FOREWORD

In recent years improvement of Federal administrative procedures has become a matter of great public interest. Many have expressed the belief that elimination of unnecessary delay and expense in administrative proceedings and the improvement of administrative procedures generally might be best accomplished through the efforts of the regulatory agencies themselves, acting in concert with a central office.

Creation of such an office within the Department of Justice was recommended in the Final Report (March 1955) of the President's Conference on Administrative Procedure and, more recently, by the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (Hoover Commission).

Acting upon these recommendations, the Attorney General, on December 4, 1956, announced that the Office of Administrative Procedure would be established on an experimental basis.1

The first report of the new office is in two parts. Part I, which covers the period of operation through December 31, 1957, contains a description of the organization and work methods employed and an account of some of the more significant assignments which are believed to be of general interest.

Part II is the statistical section of the report. It is devoted principally to backlog, volume, and time data with respect to certain types of hearings pending before hearing examiners during the fiscal year 1957.

For invaluable assistance in preparation of forms used in soliciting statistical data, the Office is indebted to the Bureau of the Budget. The complete cooperation of the agencies also is gratefully acknowledged. Each of the 21 agencies asked to supply data responded as fully as possible, even though much of the material requested had to be assembled from original notes and files. Indeed, throughout the year the work of the Office has encountered a most favorable and heartening reception at the hands of Government and bar.

It is to be hoped that this first Annual Report will serve in some measure to stimulate increasing use of the advisory services of the Office, to the end that the Office may fully portray the role imagined for it by the President's

1 The announcement was implemented by Administrative Order No. 142-57, published in the Federal Register, February 16, 1957, at p. 998. Text of the Order follows this Foreword.

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