Ma Liang
He is a full-time researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategic Studies, Chinese Min University, and a professor at the School of Public Administration
Grassroots governance is an important part of national governance, and grassroots stability is the world's safety. The grass-roots level has become the intersection of state power and social operation, various goals and tasks of the higher levels have been sent to the grass-roots level, and various social problems have been concentrated at the grass-roots level, which has put grass-roots organizations and workers under tremendous pressure. Therefore, the main problem of the current grass-roots governance is how to comprehensively, substantively and thoroughly reduce the burden, as far as possible to let the grass-roots staff get rid of unnecessary repetitive work, and devote more time and energy to doing practical things for the masses.
In China's five-level administrative management system, grass-roots organizations such as streets and townships, as the lowest level of the pyramid-type bureaucratic organizational structure, not only face the various demands of the masses and enterprises, but also undertake orders and tasks from higher-level party and government departments. Because the grassroots cannot transfer various goals and tasks from top to bottom, they can only be digested through self-pressure and the tactics of the sea of people, which makes the burden on the grassroots unabated, and the demand for grassroots burden reduction is getting stronger and stronger.
In 2019, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued the Notice on Solving Prominent Problems of Formalism to Reduce the Burden on the Grassroots, requiring all localities to streamline various documents and meetings, reduce the frequency of assessment, supervision and inspection at the grassroots level, and reduce the burden on the grassroots as much as possible. It should be said that thanks to the great attention attached by the central authorities, the deep involvement of the media, and the extensive participation of the masses, the work of reducing the burden at the grass-roots level has achieved remarkable results. However, there are still problems in reducing the burden at the grass-roots level that are difficult to break through, the sense of acquisition of grass-roots workers in reducing the burden is not high, and the situation of reducing and increasing the burden at the grass-roots level has a rising trend.
Through the investigation, it was found that grass-roots cadres generally reported that there were many temporary tasks, high work pressure, tired of coping with the inspection and supervision of superiors, and heavy tasks in filling out forms, summarizing, and reporting various written materials. Although the results of reducing the burden at the grass-roots level are obvious, many grass-roots cadres still report that their actual workload and work burden have not been substantially reduced, and "busy", "busy" and "tired" are still the norm of grass-roots work. This has made the overtime work of grass-roots cadres increasingly normalized, the sense of work burnout is stronger, and some people even have the idea of leaving their jobs.
At the same time, a large amount of time and energy of grassroots cadres is spent on coping with various goals and tasks issued by their superiors, while they are unable to seek development for the local areas, it is difficult to do practical things for the masses, and they do not have time to learn and improve themselves. More importantly, due to various reasons such as unclear division of personnel functions, irrational institutional setup, unscientific establishment arrangements, and imperfect assessment and evaluation mechanisms, there is a phenomenon of uneven busyness and leisure in many places, and it is more common for those who can work more and overwork, and those who are mediocre are at ease. Therefore, how to further promote the grass-roots burden reduction version 2.0 on the basis of the grass-roots burden reduction version 1.0 has become a crucial issue.
Why is the sense of gain of grassroots burden reduction not high?
Heavy burdens at the grass-roots level are not a new phenomenon, and the work of reducing the burden at the grass-roots level has been carried out for many years, but why do the grass-roots staff have a low sense of gain, a strong sense of security, and a lack of satisfaction? The reason is that the sustainability of grass-roots burden reduction is not strong, the manifestation of grass-roots burden has changed, and there are structural contradictions in grass-roots burden reduction, which still has a strong impact on the substantive effect of grass-roots burden reduction.
First of all, the sustainability of the grass-roots burden reduction work is not strong, the grass-roots burden continues to rebound and decrease and increase, and the long-term effect of the burden reduction is not obvious. At present, reducing the burden at the grass-roots level is still making a fuss about the stock of burdens, and it has not effectively restrained many double "hands" of higher-level party and government departments reaching out to the grass-roots level. This has not curbed the increase in the burden on the grass-roots level, and some tasks have been sent to the grass-roots level in a different way, making the grass-roots staff overwhelmed. If the problem of heavy burdens at the grass-roots level is not completely eradicated, then there will be a problem of the resurgence of grass-roots burdens, which will greatly reduce the sustainability of grass-roots burden reduction.
