularly in resource allocation and regulatory compliance. Additionally, the framework establishes links between the dialogue forums and arbitration and mediation mechanisms. These mechanisms are instrumental in addressing and resolving conflicts during discussions, ensuring the process remains collaborative and solutions-oriented. This integration supports a robust conflict resolution system, enhancing stakeholder trust and cooperation.

Introducing Dispute Settlement Machinery

The proposed dispute prevention and settlement mechanism aims to bring critical structural changes to Sri Lanka’s public service. This includes introducing alternative dispute settlement mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration services and revising the roles of existing institutions like the Public Service Commission and Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Revising regulations such as the Establishment Code and enforcing Administrative Appeals Tribunal Orders at the Magistrate Court is also essential. These changes address the gaps in the current dispute prevention and settlement framework, leading to a more harmonious workplace.

Promoting Modern Human Resources Management Methods in the Public Service

The current approach to human resources in the Sri Lankan public service primarily focuses on personnel administration rather than on modern human resource management that aligns with the service’s larger mission and goals. To address this, the ILO study proposes implementing modern human resources development methods across the public service. This includes considerable investment in human resources functions, a comprehensive training component, and a robust monitoring mechanism.

In addition, it is recommended that the Ministry of Public Administration establish a public service-wide database to support these reforms facilitated by the Department of Census and Statistics. This database would help monitor progress, manage human resources effectively, and ensure the reforms are implemented smoothly.

Pilot Activities

The Railway Department has implemented its pilot programme for nearly two years, marking a significant advancement in fostering workplace dialogue within Sri Lanka’s public sector. Over this period, nine workplace forums have been successfully established, providing a platform for employees and management to address workplace challenges and improve operational efficiency collaboratively. Building on this foundation, actions are now underway to set up a sectoral forum for the entire Transport sector, which will unify the efforts of these forums, promote policy coherence, and address broader sector-wide issues. Inspired by the success of the Railway Department’s initiative, similar efforts are being made to establish workplace forums in the Ministry of Public Administration, Home Affairs, and Provincial Councils, as well as the Ministry of Education, further expanding the scope and impact of social dialogue in enhancing public sector governance.

by Ifham Nizam

In an era where misinformation spreads at an unprecedented rate, organisations like DataLEADS are taking proactive steps to address this growing challenge, particularly on social media platforms. Sonia Bhaskar, Programme Head at DataLEADS, an organisation based in India, speaks to The Island about the organisation’s initiatives to strengthen the fight against disinformation and empower communities with accurate information.

“At DataLEADS, we are committed to tackling misinformation and disinformation through a combination of technology, training, and grassroots initiatives,” says Bhaskar. “We believe that authentic information is essential for empowering individuals and protecting the integrity of democratic processes.”

Excerpts of the interview:

Q: At DataLeads, what are the most effective tools and strategies you employ to tackle the growing issue of misinformation and disinformation, particularly on social media platforms?

A: DataLEADS is a globally recognised award-winning digital media and tech company, leading conversations on Information, and AI ecosystem globally. At the core of our work lies a profound belief that authentic information is central to human empowerment. In this direction there are numerous programmes and key interventions we have initiated.

1. Building Fact-Checking Capacities in India

In partnership with Google News Initiative, we run one of the world’s biggest fact-checking and training networks the Google News Initiative-India Training Network, which has benefitted hundreds of organisations, local governments, newsrooms, universities and local communities in India. This initiative adopted the Training-of-trainers (ToT) model to initially train about 250 journalists, who in turn trained not only journalists in their newsrooms but also other newsrooms and students of mass communication and journalism all across India. So far as part of this initiative over 70,000 journalists and media students at over 25,000 newsrooms and media schools based in 28 states of India have been trained.

2. Building India’s Largest Media Literacy Network

The problem of misinformation/disinformation is not just a journalism problem but it affects all sections of society and has larger ramifications on democracy and what sources of information people tap into and trust. This prompted us to create Factshala – a network of trainers from different walks of lives, who in turn undertook training in their networks and communities and reached millions of people across the country from Tier-2, Tier-3 cities and villages to build community surveillance and intelligence against misinformation. The initiative has reached more than 66 million people across India in the last five years.

3. Strengthening the fact-checking Ecosystem to tackle online election related misinformation and deepfakes

We are also currently running the Shakti Collective initiative which has brought fact-checkers and publishers from across India together to address election-related misinformation and deepfakes. It is the biggest collaboration between fact-checkers and newsrooms in India to protect elections from misinformation. Together, this consortium between March and June 2024, distributed 6,600+ fact-checks during the world’s biggest elections, the General Election in India. This was a 92% increase in number of fact-checks published, 180% increase in regional language fact-checks, which were amplified in 10+ languages covered. This effort amounted to 4x increase in teams actively engaged in countering election-related misinformation.

As part of the Collective we also had an advisory council for AI and Deepfake detection. It had the best tech minds and academicians in the country, a Supreme Court lawyer and also international tech partners with access to tools to facilitate deepfake detection and also conduct masterclasses and trainings for the Collective members.

