What does it mean to build a service-oriented government?

A notice published by the Shanghai municipal government on its website to regulate the activities of its government officials is a pointer.

The notice specifically requires municipal government leaders to attend fewer rituals, issue fewer documents, deliver short but substantial speeches, and convene as few meetings as possible.

It stipulates that government departments are not allowed to invite government leaders to attend their meetings or other activities through connections or non-official channels rather than through the municipal government general office.

Municipal government leaders should not attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies or other rituals by institutions or enterprises.

The notice also requires that inspection tours by leaders should never be arranged in advance, and neither should such tours be accompanied by lower level leaders.

Such a notice should be lauded if implemented to the letter. It will free the municipal government leaders from the busy routine of delivering speeches, cutting ribbons, wading through mountains of documents or being toasted by guests at dinner parties.

Not attending those insignificant activities will spare them from delivering meaningless speeches and leave them more time to conduct on-the-spot investigations and focus their efforts on solutions to specific problems of immediate concern to the livelihood of the people.

Many meetings within governments have not only wasted a lot of time and resources, but also contributed to the inefficiency and empty talk by both leaders and their subordinates.

The more meetings government officials attend, the lazier they tend to become in dealing with specific work problems. The more meetings leaders address, the more they are likely to use meaningless cliches.

Cutting unnecessary meetings or rituals is one way to foster good work within the governments.

Whether the specifications of the Shanghai notice will be effectively observed depends on self-discipline of the leaders, and outside supervision.

The notice and corresponding supervision mechanism should hopefully function as a reminder to leaders that pompous formalities which some consider as an avenue to build their images, are actually vanity traps that ruin their reputation as civil servants and possibly drag them into corruption.

(China Daily, March 20, 2008)