The Chairman of Da Nang City People's Committee has just requested to proactively complete internal procedures, promptly detect and correctly evaluate innovation and creativity proposals of officials, and boldly apply innovation mechanisms within their authority, associated with reasonable risk control.
In fact, the psychology of fear of making mistakes after a series of violations related to public investment, land, finance, bidding... across the country in the past time has caused many officials to fall into a state of working in moderation, choosing safety instead of choosing innovation, now it has become a matter of "knowing already, it's very hard to talk about forever".
Da Nang is also not the first time, and not the first locality to propose solutions to overcome this situation. However, this request of the Chairman of Da Nang City People's Committee is not only limited to a general call, but has begun to move towards specific solutions.
That is the requirement to improve internal procedures to promptly detect and correctly evaluate innovation and creativity proposals of officials; boldly apply innovation mechanisms within the scope of authority; and at the same time link with reasonable risk control.
In other words, Da Nang is raising the issue of building an administrative environment where officials can proactively propose new things without immediately falling into the mentality that if there is a risk, who will protect them?
This is a very important point. Because in reality, for a long time, what makes many officials hesitant is not necessarily because they lack capacity or lack responsibility, but because the boundary between creative work for the common good and errors that are easily attributed to responsibility is sometimes still very fragile in the implementation process.
If there is no transparent, fair and consistent evaluation mechanism, the call "dare to do" can easily become one-sided pressure on officials.
Another noteworthy detail is that Da Nang requires making the results of innovation, creativity, and daring to think and dare to do an important criterion in evaluating, planning and appointing cadres.
This is also the request of the Prime Minister in Document No. 465 on strengthening the implementation of Decree No. 73/2023/ND-CP of the Government in the context of implementing the Resolution of the 14th Party Congress.
This shows a change in management thinking and cadre management. Because for a long time, in reality, the more people work, the more they are sometimes easily confronted and easily scrutinized, while those who choose a safe way, not taking big decisions, are less risky. If the evaluation system does not change, it is very difficult to create motivation for dynamism and creativity in the apparatus.
Protecting officials who dare to do cannot only be with words and encouragement, but needs specific mechanisms and procedures. Officials only truly dare to do when they believe that if they do it with the right motive, according to the right procedure, for the common good, they will be protected when objective risks arise.
Conversely, if the protection mechanism is still general, inspection, examination, and audit between levels are still overlapping, or the method of assessing responsibility is not unified, then the mentality of "it's better not to do it than to do it and then encounter risks" will still exist.
