Chapter 714: Corruption eradication and integration
Purficott's reforms are actually not complicated. Generally speaking, in order to improve administrative efficiency, she established two new departments under the existing structure of the cabinet.
An audit department is responsible for reviewing whether all government plans are reasonable. It also reviews the financial expenditure of each government plan to confirm whether it is reasonable and whether there are unnecessary expenses.
To this end, the Ministry of Finance needs to prepare a fiscal budget every quarter and a general government budget every fiscal year.
The Audit Department will review government expenditures based on the budget formulated by the Ministry of Finance to ensure that all expenditures are within the budget plan as much as possible and avoid unnecessary waste of expenditures.
The reason for doing this is because when Purficott re-examined the cabinet's implementation of the air battleship plan after she left, she found that the cabinet seriously lacked overall planning, and repeated construction of the same project was not an exception.
In addition, although the Ministry of Finance has made a budget plan before, this budget plan is only a reference.
The expenditures of various government departments are not carried out according to the budget, but only used as a reference. They do not control expenditures strictly according to the fiscal budget, but only look at how much money the department can spend this year.
Almost all departments spend money without a plan. Once they run out of money, they reach out to the treasury for money.
A project often requires several additional funds to complete the project. During this process, the funds approved from the national treasury are often not used directly for the project, but are divided into layers, and each person who handles it has to pay. Scrape a layer.
During Purficott's investigation, she was shocked to find that at least one-third of the funds were divided up in the entire process from the time a fund was approved by the Ministry of Finance until it was finally used for project expenses.
And this does not take into account the clever design of project expenses and various rebates.
Purficott only made a rough estimate and came up with a result that shocked her, that is, more than two-thirds of a project's funds are often lost, and only less than one-third of the funds are lost. Really for projects.
In the past, when the Victoria Empire was strong, all kinds of corruption were well covered up because the treasury was rich.
After all, under the luxuriant flowers and the burning fire, who can see the chaos behind the prosperity?
But when the apocalyptic winter struck, while the empire experienced a cold winter in the natural climate, the empire itself also experienced another cold winter.
The national treasury was emptied out, and a huge amount of funds, together with the wealth plundered from the three countries of the old world, accumulated to form the current northern border.
People seem to have only seen that Perficott has built the current prosperity of the North in just three years, but they have not seen how much money and resources were spent behind it.
In the later stages of the entire plan, if the Queen had not used royal assets to subsidize the treasury, I am afraid that the treasury would not be able to support it in the end.
In this process, it is impossible to find out how much money has been embezzled and how many resources have been wasted.
If he wants to be held accountable, I am afraid that Purficott can only do it by killing all the interested groups in the northern border.
But after doing so, it is estimated that everyone in the north, from merchants to nobles, will be slaughtered.
Therefore, Purficott had no intention of pursuing the past.
However, she will not allow such a situation to happen again with regard to the future government budget and project implementation after she takes over the empire. That’s why the Audit Department was set up to audit all government expenditures and plug corruption loopholes from the source.
Of course, if it is just this, the effect it can have will be very limited.
In order to further eliminate corruption, Perficott also established an inspection department within the agency under the Audit Department, which is responsible for investigating the flow of funds and the implementation of government plans.
If someone is found to be corrupt, abuse power for personal gain, neglect their duties or derelict in their duties, they will be arrested and dealt with severely by the supervisory authorities.
To this end, Purficott even gave the department, named the Commission to Combat Corruption and Sabotage, independent investigative and arrest powers without anyone having to initiate investigations and arrests.
However, Purficott still did not give them the right to judge, that is, they can only investigate and arrest. As for the trial and conviction, they still need to be carried out by judicial organs.
Although Purficott knew that doing so would allow some people to exploit loopholes in the law and escape punishment, she also knew clearly what kind of terrible monsters would be created if the three powers of investigation, arrest and trial were given to one department.
She just wants to improve government efficiency and reduce corruption, and does not want to raise a terrifying power monster.
Compared with the audit department, the other department established by Purficott is much more inconspicuous.
This department, named the Department of Integration, is only responsible for the overall planning and coordination and management of government projects, and does not have much power.
Purficott had previously discovered that there was often serious mountaineering among the various departments of the empire. They all took the interests and affairs of their own department very seriously, and tried their best to shirk other departments' requests for assistance in handling matters.
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This has caused a very bad phenomenon, that is, things that can be solved by just communicating between the two departments often need to go back and forth several times before the matter can be explained clearly.
It would be fine if things could be done after things are explained clearly, but the result is often that even after things are explained clearly, the two departments will still be pulled against each other due to the entanglement of interests, and in the end things still cannot be done.
In this case, a department that can coordinate and manage things across the two departments becomes very necessary.
They can be responsible for coordinating and communicating between the two departments, and the power they possess also ensures that they can work obediently according to the two departments with entangled interests.
At the same time, they can also effectively plan ongoing projects to avoid the waste of constructing a project in two different departments.
Don't think it's incredible. When Purficott re-examined the flying battleship plan, she discovered that more than one project had this situation, which raised her blood pressure a lot.
After severely dealing with a group of officials who were idle, Purficott came up with the idea of establishing a unified department.
And her reform also started from these two departments. She hopes that with the help of these two newly established departments, Victoria's political situation can have a new look, and she can use higher efficiency and lower cost to promote Purfi All the things Kurt envisioned.
After all, what she wanted to build was a floating city, and something like that spectacle was not an ordinary expense.
(End of chapter)