Gathering and building a great national unity bloc in the 4.0 era - Part 1: Exploiting the strengths of social networks
The process of building and effectively using social networking sites by the Fatherland Front at all levels in Nghe An has proven that this is an important foundation in propaganda work and building great national unity, truly bringing many great benefits, creating a revolution in the way of communicating information and connecting the community.
PART 1:
Exploit the power of social networks
News Reporter Group • July 18, 2024
The process of building and effectively using social networking sites by the Fatherland Front at all levels in Nghe An has proven that this is an important foundation in propaganda work and building great national unity, truly bringing many great benefits, creating a revolution in the way of communicating information and connecting the community.
FAST, EFFICIENT
In the Northwest of Nghe An, the Pha Ca Tun range is over 2,400m high, considered a common home for the community of ethnic groups: Thai, Mong, Kinh on the Vietnam - Laos border. With an area of over 20,000 hectares, the terrain is mountainous, rugged, and fragmented, posing many challenges for grassroots cadres, including cadres working for the Front. The villages are scattered, almost isolated from each other, some villages are 23km from the commune center, not to mention from the commune center to the center of the mountainous border district of Que Phong, one has to overcome 30km of steep and dangerous mountain roads. But since knowing about Facebook and Zalo applications, those obstacles have almost been resolved.
Talking to Nghe An Newspaper reporter, Mr. Lo Van Thuan - Chairman of the Fatherland Front Committee of Tri Le commune (Que Phong) excitedly said: the establishment and use of Zalo and Facebook groups to convey "two-way" propaganda information from top to bottom, bottom to top is more complete, accurate, and timely; overcoming the delay when sending by "official dispatch" as before; when posting to Zalo and Facebook groups, whoever has viewed and commented will be shown publicly.
In addition, thanks to "digital transformation", documents receive instructions from top to bottom and reports and information from the grassroots level through the system.I-Office document management software, through Zalo groups, Facebook groups of the Front at all levels ensure faster, more timely, contributing to promoting the activities of the Front at specific, in-depth, quality and effective levels. "In terms of economic efficiency, each year saves on stationery costs: paper and ink, envelope money, stamp money... about 3 - 4 million VND", Mr. Thuan said and affirmed that this is a very valuable savings for a difficult locality like Tri Le border commune.
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That is just one of many examples that we heard from the Front officials at all levels in Nghe An province sharing about the effectiveness brought about by knowing how to exploit the utilities of the Internet in general, and social networks in particular in their daily work. "In the era of technology 4.0, when social networks are on the rise, cadres cannot organize activities and movements in the traditional way, but must always mobilize and change their thinking to make the most of the power of technology, keeping up with trends to serve professional work", Mr. Nguyen Ba Hieu - Standing Member of the Thanh Chuong District Fatherland Front Committee, administrator in charge of social network applications of the Thanh Chuong District Fatherland Front shared and added that: In recent years, in order to diversify the means and forms of conveying information to the people, the Thanh Chuong District Fatherland Front has paid attention to developing a social network network from the district to the grassroots level.
The Thanh Chuong District Fatherland Front Committee has coordinated with Viettel Telecom to provide the District Fatherland Front and 38 communes and towns, each unit with a subscriber number ending with the common number 456 as a collective "asset" to create Facebook and Zalo Fanpage accounts, so that when the Fatherland Front officials retire or transfer to other jobs, these pages will still exist and become community pages.
Currently, the Fatherland Front of Thanh Chuong district and 38/38 communes, towns and 234/234 working committees of the Fatherland Front of blocks, hamlets, villages and hamlets have all set up Fanpages on Facebook according to the logo of the Fatherland Front of Nghe An province along with Zalo group and are continuing to build Facebook pages according to self-managed groups of 20-30 households. In addition to Facebook and Zalo, the Fatherland Front of Thanh Chuong district has built the Vietnam Fatherland Front of Thanh Chuong district website, with 1,300-1,500 visitors/day, and the YouTube channel of the Thanh Chuong Front has more than 2,000 subscribers.
The Thanh Chuong Fatherland Front Fanpage has nearly 10,000 followers. In addition to conveying propaganda information that people need, the district Fatherland Front has creatively opened a section: "People ask - The Front answers". People can ask questions by commenting or sending private messages on the page, the district Fatherland Front is responsible for forwarding them to the relevant authorities for answers and the answers will be answered directly under the comments or posted publicly on the Fanpage. This is also a forum for posting responses from all levels and sectors to voters' recommendations, reflections and proposals after each meeting with voters of National Assembly deputies and People's Councils at all levels; contributing to overcoming the situation where voters' recommendations and reflections are answered and resolved by relevant authorities but do not reach voters, leading to voters and people reflecting and making recommendations many times.
Mr. Nguyen Ba Hieu - Standing Member of the Fatherland Front Committee of Thanh Chuong district said: “We have built a team of administrators and collaborators with management skills, writing news, articles, taking photos, and passion, enthusiasm, and "fire" to create digital content; organizing training and guidance for the Front staff and collaborators from the district to the grassroots to orientate propaganda content along with other skills. Thanks to building this team, information on the digital platforms of the Front at all levels in Thanh Chuong district is fast, timely, regular, continuous, diverse, condensed, concise, easy to see, easy to access, and aimed at serving the people".
