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April 4, 2013

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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views

'Office of Immediate Action' leaves public puzzled

By Ni Tao | April 4, 2013, Thursday | Print Edition

WHAT'S in a name?

The names of China's many government agencies generate wild imagination about what they do.

Some names are so awkward that when translated into English, they can have negative connotations.

The list of oddly named agencies goes on, including, typically, Zhiyong Ban, literally the Office for Control of Sloth, a body set up to tackle bureaucracy and cut red tape, and Jiufeng Ban, or the Office of Correction of Code of Conduct, a watchdog that exposes official misbehavior such as feeding at the public trough.

Although their responsibility sometimes overlaps, the host of these offices is said to be crucial to improve public service, a source of popular complaints.

For many years it has been observed that officials in public service are hard to approach, rarely serve with a smile, stall in addressing citizens' needs or pass the buck. One could wait for months, if not years, to be told he has turned to the wrong organization for help.

In a move apparently echoing the recent pledge of Premier Li Keqiang to streamline the government for higher efficiency, Xiangyang City of Hubei Province has set up another office with a name that reveals the urgency of its job - Mashang Ban, the Office of Immediate Action.

According to media reports, the new office integrates part of the functions of six offices, including watchdogs such as Zhiyong Ban and Jiufeng Ban. It aims to speed up government's handling of citizens' requests for help and redress.

A desirable change, boast its authors, but the public is unappreciative, with many dismissing it as yet another publicity stunt.

There are good reasons to doubt whether it will live up to expectation for a smaller yet more efficient government.After all, if watchdogs like Zhiyong Ban had done their jobs, why is it worth the trouble to set up another one?

And do we need this new office if it proves no better than its predecessors?

In the face of criticism, Xiangyang officials have defended their pet project, saying this time things would be different. For one thing, the new "urgency" office is peopled by staff from various agencies, so its formation doesn't increase the number of people on the government payroll and add to fiscal burden.

For another, the new office isn't a guarantee that citizens' pleas will be taken care of right away. Its job is to coordinate, rank the pleas in order of priority, and send them to relevant authorities.

Coordination

Hopefully, good coordination will reduce tension among government divisions over who should be held responsible for what.

Although the new office may reduce procrastination, there are clear caveats. It came into being upon orders by Deng Zhuohai, a district-level Party secretary of Xiangyang - proof of a leader's decisive role in a top-down system.

If Deng's successor has no interest in claiming his mantle, does the office risk becoming a nonentity, just like the others that went before?

More importantly, since he is aware of the plague of bureaucracy, why not require all civil servants to comply with the decree on curbing ostentation and idleness? Isn't that request more direct than setting up a new office?

This explains why the public wasn't as excited as the authorities about their experiment with institutional reform.

And it's highly unlikely that long-running work ethic issues will go away with the new office. A novice civil servant recently wrote to People's Daily complaining about his superiors' open defiance of the ban on drinking at noon and playing computer games during work hours.

Before Xiangyang, precedents abound nationwide of special task forces formed to accelerate the administrative process. Their performance varies, some are given high ratings but others don't fare as well. Many are criticized for "big talk but little action."

If officials' exploration of more efficient government leads only to more bloated government, or mere window-dressing, they can only expect the public to carp.

Chinese Views


 

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