The focus is not on increasing staff according to average thinking but on correctly determining needs according to population size, natural area, task volume, urbanization level and local characteristics.
Regarding this issue, in an exchange with Lao Dong Newspaper, delegate Ta Van Ha - Deputy Chairman of the National Assembly's Committee for Culture and Society said that the standardization of job positions and the structure of the contingent of commune-level cadres and civil servants should be linked to salary reform.
After implementing the new government model, the commune level becomes a place to receive more tasks than before. From resolving administrative procedures, land management, construction, social security to digital transformation, many fields are strongly decentralized to the grassroots level.
The workload has increased, and professional requirements are also higher, while in many localities, conditions on human resources, digital infrastructure and databases have not kept up.
In that context, standardizing job positions is an inevitable requirement.
A mountainous commune with a large area and dispersed population will have completely different requirements from a densely populated urban ward, where hundreds of administrative dossiers must be processed every day.
Therefore, determining staff size according to population size, area, urbanization level and workload instead of applying average thinking is a suitable direction.
More importantly, standardization must go hand in hand with a substantive evaluation mechanism. When the Ministry of Home Affairs orients to take work results and the level of satisfaction of people and businesses as the main measure, that is a positive signal.
However, it will be very difficult to create motivation if only raising standards without innovating the incentive mechanism.
Today's commune-level officials are doing more work, under greater pressure and must continuously update their knowledge to adapt to the requirements of digital transformation, decentralization, and delegation of power.
If they are required to meet higher standards but their income is still not commensurate, standardization can easily become a story of more responsibility than motivation to contribute.
Therefore, job position standardization must be linked to salary reform as two sides of a policy. People who do work, create value and bring satisfaction to the people need to be paid fairly.
Conversely, cases that do not meet the requirements must also be retrained, transferred or screened according to their actual capacity.
Doing so, standardization will truly contribute to building a team of professional civil servants, instead of just adding administrative criteria.
Of course, it is not possible to require grassroots officials to complete their tasks well if there is still a lack of shared data, digital infrastructure or resources to implement.
Decentralization must go hand in hand with resource allocation, assignment of tasks must go hand in hand with tools and responsibilities. These are the conditions for evaluating based on results to become fair and feasible.
The ultimate goal of standardization is for people to be served faster, more conveniently and more effectively.
When each position is assigned to the right people, the right jobs and is recognized by a worthy remuneration mechanism, the administrative apparatus will truly meet that requirement.
