FDA’s annual NI conference takes place in Belfast

FDA members in Northern Ireland had the opportunity to hear directly from two current Finance Ministers; Minister of Finance in NI Executive, John O’Dowd MLA and Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Welsh Language, Mark Drakeford at the FDA NI Section’s annual conference. 

The first FDA NI conference held at The Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC), Belfast, brought together FDA members from across the NI civil service to engage in debate and discussion and decide priority areas of work for the Section over the next year.

Mark Drakeford, former First Minister of Wales, who travelled from Cardiff to Belfast to join the conference, gave a speech on the current constitutional challenges in the UK, particularly focusing on the current state of devolution. The Cabinet Secretary gave an overview of the Gordon Brown commission on constitutional reforms, and the need to re-imagine the principle of ‘sovereignty.’ Drakeford argued that the current constitutional framework where sovereignty is rested in Westminster and dispersed to devolved administrations should be reversed,  sovereignty should rest in the devolved administrations and through consensus matters are reserved to Westminster.

Further to this, he argued that questions of the constitution are not separate from “bread and butter” issues, asserting that the constitution is akin to the “plumbing”: you may not always see it, but you need it to work. Answering questions from the audience, he also argued that the Barnett formula is no longer fit for purpose but that there is little political will to consider a completely new formula. He praised the work of civil servants in NI who stepped in, attending cross-government meetings, while the Executive was collapsed. 

Raising the curtain on the conference NI Convenor, Robbie Davis, welcomed the audience and thanked the NI reps for all their hard work over the last year as the Section has continued to grow from strength to strength. Davis then introduced the first session of the conference with Minister of Finance, John O’Dowd. The Minister thanked members for their continued dedication and professionalism.

Referring to the ongoing budgetary pressures facing NI, O’Dowd referred to the ongoing public consultation on the multi-year budget “against the backdrop of an exceptionally constrained financial position.” He also referenced the need for public sector transformation and the over £200m funding that has been made available for transformation projects, asserting that this must go beyond pilot projects and be properly embedded across the public sector. He also took questions from the audience on the need to defend civil servants, stating that all ministers should be defending their officials in public and challenging them in private. 

Next on the agenda was a panel discussion on AI and public sector transformation, moderated by FDA President Margaret Haig and featuring FDA General Secretary Dave Penman and Professor Stephen Farry, former NI Minister for Employment and Learning and Co-Director of the Strategic Policy Unit at Ulster University.

The panel discussed whether, given the ongoing challenges facing public service delivery in NI, AI is the cavalry coming over the hill. Professor Farry referred to AI deployment in NI being sporadic and piecemeal and talked about the need for an overarching strategic approach, alluding to the work ongoing elsewhere in the UK and the Irish government’s recent publication of their third AI strategy. Penman underlined the need for a strategic approach to AI adoption that recognises people’s fears and is done with the workforce, not imposed on them, affirming why access to training and developing digital skills must be core to AI adoption.

Responding to a question on the potential biases in Large Language Models, both Farry and Penman agreed on the need for robust guardrails in the adoption and the importance of the technology boosting human work, rather than simply replacing it. 

The conference then moved to the formal AGM business including a report from Secretary, Ross Thompson who outlined the success of the section, including continued membership growth, increasing viability and the work undertaken to tackle workloads, build the capacity of the section and to engage on the undervaluing of our Public Prosecutors. He also referred to the successful ‘Insights into Public Service Leadedship’ conference held in October and the fact that members overwhelmingly voted to accept the 9% pay deal, over 20 months, that included extending full contractual maternity pay to 26 weeks.