Administrative Reform - Business Environment Improvement

 

In the current changing world, each nation is facing many challenges posed by its integration and globalisation context. The context with which public administration begets, is affected by and is faced with is identified as a characteristic of hard-to-solve issues. Challenges posed to public administration are no longer placed under simple control as in the past. Intractable characteristics are expressed in complexity, multi-stakeholder involvement, constant and unpredictable fluctuation, and long-term effects. Such complicated challenges include unpredictable natural disaster, economic crisis - or to be more specific public debt crisis, pandemics, social issues or terrorism, information security and food security. These issues are begetting threats to traditional values which used to serve as the foundation of stability and social development for the achievement of development goals and sustainable development in the region or in every single nation.

 

To cope with these issues and proactively and effectively manage follow-on changes in the future, governments and local authorities must marshal intelligence, commitment and resources of stakeholders. This requires branches and localities to establish uninterrupted coordination and overcome resource and capacity shortages to address those issues.

 

Besides, international integration results in the international division of labour and utilisation of comparative advantages of each country. This, once again, raises questions about the capacity of each government to create its inner strength by the use of appropriate operating methods in order to mobilise the synergised force on the foundation of local and sector characteristics.

 

Vietnam, which is looking toward a consistent vision of a society of prosperity, justice and happiness and sustainable development, has attained remarkable achievements in the doi moi (renovation) process. However, Vietnam is also facing challenges in maintaining development speed and quality as now on the one hand, and moving toward the sustainability of national development results when more proactively and effectively engaging in overall global governance on the other hand. The existing performance management system of Government underscores effectiveness, efficiency, economy and fairness on the basis of upholding accountability and taking citizen satisfaction and development sustainability as the main measure.

 

In the context of domestic and international active economies, much-changing, fast-changing and abnormally-changing market economy as Michael Porter has pointed out, Vietnam is standing at an important transitional point from growth based on available comparative advantages to growth based on the upgrading of competitiveness, and the formation of new competitive advantages at higher levels: “It is high time Vietnam needs to discuss where it wants to stand in the global economy, what sectors, fields and strengths of its business environment that the world will know.” Each specific reform initiative needs to have an agency or working group in main charge of implementing such initiative. This will then require an agency at the heart of the system to manage entire operations and reform programmes to ensure that the most important tasks and activities will be prioritised for execution.

 

In that sense, a dynamic system approach is of great significance. According to systems theory, the coherence of sub-systems creates characteristic feature and strength of the bigger system. However, each sub-system has its own dynamic features and should be taken into account in system interferences. The dynamic nature in dynamic system approach requires governments to take into consideration “time” factor or “context” factor of the circumstance to change national governance methods in a context-adapting manner.

 

That requires a better capacity of policymaking:

- It is necessary to have a vision for the Government, integrated and realised in the vision and strategy of each sector and locality. This vision needs to be shared and realised in the whole society.

- There is a need for cohesion of sectors, localities and social forces.

 

It is essential to formally set up a general strategic consulting unit in charge of directly advising the Prime Minister and the system of strategic consulting units for ministries and branches. The unit will employ leading domestic and foreign experts in all fields concerned to propose master designs of national strategy, sectoral strategy, inter-sector strategy before putting forth detailed discussions. To ensure the objectivity of advice from these consultants, politicians and ministers are not included in these consulting units.

 

In strategic discussions with the National Assembly's committees or in the Government, these units should be present in order to provide reasons and arguments when necessary. Similarly, strategic consulting units for localities or industries should also be present in discussion sessions before making decisions.

 

The dynamic system approach requires a strong cohesion inside the system and in the mindset so as to be ready to receive new positive matters. We are now weak at external issues (outside the organisation or outside the country) and only those responsible are held accountable. The interconnection of information, attitudes and weak actions will result in time consumption, indecisiveness, internal response and external response. One of in-situ fixes is building the capacity of research institutes and centres of each ministry to ask them for provision of general information and detailed information for better planning. At least some members of research institutes and centres will be members of the inter-sector research centre (should be established under the direct authority of the Prime Minister, assigned to provide information support for ministries, sectors, the Government and strategic consulting units) in order to help them understand the overall context and integrate national issues into their sector issues.

