Sessional_Paper_1949 — Page 127

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Shift duties of Women Confidential Assistants.

453. The women assistants are not called upon for duty on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, to assist the clerks on duty.

454. A roster of duties should be issued to provide each shift with an officer in charge and a woman assistant.

Misuse of urgency classification.

455. Urgency categories are applied to telegrams very freely. It may not be appreciated that the speed of cyphering, other than with the use of the "typex" machine which has a limited application, is about 100 groups of words an hour and many telegrams contain 200 or more groups.

456. It is recommended that officers should again be reminded of the necessity for care in classifying telegrams, and in the economical use of words.

Work volume and telegrams for Department of Supplies and Distribution.

457. The staff of the "open" office are easily disposing of the present volume of work. Of the 500 non-confidential telegrams received and sent during March last, 200 of these were for the Department of Supplies and Distribution.

458. Arrangements should be made for the Department of Supplies and Distri- bution to send and receive their own plain telegrams.

Card index for secret and confidential telegrams.

459. The information required by this index was partially completed when it was found that the index served no useful purpose. The index is no longer used.

460. It is recommended that this index should now be withdrawn.

Telephone.

461. One telephone is installed in the "open" office. The officer-in-charge is called away from his work in the inner office many times a day to answer telephone enquires on secret and confidential telegrams.

462. It is recommended that another instrument and a two-way switch be in- stalled in the inner office to prevent unauthorized persons listening-in to a conversa- tion and to save the time of the officer-in-charge and enable him to pass a call to the "open" office.

Spirit duplicator.

463. All telegrams received and a large number of those sent, are copied with the use of hectograph carbon and spirit duplicator.

464. To provide cleaner and speedier production of copies, a hectograph type- writer ribbon attachment should be provided for the use of this office. The trade name of this attachment is the "Carbex Automaster".

Economy labels.

465. It is recommended that these labels should only be used on the second and subsequent occasion an envelope is addressed. On the first occasion the address should be written in the usual position on the envelope.

Sealing of envelopes.

466. Many envelopes have their wax seals placed on the edges of the economy label without the envelope flaps being gummed down.

467. It is recommended that whenever an envelope is wax sealed, the envelope flaps should be gummed down, and the wax seals placed where the flap joins the body of the envelope.