Right from the beginning of the 2021-2026 term, the Party Delegation of the Nghe An Provincial People's Council submitted to the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee to promulgate the Project "Improving the quality and efficiency of the activities of the Nghe An Provincial People's Council, term XVIII, term 2021-2026". That affirms the role of the Provincial People's Council in innovating local governance in the direction of modernity, effectiveness, efficiency, focusing on development management; ensuring the rule of law and the Constitution, enhancing transparency, accountability and participation of the people; contributing to building an administration serving the people, democracy, rule of law, professionalism, modernity, science, cleanliness, openness, transparency, upholding the spirit of serving the people and creating a favorable environment for production and business enterprises.
This project has proposed 6 groups of tasks and specific solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of the activities of the 18th Provincial People's Council, term 2021 - 2026, including improving the organization of meetings, innovating the development and promulgation of resolutions to be submitted to meetings; improving the quality of thematic supervision activities, improving the questioning and answering activities, and more regularly conducting explanation activities at the meetings of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Council. Through the implementation of the project, the effectiveness of coordination between the Provincial People's Council and the Provincial Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee has been improved; thereby, performing tasks well, especially handling voters' opinions and recommendations; the working relationship between the Provincial People's Committee and the Provincial People's Council has been more proactive in solving problems, especially handling contents submitted to the Provincial People's Council; while still ensuring principles and strictness through the signing of coordination regulations between the parties.
Standing Vice Chairman of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee Le Hong Vinh said: "The coordination regulations between the Provincial People's Committee and the National Assembly Delegation; between the Provincial People's Committee and the Provincial People's Council in this term are specifically and in detail built; especially coordinating with the Provincial People's Council Committees in drafting resolutions to submit to the Provincial People's Council for promulgation; coordinating with the Provincial National Assembly Delegation in grasping difficulties and obstacles in the process of implementing legal provisions or overlapping legal provisions to synthesize and recommend the National Assembly and the National Assembly Committees, the Government, ministries, branches and central agencies to amend, supplement or develop new regulations and policies suitable to reality; coordinating in receiving, synthesizing and accepting recommendations and feedback from voters and the National Assembly Delegation, the Provincial People's Council to organize the examination and supervision of the results of handling, responding to opinions and feedback from voters from the Provincial People's Committee.
Determining the roles and responsibilities in legislative and executive work must always go hand in hand and be closely linked together, therefore, every month, the Provincial People's Committee attends the regular meetings of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Council and the Standing Committee and committees of the Provincial People's Council attend the regular meetings of the Provincial People's Committee; before each session of the National Assembly, the Provincial National Assembly Delegation organizes a working session with the Provincial People's Committee to grasp practical issues reflected to the National Assembly.
From practical activities, the Standing Vice Chairman of the People's Council of Nghe An province, Nguyen Nam Dinh, concluded: “Innovation and improvement of the quality of activities to complete the assigned tasks at the highest level is really necessary. To do so, it is necessary to promote the role of the Party Delegation of the People's Council in directing the development and implementation of the People's Council's work program, focusing on the program of issuing resolutions of the People's Council; promptly institutionalize and concretize the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's laws and policies, meeting the requirements and aspirations of voters and people. Closely follow the work program of the National Assembly, the National Assembly Standing Committee and the National Assembly's agencies to orient the activities of the Provincial People's Council; fully participate in the activities of the National Assembly, the National Assembly Standing Committee and the National Assembly's agencies related to the locality".
Entering the 2021-2026 term, facing strong innovation in the activities of the National Assembly and higher development requirements of Nghe An province, the National Assembly Delegation and the Provincial People's Council have many concerns, innovations, and improvements in operational efficiency, with many solutions to improve the quality of elected representatives.
In addition to organizing training courses on operational skills for elected representatives, the Provincial National Assembly Delegation organized conferences to discuss and improve the quality and effectiveness of voter contact activities of National Assembly representatives. Thereby, elected representatives have a deeper understanding of the responsibility to cultivate skills in explaining and clarifying issues raised by voters right at voter contact conferences, avoiding one-way reception from the representatives; at the same time, enhancing the responsibility of "following up" on resolving recommendations and reflections from voters by elected representatives at all levels...
