H.—lla

PART lII.—MISCELLANEOUS 23. STAFF AND ORGANIZATION At the present time the Department controls two major sets of district offices as follows : — (i) Armed Forces Appeal Boards, comprising twenty-six Boards in all, established in seventeen centres. (Note. —These are now being re-organized and reduced to nineteen Boards established in sixteen centres.) (ii) *District Man-power Offices (which have superseded the Placement Offices), these being located in twenty-two centres. In addition, there are the following smaller parts of the external organization : — The Special Tribunal (located in three centres) ; Defaulters Detention Camps (located in seven places) : Women's War Service Auxiliary : Emergency Fire Service (in four centres) : *Man-power Appeal Committees (located in four centres). As compared with the two major sets of district offices, it may be said that the Head Office of the Department is divided into three major divisions : — (i) The National —i.e., military —Service Division, which attends to all matters relating to the calling-up of men and recruitment of women for service with the forces, appeafs against such service, and related matters : (ii) The Civil Defence Division, which attends to the central administration of civil defence throughout the Dominion without at the same time, however, exorcising the same detailed control over local activities as applies in the other branches of the Department: (iii) The Industrial Man-power Division, which controls the administration of all measures of industrial mobilization (including those parts of the external organization set out above which have been marked an asterisk (*)), and which also supervises the workings of the Rehabilitation Division. Within the Head Office are located also three independently organized sections which handle all matters within their respective spheres relating to all three of the above major divisions. These are— (i) The Records Section, which, while limited in scope to the internal records of the Head Office, maintains a very large volume of individual files, in addition to a master index of men registered for service, and other records : (ii) The Accounts Section, which covers the financial and accounting aspects of all phases of the Department's activities throughout the Dominion, and also attends to the purchase and control of stores : (iii) The Statistical Research Section, which not only keeps the workings of all the internal ramifications of the Department under review, but which also conducts statistical surveys, forecasts, and researches of a frequently technical nature into many phases of the war effort which are external to the Department, such, for example, as wagetrend studies, industrial surveys, medical research, statistical reviews of the armed forces and of the civilian population, forecasts of yields to the forces following the calling-up of different age-classes, and many similar investigations into subjects which are intimately involved in some aspect of the war effort. Important work has also been carried out in this Section on inter-departmental co-ordination, the examination of proposals involving major commitments of man-power, and the preparation of major policy reports. The continual evolution and changing emphasis in the Department's activities to meet the changing needs of the war effort have kept the staff in a continual state of flux. With the virtual completion of the balloting phase, a decline in the work of Appeal Boards may now be expected, though this has already been more than compensated for by an upgrowth of work in the industrial man-power organization, which has shown heavy increases of staff during the past year. The actual numbers employed in the various parts of the Department's organization have been as follows : —

It should be noted that the figures relating to Appeal Tribunals do not include the seventy-eight (present) members of these tribunals, but only the secretarial staffs. An unusual feature of the organization is the fact that there are at present no fewer than six separate Ministerial portfolios concerned with the administration of various phases of the work carried on by the Department—namely, those of the Ministers of National Service and Industrial Man-power (held jointly), Civil Defence, Rehabilitation, Justice (as regards the special Tribunal and Defaulters' Detention Camps), and Labour (as regards employment promotion).

23

As at 31st March, As at 31st March, As at 31st March, 1941. 1942. 1943. Males. Females. Males. Females.. Males. Females. Head Office .. .. .. 105 82 87 109 95 131 Appeal Tribunals .. .. .. 29 26 29 45 85 99 Placement (later Man-power) Offices .. 146 19 195 48 317 189 Others.. .. .. .. .. 12 2 51 6 108 12 Totals .. .. .. .. 292 129 372 208 605 431 421 580 1,036