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Wednesday, May 23, 1973

MCKINSEY REPORT MOST VALUABLE

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The Colonial Secretary, the Hon. Sir Hugh Norman-Walker, today

described the McKinsey report on improving the Government's effectiveness

as "a most valuable one" which provided Hong Kong with "real future benefits."

In tabling the report in the Legislative Council today, he said

that the recommendations made by the management consultants were not a

single package, or set of proposals, which needed to be accepted or rejected

in toto.

They are, rather, a series of new ideas on ways of doing things,

to be tried out and implemented if they are found to be workable and effective,"

Sir Hugh said a number of the consultants' recommendations had

already been adopted with success while others would be tried in future.

Some of the most important areas in which the new approaches were tried out were education, medical and health, police, urban services, and

public works.

Taken as a whole, he said, the object of the consultants' proposals

"is to create a smaller but highly powered central machine with a more positive role for the initiation and formulation of policies and programmes, and for the monitoring, control and co-ordination of their implementation."

He added: "But an essential corollary of these proposals is to reaffirm and strengthen the authority and responsibility of heads of departments for the effective operation of their departments, and for the formulation

and implementation of department policies."

/At the