Secondly, the manifestation of grass-roots burdens is undergoing subtle changes, and online digital burdens have replaced offline practical burdens and become a new form of grass-roots burdens. Although some grass-roots burdens involving visits, research, meetings, archiving, and leaving traces have been significantly reduced, they have been transformed into digital burdens and become new manifestations of grass-roots burdens. These "formalisms at the fingertips" often require grass-roots cadres to complete tasks such as the publicity and promotion of new media, the punching of government affairs apps, and the data filling of information systems, and the burden brought by this is not small. These invisible online digital burdens are no less "lethal" than the burden of offline practice, and their concealment is stronger, and the difficulty of eradication is also greater.
Third, the structural contradiction of reducing burdens at the grass-roots level is still prominent, and the phenomenon of uneven busyness and leisure has not changed significantly. In general, the burden on the grass-roots level has been reduced, but the differences between different regions, departments and posts are quite large. The burden on the grass-roots level may be transferred from in-staff personnel to non-staff personnel, resulting in the expansion of the scale of non-staff personnel, and even the phenomenon of "inverted" the number of non-staff personnel. For some grass-roots workers who do not seek to be motivated or rely on relationships to enter and are difficult to perform their own work, under the current employment system of "can enter and exit, can go up and down", their work tasks will be transferred to others, resulting in the problem of "whipping fast cattle" and "those who can work more". Due to the different responsibilities or power differences in different departments, the burden reduction at the grass-roots level may also increase the burden of specific departments sharply, without achieving all-round burden reduction. Therefore, how to achieve comprehensive and inclusive burden reduction has become a difficult problem that needs to be solved at the grass-roots level.
Finally, the burden on the grassroots has been reduced, but the tasks behind it still have to be done by someone and may be transformed into a new grassroots burden. For example, the burden of the grass-roots level is handed over to the higher-level party and government departments, which can arrange for grass-roots cadres to undertake work tasks in higher-level departments through secondment of personnel. This kind of burden reduction is equivalent to "changing the soup without changing the medicine", because the burden itself has not been reduced, but the place and way in which the grass-roots cadres have completed their tasks have changed. More importantly, the prominent problems brought about by secondments have further squeezed the already stretched human resources at the grass-roots level, and the problem of insufficient manpower has been further highlighted.
Administrative Burden: A Theoretical Perspective on Understanding Grassroots Burden
At present, the study of grass-roots burdens is regarded as the work pressure caused by bureaucracy and formalism, but grass-roots burdens may be more studied from the perspective of administrative burdens. Administrative burden is a new concept that has been widely concerned by the international academic community in recent years, referring to various costs caused by government administrative procedures and rules. The initial administrative burden study focused on the costs that citizens and enterprises need to bear in dealing with government departments, but the staff of government departments themselves also encounter administrative burden problems. Therefore, administrative burdens can be used as an important theoretical perspective to understand grass-roots burdens and provide new theoretical insights for grass-roots burden reduction. At present, the academic community believes that administrative burden includes three types of costs, namely learning costs, compliance costs and psychological costs.
The cost of learning refers to the time and effort that people need to spend to complete a certain task, which is related to the business and technical requirements related to the task. For example, the materials required by the higher departments may have special regulations in content and form, and grass-roots workers need to spend time and energy to learn and master. In particular, some temporary new tasks often mean that grass-roots staff must work overtime to learn in order to understand and master the correct way to complete them. There are also some newly introduced information systems, and grass-roots staff must participate in training and repeated exercises to master the correct use methods. The cost of learning is also related to the human capital of grass-roots workers, that is, whether people have the corresponding cognitive ability. Relatively speaking, the cognitive ability of vulnerable groups in society, such as the poor, the elderly, low-educated people and the disabled, is not strong in social capital, and the cost of learning is also high. At present, the problem of aging of grass-roots workers in some areas is general, the level of knowledge and work skills need to be improved, and the ability to learn new tasks and new technologies is still far from enough, making the cost of learning high.