Over the years, we have also run specially designed visual workshops and boot camps for media colleagues and newsrooms in India. We are committed to building new competencies, collaborations and networks across the globe to strengthen information resilience and integrity and helping communities unleash their creativity at work. With Asian Dispatch, Global Data Dialogue, and the Shakti Collective we are building new networks and platforms to engage different stakeholders to build new conversations and scale the impact of our work.

AI is often touted as a solution to detecting and combating misinformation. What role do you see AI playing in identifying fake news and deepfakes, and how reliable are these tools in the fight against digital deception?

There are no tools, AI driven or otherwise, where you can feed in information and it can declare it true or false. Tools are to be applied to facilitate investigation and then fact-checkers and journalists need to follow due process to verify the sources, ask the right questions and if need be pick up the phone and make calls. Good old journalism practices are needed more than ever before and the essence of journalism, which is defined by the need to verify everything, needs to be followed. This is irrespective of the advent and rise of AI or any other technology in future.

There are tools that are being developed as deepfake detection tools. But these tools cannot be relied up on completely for accurate results. They have been known to give inaccurate results, and sometimes can falter when parts of real images are mixed with AI generated components. The reason for these errors could range from limited datasets, lack of properly trained data, lack diversity in data in terms of languages, race, ethnicity or just inherent biases. The fact is also that these tools are built by and large by tech companies but detection tools are playing catch up to the advancements in tools to create AI generated content, since more money is being invested by big tech companies to develop AI tools rather than build guardrails and tools to detect misuse of these tools.

Q: What role do you think digital literacy plays in addressing the problem of misinformation? How can organisations, governments, and educational institutions better equip individuals to navigate the digital world responsibly?

A: Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and false claims and so on cannot be abolished. They have existed in the past and will always be there. What has changed is the ease of creating and disseminating these materials, thanks to social media and its ubiquitous presence in everyone’s hands thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones with internet access. So any effort to combat misinformation will not succeed without a robust media literacy plan for the masses belonging to different age, gender, ethnicity, covering as many languages, regions and socio-economic backgrounds.

The first step to fighting misinformation is the need to assess the content being consumed, apply critical thinking and verify the information. Given the sheer volume of the content being generated online, across so many varied platforms, media literacy assumes greater significance, today everyone with a phone is a content creator but more importantly there is more content available but quality check is missing. The rise of social media has come at a time when traditional sources of credible information are crumbling due to faulty financial models, ownership issues and diminishing freedom of press. The erosion of trust in mainstream media is too real and increasingly proving to be problematic in a world where misinformation and disinformation not only spreads faster but it is getting easier to produce with AI generated tools. As AI tools evolve, it will get increasingly difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is fake.

Awareness among people to not just identify misinformation and disinformation but also verify and stop its spread will assume importance.

Tackling a problem of this magnitude requires a 360° degree approach and effort from all stakeholders – in developing curriculum and in implementing it in a manner that bridges the digital divide to reach all, down to the last mile.

Q: Fact-checking has become a vital part of journalism today. What unique challenges do fact-checkers face when dealing with the sheer volume of content online, and how can AI help or hinder their work?

A: Fact-checkers face a problem of reach. They depend on the same platforms for distribution of fact-check, which are spreaders of misinformation. They also face the issue of scale, and may lack the resources to scale up operations in different languages and establish presence in the various platforms, past and present. There is also the challenge of making fact-checks available in different formats from articles to vertical videos like Youtube shorts or Instagram reels.

The other big challenge is that of ability to cover all the misinformation that is floating and priortising what to fact-check. Currently, most fact-checkers in India, especially the independent ones that are not part of a larger newsroom or organisation, struggle for financial avenues to sustain and grow operations and currently lack the monetary muscle to invest in R&D and even AI to increase their productivity and efficiencies to scale up their fact-checking and verification work.

Q: What do you consider the biggest strengths of AI when it comes to improving the efficiency and accuracy of journalism? Many people still fear the potential of AI to replace human jobs or make unethical decisions. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions people have about AI, and how can we educate the public on its potential benefits and risks?

A: In an era of resource crunch that most newsrooms face, AI can help free up resources by taking over repetitive, mundane tasks that currently need manpower, to reduce time taken for production of news. These could be functions that can be templatised – like stock market reports, weather reports, game scores etc.

AI can also facilitate distribution of news by personalising the dissemination based on preferences of readers (for example, creation of personalised newsletters) or even maximise ad revenues through contextualising ad placements. It can also be used to scrape comments and ease the work of sorting and replying to comments. It can facilitate SEO functionalities, transcriptions, subtitling, translations (dependent on the tool’s language capabilities).

