The field studies in Tây Ninh and An Giang provinces in April 2021 helped to explore and verify information for the indicators of the CPI Initiative. Photo: The rice paddies monument in front of An Giang Provincial People's Committee

The CPI Initiative, launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) under the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) program, aims to identify, promote and accelerate local initiatives that are committed by top leadership to solve citizen-identified problems and will be implemented in a transparent manner to mobilise public action and inform broadbased learning.

A long-term goal of this initiative is to create compelling success stories and provide evidence that positive changes can be made at and by the local/provincial governments to the way they operate, which in turn inspire other provinces, and that they may benefit from more political space (and incentives) to experiment new ideas.

From the provincial governments’ perspective, the incentives to participate in the CPI Initiative are manifold. Encouraging the adoption of citizen-inspired innovative solutions, especially those based on recent advances of information technology and artificial intelligence, not only helps these governments to understand, interact with, and serve the people more effectively, but also is well aligned with the Prime Minister’s decision 2289/QĐTtg on the National Strategy for the 4th Industrial Revolution toward 2030. Embracing citizen engagement also helps raise the awareness among local citizens and business community of the genuine commitment of a provincial government toward “citizen-centric” which in turn contributes toward improving the government’s performance in surveys and indices on the province’s competitiveness. Finally, a success in piloting (and upscaling) solutions proposed by local people to tackle local challenges is strong evidence that the provincial top leadership are proactive, innovative, and in accordance with best international practices of public governance.

In order to achieve these long-term goals, the CPI Initiative sets out to identify, promote and accelerate local innovative solutions that are committed by top provincial leadership to solve citizen-identified problems, and to implement these initiatives in a transparent manner to mobilise public action and inform broad-based learning. This will be achieved by an iterative process of (1) developing/revising the selection criteria to identify and engage with provinces that have suitable innovative solutions, (2) collaborating with the selected provinces to co-develop and co-deploy the solutions, and (3) capturing and sharing lessons learned and success factors of these piloting projects.

Many similar initiatives were done and reported around the world under slightly different names, e.g. Citizen-Driven Innovation [2] or People Powered Social Innovation [4]. However, these reports were prepared to serve primarily as “guidebooks” for governments in executing citizen engagement, featuring real-life success stories and pitfalls in various socioeconomic contexts. Criteria for objectively assessing the readiness of a region (e.g. a city, a province, or a municipality), including its citizen and the government, for citizeninspired innovation were lacking in these reports. Even if there were such criteria drawn from international experience, their adoption in the Vietnamese social (and political) context would require careful consideration and possibly significant revisions.

These literatures, however, contain information and discussions on a local government’s readiness for citizen driven innovation that might be relevant to developing selection criteria to assist the CPI Initiative in identifying and engaging with provinces. Below are exemplary guidelines extracted from the report on citizen driven innovation by the World Bank and the European Network of Living Labs.

First, the provincial government attitude toward CPI, such as the willingness and capability of the local administration to engage with the citizens, from co-identifying local problems to co- developing the solutions and providing the political support to co-implementing the developed solutions in real life.

Second, the engagement of local citizens, such as the activeness of groups of local people in identifying and voicing pressing local problems, in designing and piloting innovative solutions, and in engaging with the local governments.

Third, track record in successfully adopting citizen initiated innovative solutions (if any) or ICT tools which encourage the communication between the people and the government, e.g. in reporting and monitoring of local problems and/or of public services’ quality.

While evaluating and comparing track record of past successes in initiatives of provinces might be fairly straightforward (provided that relevant information is available, accessible and complete), an objective evaluation of a provincial government’s attitude toward CPI and the level of engagement in the policy making process by its citizens was more challenging. The field studies in Thừa Thiên-Huế, Quảng Ninh and Hà Giang in December 2020, and in Tây Ninh and An Giang in April 2021 helped to explore and verify information for the above three indicators.