Those provinces that are considered relatively more innovative in governance (for example Quảng Ninh and Thừa Thiên-Huế) do not necessarily have similar socio-economic backgrounds. Photo: Ha Long Bay, Quang Ninh

This indicates the growing awareness of the Viet Nam’s top leadership of the importance of diverse stakeholder engagement and innovation in governance of the central government. However, findings from UNDP and Fulbright University Vietnam’s field study showed evidence of largely uneven levels of governance innovation between provincial governments. Importantly, those provinces that are considered relatively more innovative in governance (for example Quảng Ninh and Thừa Thiên-Huế) do not necessarily have similar socio-economic backgrounds. As governance innovation is a relatively new concept, there needs an agenda on governance innovation to inform provincial leaders and to develop capacity for public officials and civil servants working at the local levels.

As citizen engagement enables the identification of local challenges as well as the development of innovative solutions to these challenges, doing it effectively is key to the success of governance innovation. Findings from UNDP and Fulbright University Vietnam’s field study showed evidence that while provincial governments may have implemented multitude and diverse communication channels, they serve primarily as a means for local governments to disseminate information and policies to the people. As such, the component at the centre of the above agenda is a mechanism to assist and encourage local governments in citizen engagement, with a particular focus on effective collecting, evaluating and sharing of innovative solutions from local communities to tackle local challenges.

As the CPII Digital Expo (and its website) has garnered approximately 90 initiatives from diverse participants that are civil servants, public employees, ordinary citizens, businesses, and social organisations, from 17 provinces within two months of its official launch, it has proved to be an effective tool and a foundational starting point for such a citizen-centric mechanism. Below are UNDP and Fulbright University Vietnam’s recommendations to further improve the evaluating method and the selection criteria for CPI initiative.

The selection criteria should be communicated to all participants well before they make submissions with clear guidelines of evidence to be provided for each assessing component, especially the ownership (by the local governments) of initiatives and the coordination (if any) between government agencies during their deployment (under Leadership commitment), the sustainability of the initiatives (under Transferability), and the relevant experience and technical competency of the responsible agencies (under Feasibility).

The sub-components of Governance impacts should be redefined to be more independent of each other. In particular, improved transparency and improved accountability should be redefined to be more distinguishable. So should be the subcomponents improved service delivery and improved efficiency.

Assessing components related to encouraging citizen engagement (under Expected impacts), accessibility (under Transferability), and engagement with citizens (under Feasibility) should be revisited to better reflect the diverse nature of initiatives, especially those aiming to improve the quality of contactless public and administrative services.

UNDP and Fulbright University Vietnam’s findings also revealed hurdles currently faced by different population groups in engaging with the governments and that certain groups, e.g. government officials and micro and small and medium businesses (MSMEs), may be more capable and accessible to information than others in contributing feasible and innovative solutions. Thus, the objects of citizen engagement should no longer be limit ed to the ordinary citizens. Rather citizen engagement may be more appropriately framed as stakeholder engagement, by which local governments not only gather innovative ideas and solutions from diverse community groups (e.g. ordinary people, government officials, MSMEs, and social organisations) but also involve them in the design and deploy of these solutions to ensure the maximum chance of success and impacts.

In a separate but related study entitled “Digital Competencies of Public Officials Holding Provincial Leadership Roles in Viet Nam: Preliminary Findings from Case Studies” (conducted at the same time of this report under Phase I of CPII), UNDP and Fulbright University Vietnam found evidence that civil servants holding provincial leadership positions in the three surveyed provinces have different levelsof competencies in skill sets that are deemed critical for them to operate effectively in the digital environment in the public sector. The digital era poses challenges to the supply side (local governments) in piloting innovative solutions, some of which include the shorter life cycle of technologies, continuous and fast adoption to these technologies by the people, and the inherent constant shifting of the demand side’s expectations of higher quality of public services. Successful governance innovation in the digital era requires continuous updating and upskilling of government employees in core digital competencies, which have been identified by the team at “Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age”.

It is important to note that, similar to citizen engagement, successful adoption of these competencies and the design of any training course for such upskilling purposes need careful considerations of the political context in Viet Nam.
In order for governance innovation to be sustainable and widely adopted across provinces, especially those of different socioeconomic backgrounds, there needs a pathway to maximise system change where possible via the adoption of the bottom-up approach in the policy-implementation processes in Viet Nam. Such a pathway could be via a mechanism that shares lessons learnt and success stories and provides evidence that positive changes can be made at and by local governments in delivering public services and creating public values.