Strengthening the grassroots cadre

In this new phase of development, the functions, tasks, and powers of the two-tiered local government continue to expand with very high demands. However, after nearly a year of implementing the new organizational model, many places are still struggling with personnel arrangement and placement.

Civil servants at the Public Administrative Service Center of Tuy Hoa Ward, Dak Lak Province, handle administrative procedures for citizens. (Photo: DUONG LE)

National Assembly representative Nguyen Dang An (Lang Son delegation) stated that in some areas, there is a shortage of commune-level officials and civil servants, particularly those with specialized expertise in fields such as construction, transportation, and information technology. Meanwhile, their functions, duties, and workload are substantial, and they interact directly with citizens and businesses more than commune-level officials and civil servants before the restructuring. Currently, communes have two specialized departments – culture and social affairs, and economy – which are under the management and professional guidance of 5-6 provincial departments, leading to many units being overloaded.

According to Representative An, public service units at the local level, such as healthcare and education, are experiencing staffing shortages but are still under pressure to meet staff reduction targets. Furthermore, regulations limiting contract employment to no more than 70% of the shortfall restrict localities from flexibly compensating for the workforce deficit.

In the civil service sector, after many individuals were granted retirement under Government Decree 178, a localized shortage has been created that cannot be immediately filled. Therefore, a comprehensive review of localities based on criteria such as area and population, taking into account specific factors like mountainous, border, coastal, and island regions, is urgently needed to allocate personnel quotas that are appropriate to the practical situation.

Sharing the same view, National Assembly representative Siu Huong (Gia Lai delegation) pointed out the current situation where communes receive a large volume of tasks previously transferred from the district level and some tasks decentralized by the provincial level, while still performing all their original duties; specialized departments at the commune level have to advise on many areas with limited human resources.

For example, in Report No. 152 (dated April 4, 2026), the Government set a target of completing the digitization of land data by the second quarter of 2026. However, in reality, at the local level, agricultural and environmental professionals are already handling a huge workload, with a shortage of personnel, limited expertise, and inadequate equipment.

To achieve the above objectives, the Government needs to conduct a comprehensive reassessment of the workload of professional civil servants in the two-tiered local government model; based on that, a rational staffing plan should be developed.

In accordance with the Government's Directive No. 18/CT-TTg on improving the quality of local government officials and civil servants at the commune level to meet the requirements of the new situation: The placement and arrangement of officials must ensure "the right person, the right job, at the right time, and in the right place," maximizing practical abilities, strengths, and work experience.

However, according to feedback from some voters, there are officials with over 20 years of experience in finance and planning, who previously held the position of head of department at the district-level People's Committee. After reorganization, they were reassigned to head of the culture and social affairs department at the commune-level People's Committee. This inconsistency significantly affects the effectiveness of advisory and management work, as well as the quality of service provided to citizens and businesses in the area. This worrying situation is also occurring in many administrative units nationwide.

Many opinions emphasized that the set target of double-digit economic growth is very ambitious, and therefore requires more in-depth solutions. National Assembly representative Le Thi Thanh Xuan (Dak Lak) suggested focusing on accelerating the institutionalization of new resolutions and policy conclusions of the Party and the National Assembly, coupled with reviewing and amending the current legal and policy system to ensure consistency, uniformity, and practicality, and to overcome the delay in issuing detailed regulations guiding the implementation of laws and resolutions that have already come into effect.

To effectively carry out this task, the Government needs to focus on allocating sufficient and competent civil servants to handle legal affairs at ministries, departments, provincial, and commune levels.

In June 2026, the Government will conduct a review of one year of implementing the reorganization of administrative units at all levels and the operation of local governments at both levels. Many National Assembly deputies have suggested that the Government needs to conduct a thorough assessment of the allocation and utilization of human resources, and the adaptability of the apparatus and staff.

The focus is on assessing the suitability of job positions to the qualifications and capabilities of civil servants and public employees, linked to the operational efficiency of the organizational structure in performing its functions of governance, development, and serving the people. This includes clarifying the level of smoothness and interconnectedness in work processing, quality, progress, and the level of satisfaction of citizens and businesses.

Furthermore, practical observations show that there is still a lack of synchronization and interconnection in information systems between different levels, and the ability to handle administrative procedures and provide online public services has affected the level of access to and use of digital services by citizens and businesses. Issues related to digital skills and data exploitation capabilities of commune-level officials and civil servants also need to be improved soon.

Notably, in many places, civil servants still have to spend a lot of time preparing various reports and statistics, sometimes even multiple similar reports and statistics on the same content, simply because they haven't been integrated to create a shared database. Many civil servants complain that this activity takes up a considerable amount of time, slowing down the process of resolving issues for citizens and businesses, as well as creating additional pressure on those responsible for implementation.

The government needs to direct ministries, sectors, and localities to assess and clarify the volume and progress of digitizing records, documents, and data after the reorganization of administrative units; the exploitation and use of shared data and specialized data to serve management, administration, and the resolution of administrative procedures, in order to clearly identify difficulties and obstacles and propose solutions for the future.

VINH KHANG

Source: https://nhandan.vn/kien-toan-doi-ngu-can-bo-co-so-post962296.html