Govt work reviews to go online
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Authorities in the capital of Central China's Hunan province announced on Tuesday they will make public the performance evaluation results of all city officials, a leap forward toward achieving transparency in government.
"We're planning to publish this year's evaluation results online around March next year," said Yan Chengfang, vice-director of the Changsha performance appraisal management office.
Yan said it would be the first time that Changsha residents will be able to access the results.
"In the past, the results were released at the city Party and government conferences. Most of the time, only a government body knew how its own officials had fared in their annual work objectives," he said.
Since 2007, 12 Changsha officials have lost their jobs after failing their evaluations, and 65 have received warnings.
"When the system of evaluation started, the criteria were still vague and never related to the common man. This year, however, we have increased the scope of the evaluation and specified the criteria, which are now more related to you and me," he said.
Public evaluation accounts for 30 percent of an official's final grade, Yan said, adding his office has posted a notice on the city government's website, publicizing a list of work objectives for officials in nine districts and 96 bureaus and administrations.
By clicking on the Education Bureau tab, Web users will be directed to a page that lists 21 work objectives, the first one being "to build 20 more public kindergartens and achieve the kindergarten gross enrollment rate of 87.5 percent".
Posting the objectives online will encourage public supervision, Yan said.
"The government bodies should not only know what each other's responsibilities are, but should also get suggestions from their counterparts and the public," he said.
Hu Zhihui, deputy director of the Changsha urban administrative bureau, said the transparency has increased pressure on the officials to perform.
"Although we're a bureau that works with common people every day, our performances were never put in the limelight. Only we knew how much we did and how well we did.
"Now, people will know at one glance whether we did a good job or not," the Legal Weekly quoted Hu as saying on Tuesday.
Yan's office will also inform the public how many of the objectives were achieved by the end of the year.
"We'll ensure the accuracy of the data with the help of authoritative agencies and the data will be detailed," Yan said, citing an example of building public kindergartens, wherein "both the names and locations of the newly built kindergartens will be posted online".
