TNAG-0364-FCO40-410-McKinsey-Report-on-strengthening-the-machinery-of-government-1973 — Page 34

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and the level of costs (around $10 million) there was a good deal of scepticism about the project. The Police were then asked to present the case again in the McKinsey style with the result that Finance Branch accepted the proposition and supported its presentation to F.C. lesson to be learned from this is that departmental proposals can founder because they are not sufficiently clearly and convincingly argued and contain inadequate supporting material. The current position is that the

new procedures for establishment requests, further refined as necessary, have been incorporated in Financial Circular No. 4/73 for general use. A further circular in regard to equipment requests is expected to issue shortly.

As regards the clarification of the rôles of branches in the Secretariat, this has so far had no substantial effect, but it has at least shown up some differences in approach between policy and resource branches and has reaffirmed what their rôles should really be. I will not dwell on this here, as it is mainly a Secretariat problem except to say that often the Finance Branch is unfairly blamed for turning down a proposal because the policy branch concerned has not really fulfilled its function. On the other side of the coin, Finance Branch sometimes oversteps its responsibilities by extending its questioning into policy areas.

On delegation, we have conducted an exercise with the Lands Branch, and a number of proposals giving both DLS of the PWD and DCNT more authority have been approved. This approval was actually given in November but unfortunately owing to delay in the NTA, which is no doubt hard pressed, the delegations did not come into effect until 1st March. This leads me to ask

you to move promptly on anything involving this management exercise as any hold-up affects the Team's time-table and, as I have said earlier, they will be here only until the end of June. With the enthusiastic co- operation of Jim Robson and Tubby Crunden, the Consultants have also penetrated, but only so far to a small extent, into the Crown Lands Division of the PWD and think they have succeeded (with the active co-operation of the PWD officers concerned) in changing the routing of a fairly important land transaction form from series to parallel (another recommendation in Chapter 1). Discussions are also proceeding at the moment with the Establishment Branch with a view to isolating areas which could possibly throw up subjects for delegation either within the branch or to departments. Finance Branch, which has been conducting a review of its delegations, including tenders, has also benefited from the Consultants' advice.

/I might add

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