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The Need for Classification and Rigid Qualifications. The first need of the Indian Service in personnel administration is a thorough-going classification of positions on the basis of duties, responsibilities, and qualifications, with especial emphasis on qualifications requisite for recognized responsibilities. As has already been pointed out, the qualifications should be materially raised for those positions which involve direct contact with the Indians. No marked improvement in the service can ever be expected unless this is done.
When the qualifications have been established, they should be adhered to with unusual strictness both in original appointments and in promotion. This course may result in some apparent individual hardship on persons now in service who entered under the old conditions but the Service does not exist for them. Insofar as possible they should be given opportunity to qualify themselves for retention and for advancement or transfer to positions in other branches of the government which do not call for the technical qualifications they lack. But they should not be long retained in the Indian Service if not qualified to render the highest type of service under a sound plan of organization.
Indian Employees. Here a few words should be said regarding the policy of preferring Indians for appointment in the Indian Service. This policy is excellent provided the Indians possess the
too involved to be corrected through this general legislation applicable to all departments of the government. The amount which should have been necessary really to standardize the salaries in the Indian Service and to place them on a level with those, say, in the Department of Agriculture which is most nearly comparable was doubtless so large as to render the various officials involved unwilling to make so drastic a recommendation. The fact that the Indian Service had resorted in the past to extremely low entrance standards also greatly complicated the situation. Although the theory is sound that salaries should be standardized on the basis of the duties of the positions and the qualifications requisite for their efficient performance, in practice there is a marked tendency to consider the training and experience of the present incumbent and to fix the salary rate for the position at what he is considered to be worth. It may seem, offhand, entirely improper to place the salary of the position above the worth of the present incumbent; yet when the salary of the position is fixed according to the worth of the incumbent and not the real duties and needs of the position, the hands of the administrators are tied. They cannot replace the underqualified person with a really qualified one, and when he resigns or is retired the salary fixed on the basis of his qualifications will generally hire only another one like him. A vicious circle is thus set up. This appears to be the difficulty in the Indian Service.