Continuous Drive To Eliminate Red Tape'

Northern Advocate, 6 August 1949, Page 8

Continuous Drive To Eliminate Red Tape'

WELLINGTON, Sat. (Sp.).—'The Public Service Commission is carrying on a continuous drive to eliminate “red tape.” This is stated in the commission’s report which ,was tabled m the House of Representatives yesterday. “We must be alert to see that unnecessary tasks are cut out and ways are found of doing jobs with less staff,” states the report.

“To the extent that many tasks are matters of Government policy, the first of these remedies is beyond the reach of the commission; but the second lies in the commission’s own hands and has been applied extensively during the past year.” There was a continuing drive to prune overgrown organisations and devise simpler ways of doing things—in short, to cut out “red tape,” adds the report. . It had become known in the service as “O. and M.” (Organisation and Methods), a name taken from the English Civil Service. Steps taken by the commission included the appointment of inspectors in departments which previously did not have them, and a suggestion to departments to look into the possibility of establishing output standards as a yard-stick on unit porduction and on staffing requirements. EXAMPLES QUOTED

In the Department of Agriculture, where the addressing of circulars by hand took an hour and a half per 100, the work is now being done mechanically at the rate of 100 every five minutes.

An amalgamation of import control forms in the Customs Department has obviated the typing of 150,000 forms each year. Over 11,000 man-hours were saved m the Auckland Land and Income Tax Office by a new routine for issuing and revising income tax assessments. Wage Fixing

A variety of wage-fixing authorities for various branches of the Government service started a “leap-frogging” process which could go on indefinitely, the report says. There were anomalies in salary and wages rates and in margins for skill and responsibility, and these were often cited to support claims for higher pay. They tended to be perpetuated because of the number of authorities.

Examples of what has been accomplished in the field of O. and M. are given in the report. It states that the mechanisation of the pay system has eliminated salary cards, typing repetitive work and overtime. The work is done faster by less staff.

A decision by Authority X to increase the wage rate of Group A in order Jo correct an anomaly was apt to be regarded by Authority Y as a precedent for increasing the wage rgte of Group B, thus re-creating the anomaly. One remedy would be to co-ordinate the various authorities; another, perhaps better, way would be to have a single authority - linked with the Arbitration Court to determine salary and wage scales for all Government services, including all public corporations. Ethical Standard The ethical standard of public service in New Zealand remained on a high plane, in spite of individual lapses now and then, states the commission’s report. Three serious cases during the year were the acceptance of a £lO bribe by a clerk in the Building Control office at Auckland, the theft of £994 by a Ministry of Works clerk at Whenuapai and a conspiracy between a Marketing Department clerk and the owner of the Timaru egg floor to defraud the Government of £lß6l. The offenders dealt with by the courts. “The integrity of the Public Service and the probity of its members in general are not open to question if these isolated incidents are viewed in proper perspective—against a background of 30,000 employees,” adds the report.