107. Head 164 – Registrar General's Department. The Land Office of the Registrar General's Department is required under the Land Registration Ordinance to register and to keep records of land documents including memorials, Crown leases, conditions of sale and related plans to which Government departments and the public have access for refence purposes. These bulky documents had been accumulating since 1844, taking up increasing storage space in sred office accommodation, some of which had been rented at great expense. In 1977 the Management Services Division of the Government Secretariat was asked to evaluate the feasibility of microfilming the Land Office records. Their report concluded that this would be feasible and, in addition to the considerable saving in accommodation, it would have the advantage of concentrating all the urban land records within one building, making it more convenient for those requiring access to the documents. The original documents, other than plans, were to be destroyed once the microfilming was complete.
108. The Registrar General accepted the proposal and it was hoped to complete the microfilming project within three years, starting in August 1978 and finishing in August 1981. However, it took much longer than expected to secure the finance, equipment and accommodation for the microfilming project and in the event, it did not start until November 1979. However, if the plan to complete the project within three years was to remain, it would still be possible to vacate the rented accommodation in the World Trade Centre in Causeway Bay, where many of the land documents were kept, when the lease expired in November 1982. In April 1980 a progress review of the microfilming project reported that the number of documents to be microfilmed was much larger than had been expected and if the microfilming was to be completed in time, then the project would have to be speeded up. The Registrar General then asked the Deputy Financial Secretary for more staff and equipment so as to complete the work within three years. The estimated cost was about $1 million but, since most of the cost would have to be incurred anyway at a later date, the net extra cost to the Government would be only about $200,000. The corresponding benefit would be the saving of the rent that would have to be paid for any renewal of the lease of the accommodation in the World Trade Centre.
109. The Deputy Financial Secretary supported the proposal but unfortunately a procedural problem arose which could have been, but was not, speedily resolved and the additional staff and equipment were not approved. Consequently, the microfilming project was not completed until November 1984 and the additional cost of renting the accommodation in the World Trade Centre up to the termination of the tenancy in June 1985 amounted to $4.75 million.
110. The procedural problem concerned the requirements, introduced for financial control purposes, for departments to operate within certain staff ceilings and cash limits. The Deputy Financial Secretary had noted that the Registrar General's staff establishment was below his staff ceiling and considered that the extra staff for the microfilming project could be recruited from within the ceiling but the Registrar General, having in mind additional staff requirements for other activities in his department, wanted his existing staff ceiling raised. According to the procedures, this would have required a detailed establishment review which normally took up to six months to complete and the Deputy Financial Secretary was willing to carry out such a review once the Registrar General had reached his existing ceiling. The procedures stated that only in very exceptional circumstances would additional staff be provided before the review was complete. After nearly five months of intermittent correspondence and discussion the Deputy Financial Secretary was still not convinced that the Registrar General actually needed to raise his staff ceiling and by September 1980, the Registrar General had resigned himself to the prospect of completing the microfilming project in five years instead of three and did not pursue his request for the additional staff. I have suggested that a speedy and satisfactory solution could have been found to the impasse if there had been better communication between the Registrar General's Department and the Finance Branch of the Government Secretariat in pursuit of their common objective of securing economy.
111. By contrast, the importance of good communication in the speedy resolution of problems is illustrated by the Registrar General's similar and contemporary effort to secure additional staff for the new Money Lenders Unit of his department. On 19 September 1980 the Registrar General explained to the Deputy Financial Secretary that it was the Government's policy to give priority to the setting up of a Money Lenders Unit but in order to staff the Unit he would breach his staff ceiling and needed to have the ceiling raised. The Deputy Financial Secretary approved the raising of the ceiling that same day without having to wait for up to six months for an establishment review to be completed.
112. The space saving objective of the microfilming project could be achieved only if the original bulky documents were destroyed. However, as microfilming was a new venture for the Registrar General, it was natural that he should be cautious about their destruction and he accepted the recommendation of the Management Services Division that the original documents should be retained until the system was well proven, with consideration to be given to their destruction when the system was fully operational. However, as the public would not need access to those original documents that had been microfilmed, the Registrar General arranged for them to be stored in cheaper factory accommodation in Aberdeen and in the Kowloon East Government Offices. The microfilming project became fully operational in November 1984 but a decision to destroy the original documents in Aberdeen was not needed because two months previously, in September 1984, the factory building in which the documents were stored was destroyed by fire together with the documents. However, no further consideration was given to the destruction of the remaining original documents which continued to be stored in the Kowloon East Government Offices at a notional rent of about $220,000 a year. The Registrar General has now accepted my recommendation to have the documents destroyed except for those very old ones which the Government Archivist might wish to keep.
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