AI tools that can generate images or videos based on text prompts can also be deployed strategically for innovative storytelling. But Newsrooms need to have guidelines specifying dos and don’ts and ethical and responsible use of AI. The most important factor to keep in mind is ensuring that no step in the workflow that involves taking decisions or publishing news to the public domain is taken by the machine, steps where human intervention will be crucial needs to be well defined and critical for responsible deployment of AI. So, in that sense, training and upskilling of newsroom staff needs to be undertaken to ensure that we have a future proof newsroom where staff is ready for the new jobs that are created while some of the old functions get taken over by machines.

We Ordinaries of this wonderful island are living in anticipation and hope. Is it for a good time in the festive season; some merrymaking; and perchance a visit from ‘Ho Ho Man’. No, our hope lives not on these ephemeral benefits. Rather are we winning our hopes for an improvement the way the country is run and the deal we get as citizens. It is wonderful to hope after so very many years of despair with government mismanagement and rife corruption. We have confidence in our new government, entirely opposite to those which preceded it.

Need for outside carers in hospitals

Cass had been mulling over the allocation of jobs in hospital wards since a person she knows is having immense problems organising carers – day and night – for his mother-in-law in a Colombo suburban hospital. Family members are hard pressed to be with the patient and to hire an attendant means Rs. 4,000 per session.

This is what pertains in government hospitals. Cass cannot generalise but she knows this is the practice: carers brought in by the patient’s family to see to all the patient’s needs –washing, toileting et al. About 15 years ago Cass was in the Castle Street Hospital for Women. Doctors were excellent but the nurses and the few scattered attendants spent most of their time chatting and munching and watching TV. This is first hand reporting of how things stood so long ago too. On the day of surgery, the nursing sister in charge announced that each patient undergoing surgery had to have a carer for the night. Mercifully, cell phones were available. That night Cass’ niece who stayed with her, attended to seven other patients, their carers were fast asleep!

Why can’t nurses and attendants do their work of nursing and attending to patients? Why have outsiders to be brought in to care for patients when the hospital pays so many nurses in each ward and attendants to care for the sick?

Nurses in our government hospitals will never touch a bedpan whereas in Britain they do all patient related work from the most menial to the administration of injections, etc. They rarely have time for even short breaks.

Patients are hospitalised because caring for them is not possible in homes. Thus, hospitals must take full charge of patients and have them cared for by trained staff. We do hope the Health Minister will direct his attention to this severe lapse on the part of hospital staff.

Gautam Adani exposed

It has been reported that the US prosecutors have charged Indian billionaire Adani and seven others in an alleged bribery and fraud scheme related to a renewable energy project in India. In the indictment, prosecutors alleged the tycoon and other senior executives had agreed to the payments to Indian officials to win contracts for his renewable energy company, expected to yield more than $2 bn in profits over 20 years. The authorities have said Adani and the other defendants agreed to pay about $265 m in bribes to Indian officials to obtain contracts.

Cass cannot expand on that. What she pounced on was that this Indian company allegedly bribed officials to accept his proposals for installing renewable energy systems. Cass had, like so many others, got suspicious bristling ever since Adani appeared on the local scene with proposals for port development and particularly the Mannar Wind Power Project, phase two. Why the insistence on this project and Adani as supplier in the face of mass protests by local environmentalists against the installation of wind turbines in Mannar posing a hazard to migratory birds and the prized eco-system in that area. The certainty of bribes, corruption and selling of Sri Lanka’s assets for personal gain of some, was firm in mind then. Have Sri Lankans also been bribed? We also realise we Ordinaries were not mistaken in our suspicion of this entrepreneur. We will, eventually, get to know which political VIPs in the two previous governments willingly sold our land with assists for a mere green back pottage slipped into their capacious pockets.

Employment in Korea

After a while, placard-bearing protestors were seen this week near the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). They were protesting the SLBFE’s move against E-8 visas for employment in South Korea. The SLBFE Chairperson announced the E-8 visa agreement was signed unlawfully by the former subject Minister, without obtaining Cabinet approval or proper government authorisation. The Bureau facilitates the issuance of of E-9 visas, which guarantee employment in South Korea for four years 10 months while the E-8 visa is for much shorter periods of employment. No private employment agencies are permitted to send workers to South Korea under the E-8 visa system, nor to collect any associated fees.

So what rears its Medusa head?

Corruption – so rampant in the recent past, so very vile. People know the name of a VIP who gained from this business of employment in Korea, where each person sent to Korea had to remit a good amount to the collectors of illicit lucre here. If that isn’t selling and living luxuriously on the blood, sweat and tears of the desperate, what is? But now we need not shake our heads and say resigned – What to do, Aney? We no long need to ask that rhetorical question. It is going to be literal. Something will be done. The day of retribution will come to these blood suckers; they will have to pay for their crimes against humanity.

P. S.

Bigger hauls of hidden drugs have been made in the very recent past than during the much touted Yukthiya programme duration of the last government. Whispered among us was the question –was it another ruse to collect bribes? Cass sure felt sprats were caught while the drug sharks were not apprehended. Did they line insatiable pockets – pockets which even ordinary Cassandra knew were in the scheme – advertised to rid the country of the drug menace. Was even a dent made by the Yukthiya Programme?