Mr. Nguyen Anh Dinh, a farmer in Thanh Duc commune (Thanh Chuong) shared: “Nowadays, everyone in our village has Facebook and Zalo, so we can update information at any time, even when we are out of the village or commune; unlike before, we only relied on the broadcasting system, so we had to fix the time, space, and location, so some people did not know. I personally find this method useful.”
Also identifying information and propaganda work via social networks as the fastest and most widespread way of transmission, the Fatherland Front Committee of Quynh Luu district has set up a Fanpage on Facebook with the name "Quynh Luu District Front", which has so far had 11,000 followers; at the same time, it has directed 33 communes and towns in the district, each unit has set up a Fanpage on social networks that are widely used by the people. In addition to the Facebook page and Fanpage, the Fatherland Front from the district to the blocks and hamlets in Quynh Luu also set up a Zalo group to direct or post activities of Party committees, authorities and organizations in the political system, good people, good deeds in the locality, creating exciting competition right in the grassroots Front system.
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DIVERSIFYING PROPAGANDA FORMS
Nghe An is the province with the largest area in the country, the 4th largest population, spread over 21 districts, cities and towns; 460 communes, wards and towns, 3,804 residential areas; diverse in ethnic composition, with differences in socio-economic levels between regions, especially between mountainous and plain areas. That high specificity raises an urgent question for the Nghe An Provincial Fatherland Front Committee: to have effective solutions to improve the effectiveness of gathering and mobilizing people of all walks of life, affirming the role of a reliable "bridge", connecting the "blood" relationship between the Party, the State and the people; contributing to further fostering the continuous growth of the Front - the "common home" of all walks of life.
In the context of limited resources and human resources of the Fatherland Front system at all levels, that problem further urges those working in Nghe An Fatherland Front to find a solution through digital transformation. To specify Resolution No. 09-NQ/TU of the Provincial Party Committee on "Digital transformation of Nghe An province to 2025, with a vision to 2030", the Party Delegation of the Fatherland Front of Nghe An province issued a resolution on digital transformation with the viewpoint: "Digital transformation is a key, consistent, comprehensive and strategic breakthrough political task; requiring high determination and synchronous participation of the entire Fatherland Front system at all levels in the province, the active participation of all classes of people and must be implemented continuously, persistently, substantially and effectively"; at the same time, promulgating the Digital Transformation Action Program with 8 main contents; developing and implementing a digital transformation plan, evaluating progress, attaching scoring criteria for emulation and annual rewards.
Comrade Vo Thi Minh Sinh - Member of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province said: “On the basis of identifying people and Front staff as the center of digital transformation, with smart mobile devices as the main means in the digital world; The Standing Committee has built a roadmap and agreed to select contents that can be implemented immediately, without financial pressure and have a wide impact on all classes of people to do first and has achieved encouraging results”.
The Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province also implemented digital transformation in many activities such as: applying the document management software system (I-Office) and implementing electronic digital signatures from the province to the commune level, ensuring 3-level connectivity for 1,603 accounts; integrating digital signatures according to personal phone numbers; documents are processed anytime, anywhere, saving more time going to the grassroots; at the same time saving costs of photocopying, printing and sending documents; implementing an online video conferencing system from the Provincial Fatherland Front Committee to 21 district-level units and 460 commune-level units; deploying synchronous reporting software from the commune level to the provincial level with more than 680 accounts, helping users to perform reporting skills quickly, accurately, consistently, synchronously, and limiting errors.
In addition, the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province has developed and applied specialized software, such as: Social security management software for housing; software for collecting people's satisfaction with new rural areas, advanced new rural areas, model new rural areas; software for managing all types of funds... Digitizing the database of the Front's fields of operation, to help synthesize, analyze, and evaluate the quality of Front activities conveniently and economically, thereby contributing to improving the quality and effectiveness of Front work in the new situation; coordinating the pilot construction of a management system reflecting the interaction between people and the government, with the participation of the Front in 3 units: Hoang Mai Town, Nghi Loc and Con Cuong.
At the same time, establish a system of official mailboxes for provincial and district-level Front officials; establish and effectively operate pages and groups on social networks, contributing to enhancing the effectiveness of information and propaganda, creating a two-way interactive environment between Front officials at all levels and between Front officials and people to convey information, propagate, mobilize, gather, grasp the people's situation, and orient public opinion. For example, with the Zalo application, the Provincial Front established a group of the Provincial Fatherland Front Standing Committee, a group of agencies of the Provincial Fatherland Front Committee; a group of provincial Fatherland Front leaders; a group of departments of the Fatherland Front agencies connecting to the district level when necessary to exchange expertise to ensure timeliness and effectiveness. Similarly, district Zalo groups connect with the grassroots, the grassroots connect with blocks, hamlets, villages, and hamlets. Through the established Zalo system, basically, information in the Front system from the province to the Front's working committee has been established quite synchronously. This is also a method, a form of direction without meetings, direction by information, by documents on digital platforms.
“The “breakthroughs” in the implementation of digital transformation of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province have changed the awareness, thinking, content and operation methods of the system and improved the skills of applying information technology and working in the network environment of Front officials, helping to save time, costs and human resources”, Comrade Vo Thi Minh Sinh - Member of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, Chairman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province affirmed./.
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(To be continued)
