POAS was portrayed as the key to solving previous administrative problems, notably the lack of co-operation of high-ranking civil servants with the chief executive.
See this as the cause of many of his policy failures such as the "85,000 Housing Reform", Tung introduced POAS in 2002 to remedy the weaknesses as he perceived of the Hong Kong government.
The "short pile" scandal shows that the government and the chief executive fail to hold top civil servants, namely permanent secretary, accountable.
Being the top of bureaucracy, permanent secretary no longer maintain political neutrality as they are bridging public and lower civil servants’ suggestions and giving advice to directors and executives; practically they are holding power for policy-making.
Under this system, the chief executive is able to appoint the Secretaries of department and the Directors of Bureau directly and they are withdrawn from the civil service and would be employed on contract.
The system is aimed at raising the accountability of the civil service, so the political appointees are responsible for all their job aspects and will step down if they make any failure.
The highest-ranking civil servants would be re-titled "Permanent Secretaries", would work to their respective principal officials under the accountability system, and would not have to shoulder the public responsibility for the performance of the bureaux.
[12] Professor DeGolyer of Baptist University echoed concerns that the proposals would severely weaken Hong Kong's system of checks and balances.
[13] The chief executive is required, by Article 56 of the Basic Law, to state for the record his reasons for rejecting a majority opinion of Exco members.
The protection Tung offered to his beleaguered officials was one of the factors that led to the 1 July protest in which hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people participated.
Alex Chan, social science lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the survey results showed the accountability system remained a mystery to the public, particularly among the middle class and professionals.
[18] In the wake of the forced resignations of Yeoh, Ip and Leung due to public pressure, Tung said that the POAS history was very short, but vowed to strengthen the system.
[24] When it was revealed that James Tien,[25] Stephen Lam and Yeoh Eng-kiong had also declared their purchases at the relevant meeting while Leung had not, Legislators were suspicious of a cover-up.
Tung did blame Leung for failing to tell him when or after he bought the new car, but added that "[w]hether or not he made a declaration at the Exco meeting was relatively unimportant.
The event was a Government underwritten, and organised by InvestHK, under the auspices of the Economic Relaunch Working Group, in collaboration with the American Chamber of Commerce.
He decried the attempt by Henry Tang to shift political responsibility from himself, as the relevant minister, to a senior civil servant, as a travesty of justice, and said it went against the Accountability System.
Each Director of Bureau would be assisted by the two new appointees and constitute the political team while the civil servants carry out the administrative and executive tasks of the Government.