Organising the Civil Service
The deliberations of the Select Committee on Estimates concern- ing the work of the 224 people who are charged with the review and improvement of the organisation and methods of the Civil Service may seem to be a considerable fuss about very little. So it is, in terms of the staff employed and of its achievements to date. But it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the question at issue—the organisation and methods of a service of over a million people which is seriously faulty in organisation and frequently employs working methods which the ordinary pressure of competi- tion drove out of private business long ago. Yet organisation and methods work in Government Departments is continuously handi- capped by low salaries, faulty recruitment, stupid but successful obstruction within Departments (only 19 out of about too have their own 0. and M. branches), unwillingness to give organisation officers full scope at the higher levels—in fact, by all the messy incom- petence and resistance to change which lowers the efficiency of the Civil Service and stultifies the efforts of its more intelligent members and sections. The Organisation and Methods branches, particularly in the Treasury and in the new Ministry of National Insurance, where they are given reasonable scope, have achieved something, but the general resistance is so great that it is surprising that the Select Committee had few recommendations to make apart from some harmless platitudes. This token expression of good will is not enough. As was pointed out by the one witness before the Com- mittee, who seemed to have full grasp of the significance and urgency of the task, the first question concerns the suitability of an organisa- tion originally designed tor quasi-judicial activities to carry the ever- increasing load of operations being placed upon it, and so far that question has hardly been asked—much less answered.
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