TNAG-0070-FCO40-106-Disturbances-in-Hong-Kong-propaganda-1968 — Page 67

CONFIDENTIAL

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from the ranks of a press whose poor standards the many people deplore and we can only console ourselves with the thought that I.S.D. has been getting the best (which may not have been a good thing for local journalism, or Hong Kong).

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Experience actually shows that journalists do not want to talk to other journalists now employed in information services and in fact tend to distrust them. The only argument in favour of the employment of journalists is that by their knowledge of technique they are able to avoid pitfalls which gape before the layman dealing with a reporter. This however is an advantage which can be secured by the employment in key positions of some journalists and does not necessarily justify nothing but journalists.

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It is worth trying to create a system which uses professional officers as such to a greater degree than is possible at present. To some extent it happens in any organisation, and particularly in Government departments with a professional function, that the necessary administrative duties absorb the best professional talents. But the situation in information work is not quite the same as in other Government services. In other departments it is likely to be the senior officers of the department who bear the burden of contact with the public if any while their juniors feed them with material. Thus the public impression of the department is formed by contact with the abler and more experienced of the staff. In I.S.D. where impression counts even more than usual exactly the opposite happens and the impression which our highly critical customers have of us is formed from their contact with relatively inexperienced and less capable staff.

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The result is too often a poor impression which cannot be erased by more occasional contact with the higher grades.

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This problem cannot be solved so long as the present departmental structure remains. Promotion, which inevitably removeS the best officers from the work they do best, is the only avenue

to the proper rewards for their ability. To keep them at their pro- fessional tasks and to hand over administration to a different class of officers will not solve the problem if they are consequently denied advancement. However, a solution would be possible if the departmental structure were entirely broken and the professionals were in long-scale grades comparable to the administrative service. This radical re- organization would also solve other problems which now limit the efficiency of

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information services.

The departmental structure wastes the abilities of its best officers and puts the weakest officers in the most vulnerable position. It also sets up certain resistances in other departments which directly reduce the efficiency of information work and, more significantly, reduce interest in what should be a vital aspect of all departmental operations.

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There is another unfortunate effect of the departmental structure in that it leads to a routine attitude to information work,

/Finding