By Yang Weifu, Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, DRC

Research Report, Special Issue, No.33, 2018 (Total 1600) 2018-8-31

Abstract: The issue of officials’ nonfeasance is a worldwide problem. The central government and the local governments have made some explorations to solve this problem, and have achieved some results, but there is still a need for better solution. Some officials still lack initiative and action. This paper argues that the biggest problem, key point and breakthrough in addressing officials’ nonfeasance is how to accurately evaluate the performance of officials, how to distinguish between “what to do and what not to do” “to do or not to do” “to do more or to do less” and “to do well or to do bad”. To address the issue, suggestions are as follows: first, democratic consultation and consensus-building are needed, in order to scientifically determine the performance assessment on objectives and tasks, guided by the implementation of medium-term and long-term planning and annual key work; second, “bundling assessment” can be used to explore ways to solve the problems of fragmentation and separation of powers and responsibilities; third, make full use of the assessment results to enhance the positive and negative incentives to officials; fourth, improve the fault-tolerance and fault-exempting mechanisms to encourage the officials to “dare to act”.

Key words: nonfeasance, incentive mechanism, accurate assessment, binding assessment