Public Service Control

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23354, 13 June 1941, Page 6

Public Service Control

It must be , hoped that the Government’s decision to appoint Mr J.' H. Boyes Acting-Public Service Commissioner is the outcome of a desire to review fully the present system of public service control. In recent months the deterioration in administrative efficiency has been so marked that, the need for an overhaul of the machinery of government has become obvious even to the general public. The disheartening muddles which have arisen over the impressment of motor vehicles and the preparation of emergency precautions schemes are unmistakable indications that the machinery for co-ordi-nating the activities of State departments and other administrative agencies is wholly inadequate. In theory, the responsibility for this coordination rests with the Cabinet, which in one aspect is a committee of political heads of de- ‘ partments. In practice, the Cabinet has neither the time nor the expert knowledge to undertake this task. What seems necessary is a group of administrative experts to act as a sort of general staff for the public service as a whole and to translate the Cabinet’s policy decisions into administrative terms. This, in effect, was the scheme recommended by the Royal Commission appointed in 1912 to investigate the organisation of the public service. Partly because the elimination of political influence over appointments was then considered to be the most necessary reform, the Government of the day rejected this recommendation and copied from Australia the system of control by a Public Service Commissioner responsible directly to Parliament. As a means of ensuring uniformity in the recruitment, promotion and grading of public servants, Commissioner control has been a success in New Zealand. But the Public Service Commissioner has never been much more than ; a staff clerk on a grand scale, concerning himself scarcely at all with the wider problems of administrative organisation.- Government has now become so complex owing to the growth of social services and State regulation of industry and to the new burdens imposed by war that the lack of an authority with the knowledge and the powers necessary for the co-ordination of the work of departments has become a serious weakness. Whenever any administrative project requires co-operation by several departments, there is almost invariably confusion, delay* and muddle, The fundamental problem which the Government should now. be considering is whether the Public Service Commissioner’s Office, as at present constituted but with a larger staff, is capable of enlarging, Its functions to the point of assuming a general control oyer the whole administrative structure or whether it is necessary to create an administrative planning bureau directly responsible to the Cabinet. There is a precedent, for this second course. When, during the economic depression, the

Coalition Government was attempting to work out and apply relief measures for the primary industries it was faced with the difficulty that a large group of State departments and producers’ boards were concerned with these measures. To solve the problem of co-ordination it created the Executive Commission of Agriculture, the function of which was to. have been to devise the administrative means to carry out the Government’s policy. Unfortunately, a change of government cut short what was a promising administrative experiment. It can at least be said, however, that the Executive Commission achieved enough in its brief period of effective life to show that the idea behind it was sound.