TNAG-1009-FCO40-1259-Appointments-of-senior-officials-in-Hong-Kong-and-Hong-Kong--1981 — Page 9

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10.

(d) Executive departments

Circling the Government Secretariat, as it were, about 55 executive departments and independent agencies most of which are grouped under the ten policy Secretaries and, in the case of the revenue and accounting departments, under the Deputy Financial Secretary. These departments employ over 143,000 civil servants in all grades and are responsible for expenditure currently running at over $18,500 million

a year on recurrent account and nearly $13,500 million on capital account. They range from large labour intensive

departments such as the Police and Urban Services Departments to departments with only a handful of staff; and they range from departments charged with spending several billions of dollars a year, such as the works departments, the Education Department and the Medical and Health Department, to small departments which are quite insignificant in budgetary terms.

(e) Internal relationships

11. As I said earlier, the responsibilities of policy branches in the Government Secretariat are related to specified programme areas but, in effect, this means that policy branches work with, and through, groups of departments. But the relationship between policy branches and departments, or rather between Secretaries and heads of departments, is not as well understood as it might be.

12. The main duties of a Secretary are: first, to formulate policies in their programme areas, secondly, to ensure that policies in these areas are effectively co-ordinated and implemented; and, thirdly, to support, preferably with objective comment, heads of departments' annual and supplementary Estimates submissions.

Each Secretary is

To help

accountable for results in his programme areas. them formulate policies and see that they are implemented effectively, a complex and sometimes none too tidy or logical network of administrative committees and working groups bring staff in both policy and resources branches in the Government Secretariat and staff in departments together in

the common cause.

'To ensure.