The cost of compliance refers to the financial, human and material resources that people need to spend in order to meet the requirements of the task, which is related to the characteristics of the task itself. For example, in order to meet the requirements of certain tasks of the superior department, people need to prepare and fill out a large number of forms, collect data or run errands in various departments and spend a lot of transportation costs and time costs, and the purchase of software and hardware equipment requires a lot of money costs. In recent years, driven by the reform of "decentralization service", especially the "Internet + government services", the masses and enterprises have been avoided from running more errands through data, and people's work processes have been greatly optimized. However, the experience of grassroots workers has not improved, and the cost of compliance remains high, becoming one of the main sources of burden at the grassroots level.
Psychological cost is the mental pressure and psychological burden that people bear in the process of doing things, such as anxiety, anxiety, nervousness and other emotional reactions due to tight time, heavy tasks, and weak ability, as well as negative emotions such as depression, sadness, pain, and anger that cannot be completed. Compared with the cost of learning and compliance, the negative impact of psychological costs on grass-roots workers may be greater, and they will also be physically and mentally exhausted, burnout and tendency to leave while they are busy and tired. At the same time, due to the heavy burden on the grass-roots level, it is difficult to balance work and family, so that grass-roots workers are burdened with the guilt of not being able to take care of their families, and the psychological costs they bear will increase sharply.
From the perspective of grass-roots burden, the cost of learning can be said to be "complicated", the cost of compliance means "busy", and the psychological cost is "tired". Of course, in addition to the above three types of costs, there may be some administrative burdens that will manifest themselves in other forms, such as moral costs. The problems of fraud at the grass-roots level and "there are countermeasures under the policy at the top" are related to the moral costs in the administrative burden. Some higher-level departments have made policy decisions that "pat their heads" and put forward unrealistic demands that are far from the actual situation on the ground. However, grass-roots organizations must do it to the letter, or risk being punished. For example, the ubiquitous "trace-leaving doctrine" requires grass-roots organizations to leave traces in the whole process, and many of these tasks require the cooperation of enterprises and the masses. This often requires grass-roots workers to prepare fictitious material for inspection in order to persuade people. This has forced grass-roots organizations to cheat and use methods such as flexibility, concealment, and falsification to get through the customs clearance. Grass-roots workers do some unnecessary work against their will, which is far from the values they adhere to, and they bear a strong moral burden, which is also an administrative burden worthy of attention.
Innovate grassroots governance and reduce administrative burdens
From the perspective of administrative burden, the burden reduction at the grass-roots level needs to break the situation from the following aspects to truly enhance the sense of gain of grass-roots workers.
First of all, it is necessary to further deepen the reform of "decentralization and management of services", especially while simplifying administration and delegating powers, so that grass-roots organizations and staff can say "no" to the unreasonable task requirements of higher-level departments. Administrative tasks can be apportioned from top to bottom, but grassroots appeals cannot reach the top from the bottom up. This has enabled grass-roots workers to complete various work tasks with hard work and resentment, and dare not speak out against the unreasonable demands of higher-level departments. Higher authorities demand responsibility for grass-roots organizations, and all matters can be apportioned to grass-roots organizations, while grass-roots organizations have no right to choose or refuse. If this structural imbalance is not broken, then it will be impossible to fundamentally solve the current dead cycle of the current grassroots burden reduction dilemma.
Therefore, it is necessary to encourage grass-roots organizations and staff to be institutionally guaranteed, so that their legitimate rights and interests can be institutionally guaranteed, and too many unreasonable burdens should be affected by the effectiveness of grass-roots governance. It is necessary to encourage grass-roots workers to dare to say "no" to unreasonable tasks, earnestly protect grass-roots workers who report unreasonable demands from their superiors, and enable supervision departments to grasp the dynamics of grass-roots burdens in a timely, accurate, and comprehensive manner, and to monitor, rectify, and clear up grass-roots burdens.
Second, it is necessary to let the heavy burden on the grass-roots units get the personal experience of more leading cadres at higher levels, so that they can empathize with the grass-roots workers and sincerely think about reducing the burden on the grass-roots level. The reason why many higher-level departments arbitrarily apportion work tasks is related to their lack of empathy for grass-roots workers. The higher-level departments lack an understanding of the actual situation at the grass-roots level, and they will not think in the shoes of the grass-roots workers and put themselves in the shoes of the grass-roots workers. This makes them take it for granted that some work tasks are formulated, and the problem of water and soil dissatisfaction often occurs, resulting in the endless emergence of administrative burdens in grass-roots governance and even intensification.
