More than most civil servants, the public affairs officers in the Department of Communication and Information have to take enormous care that they do not cross the fine line between presenting and explaining the Government's policies and promoting the governing party of the day.

In commissioning taxpayer-funded research that asked about the performance of Premier Alex Scott and the Progressive Labour Party, the department has done just that. In failing to recognise that it has erred, it has brought the Civil Service into disrepute.

Beverle Lottimore, the director of the department, said in yesterday's that she had personally come up with the idea of holding focus groups to measure the performance of the Government.

In doing so, she was getting close to crossing that fine line, and needed to exercise great care.

Even if the focus groups were not asked overtly political questions, it could be argued that in conducting this research and assuming that it is not made public, the information could be used for free by the Progressive Labour Party in its election planning ? at the taxpayers' expense.

And this kind of research is not cheap. The focus group participants are being paid $100 apiece to take part. If 40 people were involved ? and it may well be higher ? that's $4,000, before adding the cost of the hotel, the polling firm and so on.

Ms Lottimore said she did not know if the information was being made public. That's amazing, since the public is paying for the information and there are no national security or privacy issues involved.

There would surely be no need for secrecy, except that the focus group participants were asked overtly political questions, which one would assume Mr. Scott and his political colleagues would like to keep those results a secret, especially if they are bad.

Ms Lottimore argued that those questions ? about the performance of Premier Alex Scott and the performance not of the Government, but of the Progressive Labour Party ? were all right too.

With regard to the Premier, she said: "When the Premier wakes up in the morning he does not go to the offices of the PLP, but rather to the Cabinet Office to deal with the affairs of the Government and the Country.

"He is the leader of our Country, the one we look to for direction and the one we are going to hold accountable. If he is doing something the public does not approve of, somebody needs to let him know."

Ms Lottimore is wrong ? frighteningly so for a senior civil servant ? on all counts.

Somehow, she wants the public to believe that Mr. Scott removes his PLP hat the minute he gets into GP1 and heads to work and that political calculations never enter his mind while he is sitting in his office.

Mr. Scott is Premier because his party has a majority of the seats in the House of Assembly. For that reason alone, he wears both hats, Government Leader and party leader, for as long as the voters give his party a majority. If the voters lose confidence in the Government, then another party takes over.

The latter point is why the Civil Service is supposed to be apolitical, and why a Government-sponsored survey should not ask questions about the performance of a particular person or party. It is not and should not be the research arm of any party.

The Civil Service's job is not to ensure that Mr. Scott is Premier for Life, as Ms Lottimore infers when she describes him "as the one we look to for direction". He may be "the man", but he is not God.

The Civil Service's job is to advise politicians on policy options, then to execute the policies the politicians choose. Its job is not to conduct market research using taxpayers' money and then to tell politicians where they are going wrong and how, by extension, it may hurt their party's political prospects. That's the party's job, not the Government's.

The DCI research has crossed the line between working for the Government and working for the PLP. It should be dropped now before any more damage is done to the integrity of the Civil Service.