 

Strengthening the capacity of scientific and technological institutions is also a relevant aspect. This means that there is a need for an impulse to realise the philosophy of executing the Government's Decree 115/2005/ND-CP dated September 5, 2005 on self-financing and self-responsible mechanisms of State-owned scientific and technological institutions, and Decree 96/2010/ND-CP on amendments to Decree 115/2005/ND-CP and Decree 80/2007/ND-CP of the Government dated May 19, 2007 on enterprises of science and technology.

 

Turning all national strategies, visions and issues into topics of dialogue and discussion, and training and retraining the educational system, first of all the higher education system to prepare for a new generation of workers and leaders having contemporary and modern character, having knowledge and being insiders.

 

This also means that if a vision or strategy is adopted by the national government or the local government, it will need to become a matter to discussion and debate, and it will be further advised for deployment in civil service life and daily life in a systematic way to identify better and better solutions.

 

For example, the State-owned enterprise restructuring strategy was launched, training and retraining topics related to leadership and management at all levels and departments need to be taken as one content and a criterion of assessing leadership.

 

Besides, this will need to become a consulting content at forums extended to community groups.

 

As a systemic matter, public administration of Vietnam must ensure its consistency, centrality, focus, priority and adaptability in administration processes.

However, the multifaceted nature of public administration is also an all-direction leadership process[1]. Public administration process needs to mobilise internal strengths while it necessarily builds an alliance of all stakeholders outside the system to pool future-looking efforts to realise the vision of the public administration while recognising, acknowledging, utilising or overcoming obstacles coming from legacies and remnants of the past administration. With all risks of dispersing energies and resources, the public administration of Vietnam needs to improve the capacity to mobilise resources from the society.. Public administration process needs to mobilise internal strengths while it necessarily builds outside the system to pool future-looking efforts to realise the vision of the public administration while recognising, acknowledging, utilising or overcoming obstacles coming from legacies and remnants of the past administration. With all risks of dispersing energies and resources, the public administration of Vietnam needs to improve the capacity to mobilise resources from the society.

That requires:

+ Recruitment and staff development mechanisms need to be improved

- Entrepreneurship of politicians and bureaucrats: It is essentially to keep changing ways of thinking and action with the high focus on strategies and measures; see customers as life or death criterion; think of policies not only from perspective of equality and social welfare in general, but also from the perspective of cost and profit for the sake of general welfare; and uphold “fair” personality in relation with partners since the public popularity and prestige in public administration will not only decide the success or failure of an administration, but also decide the life or death of a people. More than ever, in the context of globalisation, losing the public popularity is losing the nation.

 

Solution 1: Boldly recruit, invite and appoint successful entrepreneurs into policy-making positions in all ministries (from the position of deputy minister upwards) to partially displace bureaucracy and closeness of the administrative system and take advantage of their creative and innovative spirits

 

Recruitments should be computerised and included proposals and schedules for changes. The jury should not be limited to higher-ranking officials or related officials, but also include representatives of different citizen generations, social circles and non-governmental organisations.

 

Pilots can be carried out in some ministries, branches and localities with activities directly relating to applicable contents such as State management over import, export and education.

 

Solution 2: Reposition some policy-mentoring officials to research institutions affiliated to ministries, thus enabling them to bring their vitality to research projects, and vice versa, to have policy-advising products more updated and practical.

 

Solution 3: Send officials and civil servants into the business sector (private) while bringing private business leaders to policymaking bodies. For this activity, it is necessary to have careful planning to select best principles, methods and time.