To this end, the leading cadres of higher-level departments should be guided to familiarize themselves with grass-roots governance through off-the-job training and grass-roots visits, so that they can more truly feel the problems facing grass-roots governance and promote more humane policy design. For example, the "Bureau Chiefs Walk the Process" activity promoted by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Human Resources and Social Security and other party and government departments since 2020 aims to let the bureau chiefs and other leading cadres experience all aspects of the government service process, solve the "blockages" that exist in them, and open up the "middle obstruction" of government services. Institutional arrangements such as these can enable decision-makers in higher-level departments to always fear the power in their hands and avoid unreasonable policy design and task apportionment from causing unbearable administrative burdens on the grass-roots level.
Finally, the application of information technology helps to reduce the administrative burden, which is mainly achieved through the transfer and elimination of administrative burdens. For example, shifting the administrative burden from the grass-roots level to the higher authorities, or substantially reducing the administrative burden through technological innovation. Some higher-level departments are accustomed to being "hands-offs" and dispatching all work tasks to grass-roots organizations, but do not provide grass-roots organizations with the necessary infrastructure, resource allocation, and guarantee support. If information technology can be used to create a common information infrastructure, the administrative burden faced by many grass-roots organizations can be systematically reduced. For example, during the epidemic, many grassroots organizations need to submit data to various departments at higher levels, but the formats and fields of data submission are diverse. If a unified information system can be designed and optimized from the perspective of facilitating grass-roots organizations, grass-roots workers can be liberated from the "surface sea".
It is worth noting that information technology can reduce the administrative burden, but it may also lead to new administrative burdens. For example, the "formalism at the fingertips" that currently appears in grassroots governance is because of the digital administrative burden caused by problems such as office software design defects and "data chimneys" between departments. Therefore, it is necessary to make good use of information technology to reduce the administrative burden and avoid the induction of new administrative burdens by information technology.
In order to better reduce the learning costs, compliance costs and psychological costs of grass-roots cadres and officers, we need to start from these aspects to promote the reduction of grass-roots burdens, so that grass-roots organizations and staff have the ability to learn to understand work requirements, have resources to efficiently complete work tasks, and have reliance to effectively dispel negative emotions. When the administrative burden faced by grass-roots workers can be substantially reduced in all aspects, they have greater motivation and ability to do more important things they should do, have a real sense of gain in reducing the burden at the grass-roots level, and revitalize grass-roots governance.
Source: National Governance Weekly
WeChat Editor: Huang Mijia
The National People's University development institute is a new type of university think tank with Chinese characteristics that Chinese University has focused on building with the strength of the whole university, and the current chairman is Professor Jin Nuo, secretary of the party committee of the school, and the dean and chief expert is Professor Liu Wei, president. In 2015, it was selected as the first batch of "National High-end Think Tank" construction pilot units in China, and was selected as one of the top 100 think tanks in the world, and ranked first in the "Top 100 Chinese University Think Tank Institutions Ranking" at the beginning of 2018. In 2019, it was selected as the first-grade echelon in the comprehensive evaluation of national high-end think tanks, and was the only university think tank selected for the first-grade echelon.
The National Development Institute of the People's Republic of China actively builds a high-end think tank platform with "new platform, large network, interdisciplinary and overlapping, promoting innovation and high output". Focusing on the four major research areas of economic governance and economic development, political governance and rule of law construction, social governance and social innovation, public diplomacy and international relations, it has brought together the high-quality resources of first-class disciplines in the university, and has achieved remarkable results in infrastructure construction, decision-making consultation, public diplomacy, theoretical innovation, public opinion guidance and internal governance. With the goal of "the leader of the new type of university think tank with Chinese characteristics", the National Development Institute of the People's Republic of China takes root in the land of China, adheres to the national strategy, adheres to the mission of the times, and is committed to building itself into a "world-class university think tank that understands China best".