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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
To commemorate this important year, the Council is planning a ceremonial programme of celebration with enthusiasm but under a modest budget. On the memorable date of April 18, a Special Meeting of the Council will be convened, coupled by a Centenary Exhibition at the City Hall. A set number of commemorative silver medallions will be put on sale at cost and a designated garden will be given the name 'The Urban Council Centenary Garden'. Other festive events include a Centenary Five-a-Side Football Tournament Competition to be held at the Hong Kong Coliseum with the assistance of the Hong Kong Football Association. In the meantime, the Council welcomes any further suggestions from other sports governing bodies on similar centenary tournaments to spot-light the Centenary celebration.
The Council is also anxious to involve the staff of the Urban Services Department in the series of celebration functions in appreciation of the distinguished services they and their predecessors have contributed to the public. A few but special events will therefore be organized for the staff and their families. These activities will serve not only to reward our staff but also to enhance morale and their sense of attachment to the Council.
Staff Training
With a staff establishment of over 17,000, the Council is keen to provide its staff with adequate training to improve its quality of service to the public. Currently, staff are sent overseas for training programmes which are not available locally. However, the newly established Urban Services Department Training School will provide a ready mechanism to upgrade and expand our local training facilities and programmes. In future, the Council will focus resources in this aspect on a wide range of professional and technical training for U.S.D. staff as well as in formulating, developing and reviewing departmental training policies and programmes to better meet their need for technical and administrative manpower.
Undoubtedly, the Urban Council will place an increasing emphasis on management training for our middle management. In as much as the Council plans to cater for the training of officers for individual disciplines, I see two areas in which the capabilities of our management staff should be enhanced. First, the computer as a powerful management tool in terms of provision of data should be a field about which middle management should have a working knowledge. A better understanding of the computer and the associated aspects of system control could help the individual officer to improve the system of work management.
The second area would be to train our managerial officers in the area of financial management. Financial management in the context of the Urban Council relates to the planning and application of financial resources to the effective functioning of the Urban Services Department. At present, finance is centrally controlled by our Accounts Office. With computer installation in this Office, more financial information can be disseminated to our management staff in future. In this connection, officers who are managing their day-to-day operations must be conversant with the budgeting process and they must be equally conscious of the allocation of resources and the optimization of benefits. This will be an improvement over our existing system of accounting which involves tedious scrutiny in the process of approving expenditure. Hence, financial management training for our staff should contribute to better economies of operation in the end.
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Management Audit
The Council is keen to improve the management of its staff. The Management Audit Unit created since April 1981 is responsible to ensure that approved policies are being followed and that staff provided for specific purposes are performing the required functions. In pursuing its duties, the Unit conducts regular reviews of management efficiency, staff responsibility and accountability with reference to operational standards within the department. In the current financial year of 1982-83, three management audit reviews have been completed and a potential saving of about $6.79 million per annum is expected. Reviews, so far concentrated on cleansing, will be extended to cover other aspects of the Council's activities.
Steps have also been taken to ensure that the recommendations contained in the Management Audit Reports are suitably and effectively implemented. Furthermore, after the completion of a review, the Unit will continue to monitor the implementation of agreed recommendations until the final stage of action. This Unit was initially funded by the Urban Council but now it has expanded its sphere of work to cover the New Territories. While the cost for running the Unit will be borne jointly between the Council and Government, cross-fertilization of experiences will benefit the Urban Services Department as a whole.
Expansion of Staff
The Council is intent to restrain excessive expansion of its staff establishment, as over the past three years. During this period, the average increase of staff is merely 2.54% per year. This low growth rate was made possible by a critical examination of the operations and structure of our organization, then followed by the creation of essential posts and the deletion of obsolete ones. Hence, a low percentage of net increase in establishment resulted. This was achieved with care to ensure that the level of services would not be compromised unreasonably. It must be recognized that the employment policy of a Government institution is vastly different from that of the private sector. In a period of economic expansion, funds are always available to increase the establishment size but when the economic conditions are not congenial, trimming is often difficult and costly. With the economy trapped in its downturn, the Council has proved itself correct in its foresight and judgement.