Author: William F. Willoughby
Publisher:
Published: 2015-07-13
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9781331309017
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Excerpt from The System of Financial Administration of Great Britain: A Report Ten years ago a definite plan was formulated for the preparation of a series of scientific handbooks through which exact information might be made available to citizens and public officers alike, about the methods and practices developed by various governmental agencies in the conduct of public business. In the spring of 1913, this plan was laid before the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation. In response to inquiry as to what studies would be taken up first if funds were provided, the following were suggested as of commanding importance: (1)Methods of budget-making and financial control; (2) standards and practices evolved for improvement of the civil service; (3) provisions for pensions and retirement allowances; and (4) methods of public accounting. An appropriation was made for the purpose of prosecuting these studies and placed in the hands of a special committee composed of Messrs. Jerome D. Greene, Charles D. Norton, Charles P. Neill, William F. Willoughby and Raymond B. Fosdick. Under these auspices three men of nation-wide reputation were selected by the director in charge, each holding a chair of government in a different university and two of whom had had considerable experience in governmental administration, to make an initial visit as an unofficial commission to England, France and Germany for the purpose of collecting materials. This was to be done by establishing contact with officers of foreign Governments actively engaged on budget-making and civil service matters, and with foreign students familiar with these subjects. The method used for collecting the data was first to prepare an outline with a list of the related subjects concerning which concrete data were to be obtained; to follow this with personal interviews; to reduce the results of personal interviews to writing and submit them for correction and amendment; also to collect such documents and data on the ground as could not be readily secured in libraries or through correspondence. The commission began its work in England early in July, 1914. Tentative arrangements were also made to spend August and September chiefly in Paris and Berlin, with possibly some supplementary inquiries into the same subjects in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. 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.
