13

H.—34.

Control of Organization. At the head of the whole organization stands the Cabinet of the day, each Minister having charge of one or more Departments. The general lines upon which the whole organization works are laid down by numerous Acts and regulations, the most important of these, as it deals with the finance of the whole organization, being the Public Revenues Act, 1910, together with the Treasury Regulations made thereunder. This Act, amongst other things, defines the relations of the Treasury and Audit Departments to the whole organization. Except for the control exercised by the Treasury and Audit Departments under this Act, the only thing holding the whole business together is the Cabinet of the day; but as each Department is under a separate Minister, there is very often little unity of control. Apart from the very moderate amount of control exercised under the Public Revenues Act by the Treasury and Audit Departments, every main Department, and many of the minor Departments, are separate concerns, each one running on its own account entirely independently of the others. There is a great tendency for each Department to magnify and glorify itself. The Secretary for each of the main Departments desires to make his Department an important one, because it means a more important position for himself. He is assisted in this way by all the officers of his Department, for raising the status of the Secretary means raising the status of all the principal officers under him. The head of every minor Department wishes to magnify his office and make it appear as important as possible, in order that he may break free from the leading-strings of the Secretary of the Department under which he is grouped, and become a Secretary on his own account; and he too is assisted in doing this by all the principal officers under him, because if they can increase the importance of the head of their Department their own importance also increases. Each Minister, too, likes to magnify the importance of the Departments under him, as it raises his own status and importance in the eyes of the country. This is only human nature; but in business life the tendency to magnify one's position is held in check by the unceasing demands of the profit and loss account, and the only way a man in business can magnify his office is by swelling the balance to the credit of this account. To do this in the face of the competition usually met with in business life, the strictest economy and efficiency have to be observed. With the exception of a few trading Departments, the Government officers are not in the same position; they have no profit and loss account to face at the end of the year, and nothing to hold them in check except the head of the whole organization. Departments working as Separate Concerns. Every main Department, and even every minor Department, tries to run its affairs as a distinct and separate concern, instead of each being a branch of* one large business. When a cadet gets into any one Department he usually remains there; and, while transfers do take place, they are not general. It is more difficult to make transfers between two different Government Departments than it is between two entirely separate businesses. If an officer wishes to transfer from one Government Department to another he has not only to obtain the consent of the head of the Department to which he wishes to move, but also the consent of the head of the Department which he wishes to leave. If he is a smart officer the head of the Department in which he is employed withholds, in many cases, consent to the transfer, and thus blocks a man of ability from obtaining promotion; «md the difficulty that a smart officer has in obtaining consent to a transfer makes transfers very infrequent. Many of the heads of Departments think that consent is given only when a man is an inferior worker, and they therefore look with suspicion on all who are permitted to transfer from other Departments, and consequently they do not try to obtain them. The result is that good men often find themselves fixtures, without opportunity, in some small Department that is not only not progressing, but which may possibly be going back. They find, in fact, that their promotion is blocked