In July of the first year of the Qingli period, the first batch of assessment reports were sent to Bianliang.

The new policy of the performance evaluation system was promulgated in February. Since the court gave it an adjustment period, the provincial governments, prefecture-level cities and the Censorate began to conduct verification in late May.

The entire verification process is as follows: at the central court, each yamen has three books, one of which records the affairs of the yamen as a base book, and some official matters that are unnecessary to be inspected are eliminated and placed in the inspection form of the department.

Internal supervision within a department is not a recent phenomenon; it existed in ancient times. For example, each of the three departments had a procuratorate responsible for discipline, supervision, and interrogation within the department, and even had the power to judge and adjudicate.

The procuratorate will supervise the staff of the department to see whether they have completed their tasks. If one task is completed, the task will be crossed out from the books in hand. If the task is not completed on time, it will be handed over to the Censorate for processing.

Then two identical books were made, and the second one was placed in the hands of the censor in charge of this department in the Censorate to be compared with the inspection documents of this department.

Starting this year, in addition to the new policies, the Censorate was also reorganized. Each department had a special censor with expertise in that area, such as the Finance Censor, the Education Censor, the Engineering Censor, the Military Censor, the Inspector Censor, the Military Farm Censor, the Inspection Censor, and so on.

If a problem occurs during an internal inspection of a department, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Censor in charge of the Ministry of Finance will report the situation truthfully to the Constitutional Court, which will then punish the officials who have failed to complete their tasks.

As for the last book, it was naturally placed in the Constitutional Court, where it could be checked at any time. This formed a system of evaluating achievements on a case-by-case basis, with each case evaluated once a month.

It’s different at the local level.

Although there are also three books, there is less internal supervision and more external supervision.

For example, a county has three books: one is in the local county government office, one is in the superior provincial government office, and the last one is in the local censorate.

The work of a county was reported to the prefecture government, which was responsible to the local censorate. The work of the prefecture government office was reported to the prefecture government, which was also responsible to the local censorate. The prefecture government reported to the imperial court and was responsible to the imperial censorate.

This means that the road level basically conducts joint inspections with the local censorate, supervises each other, and cooperates with each other to review the lower-level state, county and other departments, and finally reports to the court in a unified manner.

But the verification speed is definitely not that fast.

The provincial government, the road government and the censors from all over the country conducted investigations and reported to higher authorities at all levels, traveled back and forth by horse and horse, and conducted on-site inspections in the local area. It would take at least more than a month to get to the bottom of the matter, and then the results would be sent to Bianliang.

By the time the performance review of officials in Bianliang was completed, it was basically August, and then the June report came in.

There is nothing we can do about this.

In ancient times, transportation was inconvenient, but the areas around Bianliang and along the canal were relatively good. For places far away from Henan, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Shanxi, it was considered good if delivery could be completed within one month.

However, Fan Zhongyan also took this into consideration. Officials at the road level were often checked by inspection officials sent by the court, while the lower-level prefectures and counties in remote roads, the road-level yamen and the Censorate could handle it on their own.

For example, Yongzhou in Guangxi Road, which is Nanning City in later generations, is 2,000 kilometers away from Fengfu. Under normal circumstances, unless it is an expedited delivery of 800 miles, it often takes more than a month to deliver ordinary official documents.

Isn't this back and forth nonsense?

Therefore, local county-level affairs could be decided by the prefecture-level Pacification Department, Transportation Department, Criminal Justice Department, Grain and Boundary Department, and Censorate. If they were truly unable to make a decision, they would report it to the higher authorities, and then summarize the affairs of the past few months and report it once every period of time.

Moreover, these five supervisors have the power to report to the Constitutional Court. There is also the Imperial City Bureau at the local level. The Imperial City Bureau also has a pacification office at the road level, and the pacification envoy is also responsible for inspection, supervision and other matters.

Therefore, unless all the officials along the route, including the Imperial Censors and the Imperial City Administration, turned corrupt, under normal circumstances, the senior officials along the route would be able to supervise each other and conduct strict inspections of the lower-level departments, so that no problems would arise due to traffic problems.

By July, the New Policies of the Qingli Period had begun to show results.

The inspection was carried out in late May, and the internal offices of various departments in Bianliang had the results by early June. The first batch of officials to be punished reached more than 700 people.

Among them, more than 400 people were corrupt officials, and Zhao Jun investigated the corruption that had escaped the net.

How did these people get caught?

It's very simple.

Just check the accounts.

How to fill the gap in public funds?

Either make false accounts or find a way to make up for it.

It might be possible to conceal the truth by making up for it in time, but it would be difficult to falsify the accounts.

Because the officials in the past were too busy and too lazy to do their jobs, they were accustomed to corruption and were too lazy to implement policies, so there was almost no follow-up and understanding of any matter.

Under the performance evaluation system, the censors and inspectors from various government offices had to dig deep into the matter, such as what was wrong with your accounts, what was purchased, why didn't you see it, where did the money go, and they would be sure to find the problem once they checked.

The result was the fall of a large number of corrupt officials. This was only the corrupt officials; the number of corrupt officials was even greater. At that time, the number of officials in the country was over 500,000. Emperor Zhenzong of Song once dismissed over 190,000 corrupt officials at one time.

The number of officials in the government offices in the capital of Bianliang alone could reach 30,000 to 40,000, and there were probably few who did not engage in corruption and bribery.

Except for Kaifeng Prefecture and the Imperial City Administration, which were relatively clean, there were not many clean officials found in the other fifty or so departments.

You should know that there were only more than 4,000 officials in Bianliang, and this time more than 400 corrupt officials were found, which is almost one-tenth.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!