Institute Holds D.C. Conference On Management

The Institute of Politics and the Washington-based National Institute of Public Management held a colloquium at Harvard on human resource management in the District of Columbia on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Philip J. Rutledge, a fellow at the Institute of Politics, organized the colloquium which reviewed a report by the D.C. Mayor's Panel on Human Resources Organization and Management. Rutledge is the chairman of the panel and the director of D.C. Department of Human Resources.

His preface to the report said, "There has been no recent across-the-board analysis" of human resources agencies, umbrella organizations which administer several social services.

The District of Columbia human resources department has had organizational troubles since its founding in 1970 and the panel spent three months analyzing its problems and formulating recommendations.

The report urges the city to give high priority to developing a personnel system and to grant the agency greater administrative flexibility to institute changes. The panel did not recommend any major organizational changes.

The colloquium also discussed management techniques, efficiency measures, political complications and the assessment of social service needs.

Rutledge said yesterday one advantage of holding the meeting at Harvard was that it brought together individuals and groups from Washington with Harvard faculty and administrators.

Walter E. Washington, mayor of Washington, D.C., Jerald Stevens, Massachusetts secretary of human services, Don K. Price, dean of the Kennedy School of Government and over 60 other academica, administrators and businessmen participated in the conference.