The Times THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1939. The Public Service

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 301, 21 December 1939, Page 6

The Times THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1939. The Public Service

When aa lioncst desire to have the Public Service staffed by the most capable persons available is conceded to successive Administrations in the Dominion, it is still a long and weary road that has been followed in the quest for a standard by which competence may be accurately measured. Within the term of office of the present Government the “efficiency test” has been postulated by the Public Service Commissioner as a means of ascertaining, by periodical examination, the fitness of public servants for their tasks. Some years previously provision was made by amendment to the Public Service Act for promotion being determined primarily on merit. But apparently there is no confidence that cither or both these methods can satisfactorily resolve a difficulty that is inevitable in a country in which a large part of the population is more or less usefully employed in serving the State. The latest decree implies, indeed, that the previous efforts to reform the system have failed, since its object is again to establish the principle of promotion by merit instead of one of promotion by seniority. The specified object is the same, the methods of attaining it different, even radically so. A superintendent of staff training has been appointed, whose duties will be to instruct and advise cadets along the lines of their particular aptitudes, and in the principal centres recruitment liaison officers will examine applicants for appointments and direct them towards avenues of service in which they may be expected to show the greatest efficiency. The innovation is, on the face of it, commendable. Its success must depend, however, on factors which cannot easily be guaranteed. It requires, in the first place, that the applicants for Public Service positions shall include a large number of likely recruits. And secondly, it requires that the officials who administer the scheme shall be men of peculiar ability in estimating the potentialities of applicants apart altogether from their scholastic attainments; and, of course, that they shall be beyond political influence or other forms of patronage. If these conditions are fulfilled, as they quite reasonably may be, the effect in increasing the standard of efficiency in the Public Service should prove most beneficial in years to come. Pi'omotion merely by seniority might work well enough in a State service which confines itself to routine administration. It could lead to grave abuses and a great loss when the State is increasingly invading the sphere of competitive and private enterprise.

And while this zeal for reform exists, it might be advantageous to consider the desirability of subjecting appointments to important administrative positions, which dc not come within the urvey of the Public Service Commission, to a careful supervision by some qualified and independent tribunal.