In addition, the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Council has increased the exchange of experiences with the Standing Committees of the District People's Councils. In 2022 alone, the Standing Committee of the Nghe An Provincial People's Council organized 4 conferences with the Standing Committees of the District People's Councils in 2 clusters, each cluster held twice a year and on each in-depth topic on solutions to improve the quality of thematic supervision, improve the quality of organizing thematic sessions of the People's Council; and exchanged experiences on the overall activities of the People's Council, from organizing sessions, supervision, surveys, explanation sessions, meeting voters, etc.
Vice Chairwoman of Nghi Loc District People's Council Le Thi Hien said that through the experience exchange conferences, many good initiatives and innovations in the activities of the Standing Committee, the Provincial People's Council committees and the Standing Committees of the People's Councils of district-level units were shared to learn from each other, bringing two-way impacts to both the Provincial and District People's Councils in improving the quality and effectiveness of operations. Including experience in selecting content and organizing thematic supervision and to ensure the effectiveness of supervision, it is necessary to pay attention to re-supervision; organizing regular meetings, thematic meetings; activities of explaining, questioning and answering questions of People's Council delegates; solutions to improve the quality of receiving and resolving voters' feedback and recommendations; promoting the application of information technology in the activities of the People's Council, etc.
Along with many solutions to improve the quality of elected agencies and the quality of elected activities, in the 2021 - 2026 term, the Standing Committee of the Nghe An Provincial People's Council continues to implement in a more systematic and strict manner the monitoring, evaluation and classification of the quality of activities of delegations and provincial People's Council delegates. Accordingly, the monitoring and evaluation mechanism is based on two channels: Monitoring by the Office of the National Assembly Delegation and the Provincial People's Council; and through 21 provincial People's Council delegations self-monitoring and evaluation. The evaluation criteria are based on the activities of delegates at the session; contact with voters before and after the session; responsibility for submitting proposals for questioning at the sessions, explanations of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Council when asked for opinions; activities of participating in receiving citizens with the government of the People's Council delegates at the constituency. The results of the assessment and classification of the quality of the delegates' activities are sent to the Party Committee where the People's Council delegates work; This is considered a "channel" for annual emulation ranking of cadres and party members./.
In order to increasingly improve the quality of operations of agencies and elected representatives, affirming their role as state power agencies, representing the will, aspirations and mastery of the people; voters, National Assembly deputies, and Nghe An Provincial People's Council have sent their heartfelt opinions to the Politburo, the Secretariat, the National Assembly Standing Committee, and the National Assembly with the desire to promptly amend the shortcomings arising in practice.
In order to improve the quality and effectiveness of the operations of People's Councils at all levels, the People's Council of Nghe An province recommends that the Standing Committee of the National Assembly: Study and perfect the law on the organization and operation of People's Councils at all levels according to Resolution No. 27-NQ/TW dated November 9, 2022 of the 6th Conference of the 13th Party Central Committee on continuing to build and perfect the socialist rule-of-law state of Vietnam in the new period.
Amend and supplement the guidance on the implementation of the Law on Organization of Local Government; promulgate model regulations on the activities of People's Councils at all levels in the direction of clearly and specifically regulating the relationship between the Standing Committee of the People's Council and the leaders of the People's Committee, leaders of the People's Council Committees and leaders of departments and branches under the People's Committee; the responsibility of the People's Committee before the People's Council; the scope and responsibility of the Chairman of the People's Council in handling the work; the relationship between People's Councils at all levels; supervision work, public reception work, handling of complaints and denunciations of citizens; contact with voters; questioning and answering questions; developing legal documents).
Adjust and increase the time for the Committees of the Provincial People's Council to review draft resolutions submitted to the session. The Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents, amended and supplemented in 2020, stipulates that there are only 5 days (before the opening date of the session, the agency drafting the resolution must send documents at least 15 days in advance; the review report must be sent to the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Council at least 10 days in advance).