 

For the transfer of private business leaders to policymaking bodies, it is necessary to limit eligible business scopes and decision-making jurisdiction and have strict terms and stringent sanctions for retreat or dismissal when needed.

 

To prepare for sending officials and civil servants to the private sector, definitions of their power to engage in production and business should be carefully made.

 

Solution 4: Supplement cost-benefit analysis content to public personnel training policies

Although economy is not the first requirement of public service and public policy, the objective of having a lean but more effective is a worthwhile condition for civil service to realise political goals.

 

This will lead to requirements for adding economics approaches to policy selection and enforcement organisation.

 

It is also important to improve the capacity of the State Audit.

 

At the central level, the accountability of agencies and units can be improved with better assignments and decentralisation.

 

Besides, it is important to set up a national regulatory agency in charge of administrative reform.

 

As mentioned in Solution 4 above, the accountability of officials and civil servants, as well as regulations on compensation for wrongdoings in the administration system and compensation for citizens and organisations, needs to be clearly and strictly defined. This is also the way to prevent the abuse of power and corruption).

 

Interpellations on key officials’ performances should be better carried out at the National Assembly the People's Councils at all levels. It is necessary to have side-line interpellations to voter meetings and officials will answer questions raised by the public.

 

Vietnam is currently describing position standards (job description) for job positions held by civil servants. This is one of important conditions to administer execution, emphasise on both inputs and outputs, and uphold accountability.

 

Regulations and instructions on job description must have provisions on deployment and modification. Job description criteria are not totally fixed but they should be changed from time to time. And, those position descriptions are only effective if they are used as the foundation for salary payment.

 

However, it is very difficult to quantify working results in the public administrative sector because of collective involvements and shared contributions to policymaking and administration decision-making and because public civil products not only generate immediate results but also cause certain errors when contexts and important parameters change.

 

It is also important to organise training classes for managers, particularly at grassroots levels in agencies and organisations on how to assess the execution through dialogues, interviews and negotiations on desired objectives and plans to achieve them.

 

It is probable that the scale of public sector can be adjusted by sharing the responsibility of supplying public services to the private sector. Improving the role of this sector in regimes and institutions is important.

In addition, staff downsizing and other programmes that the Government of Vietnam has conducted is also a right choice to streamline the public sector.

 

Unlike other countries where the private sector has long engaged in policymaking and political process, the private sector of Vietnam has its own characteristics that we cannot skip when building institutions and policies, for example, they are mainly small and medium-sized and easily driven by the crowd. Therefore, they need support for institutions and organisations (e.g. tax incentives, expertise assistance, investment subsidies, soft loans, incentives and infrastructure subsidies).

 

It is however the most important to have sector, field and regional development strategies to protect SMEs when they engage in transnational value chains.

 

Vietnam also needs to learn experience from ASEAN countries in the empowerment of and capacity building for the private sector.

 

In addition, SOE reform experiences in some ASEAN countries as presented above were substantially affected by the original model of government reform in developed countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. It is worth mentioning the Executive Agency (EA) model of the United Kingdom -the original model that was later learned and adapted by some ASEAN countries such as Thailand. According to this model, some non-business units affiliated to ministries are transformed into independent units and operate like real enterprises where leaders will lose their position if their units suffer losses.

 

This is the subsequent result of the above efforts rather than a stand-alone effort. After a lot of reform efforts in a long time, officials and civil servants in all countries tend to lose their motivation and enthusiasm and suffer more working stress.

 

Thus, it is vital to create professionalism in performing official duties for State employees and officials by upholding position and title standards, improve accountability regimes, and most importantly, legal liability, finance, morale and exemplary capacity of agency leaders. In addition, advisory bodies should perform better public relations in the public service. This does not imply boasted attempts to create illusions or mislead public opinions about any error or weakness of politicians and senior civil servants, but it implies better communications to maintain social trust by making the public fully understand what is going on the civil service, thus helping limit misunderstanding or misrepresentation on lack of information.