Book Description

Excerpt from Reprint of Reports of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency: Regarding Outlines of Organization of the Government November 27, 1911. The President: The Commission on Economy and Efficiency has the honor to submit the following report on the organization of the Government of the United States as it existed July 1, 1911. This report has been prepared with two definite objects in view, (1) to secure and present the information that is essential for any detailed critical study of the manner in which the Government is organized, and (2) to furnish this information in such a way that it can be kept constantly revised to date, with little or no expense, and thus be at all times available to officers of the Government for use in the current administration of public affairs. Introduction. At the outset of its work the commission was impressed with the fact that the Congress, the President, and the administrative officers were attempting to discharge the duties with which they are intrusted without sufficient knowledge regarding the instrumentalities through which these duties are to be performed. While it is true that officers of bureaus, divisions, etc., have information regarding the organization of their services, it is only in exceptional cases that such information has been compiled in a form to be readily available to others. Each service consequently has had to conduct its affairs without adequate knowledge regarding conditions elsewhere, and the higher administrative officers have been without the information so imperative to the exercise of real administrative control and direction. Desirable as it may be that special efforts should be put forth from time to time to better governmental conditions, improvement and reform that is really worth while and lasting can be secured only by the adoption and current use of devices that enable administrators, from day to day, to pass judgment upon the effectiveness of the machinery and methods by which they are managing the affairs intrusted to them. In the same way that the commission is recommending, through other reports, that the accounting system of the Government be modified so that the information developed by the recording of financial transactions will be currently available for use by those in authority, it is also recommending, through the present report, the adoption of a plan by which any officer of the Government will be able to know, at any time, exactly the manner in which the service in which he is interested is organized. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.