Issue regulations on emulation and reward work under the authority of the People's Council, criteria for evaluating and classifying the People's Council, People's Council committees, People's Council delegation groups and People's Council delegates.
Propose that the Politburo and the Secretariat have more specific policies and guidelines on the structure of Party committees taking on the positions of Standing Committee of the People's Council and full-time leaders of Provincial People's Council Committees to ensure consistency among localities nationwide; increase the number of Party committees that are Standing Committees and full-time leaders of Provincial People's Council Committees.
Currently, there are urgent issues that voters have reflected and petitioned over many voter meetings that have not been resolved; there are problems at the grassroots level that have not been resolved. This leads to voters not wanting to go or speak at meetings with elected representatives. Therefore, it is recommended that the National Assembly continue to innovate its activities, have mechanisms to monitor and direct the resolution of voters' recommendations and reflections at meetings in a more satisfactory and timely manner.
At the same time, there needs to be a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the action program and promises of the delegates during the election campaign for the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels, both to ensure equality in the activities and contributions of the delegates; and to contribute to improving the quality and sense of responsibility of the delegates to truly represent the voice and interests of the voters and the people.
Currently, the functions and tasks of the Provincial People's Council have increased, while the proportion of full-time delegates is still low, such as the Nghe An Provincial People's Council, which is only over 13%. Although the Law on Organization of Local Government stipulates that part-time delegates must spend at least 1/3 of their working time in a year to perform the duties and powers of a People's Council delegate; however, there is currently a lack of a mechanism to systematically monitor, track, and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of elected delegates' activities. Therefore, it is recommended that the National Assembly Standing Committee study and promulgate evaluation criteria to create a basis and consistency for implementation.
The Law on Supervisory Activities of the National Assembly and People's Councils at All Levels has been promulgated and implemented in recent times, contributing significantly to improving the quality and effectiveness of the activities of elected bodies. However, in practice, there is still a lack of specific sanctions and guidelines to improve the quality and effectiveness of supervision by the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels over the agencies and units subject to supervision.
To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the supervision activities of the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels, it is recommended that the National Assembly Standing Committee study and amend and supplement the Law on Supervision Activities of the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels, clearly defining responsibilities and providing specific guidance on the implementation of recommendations and conclusions after supervision, after questioning and explanation of elected bodies. Specify sanctions for cases of failure to strictly implement recommendations after supervision. Provide guidance on the development and implementation of coordination regulations between the supervisory entities of the National Assembly and People's Councils at all levels with the inspection and supervision agencies of the Party, the State Inspectorate and law enforcement agencies.
Currently, the apparatus of the People's Council at the district level is implemented in a different way in each locality, without any consistency. Some localities arrange for the heads of the People's Council to hold part-time positions and the deputy heads to hold full-time positions; other localities arrange for the heads of the People's Council to hold full-time positions and the deputy heads to hold part-time positions.
Through practical activities, it can be seen that the head of the specialized committee of the People's Council has many advantages, the activities are specialized, wholehearted, and many decisions are proactively made without waiting for opinions if the head of the committee holds concurrent positions. However, the current problem is that the heads of specialized committees have not been structured at the Party Committee level, while the subjects subject to supervision of the activities of the committees are the chairman, vice chairman, and heads of specialized departments of the People's Committee at the same level, who are the standing committee, standing committee, and Party Committee members. Therefore, to facilitate the activities of the heads of the People's Council committees, it is proposed that the National Assembly study and recommend to the Party the structure of Party positions for the heads of specialized committees of the People's Council, both to strengthen the Party's leadership role in the activities of the People's Council and at the same time increase the "weight" of the People's Council's activities in the political system.
Propose that the National Assembly Standing Committee direct the development of application software for elected agencies at all levels nationwide to receive, monitor, and resolve voters' petitions and recommendations. Because the process of handling many petitions and recommendations is not only for local authorities, but also related to the central level; using a common software will create connectivity between levels, helping the process of receiving, monitoring, and urging processing to be more seamless and effective.