Relieve the grass-roots of burdens and give authority figures capabilities.
“The same data tables do not need to be repeatedly reported in various groups and ports.”
Recently, Qi Zhongbing, the deputy secretary of the Party Branch Committee of Jiangdong Village, Huangshi Town, Lichen District, Fujian Province, happily said so.
Qi recalled that in the past few years, cadres at the village and town level had to fill out hundreds of various report forms involving nearly 50 information systems at all levels. Forms were distributed to villages and communities every day for filling, stamping, and submission, which occupied a lot of grassroots energy.
Now, with digitalization used to alleviate the burden at the grassroots level and create an intelligent filling system called the “Grassroots One-Sheet System,” the data reporting ports are integrated. Cadres in villages and communities input their data onto the platform, and other departments can directly search for data on the platform. “Asking for data from the grassroots has decreased, and searching for data in the database has increased,” said Qi.
This has allowed Qi and others like him to focus more on practical work.
In August 2024, the Central Office of the State Council issued the “Regulations on Rectifying Formalism to Reduce the Burden on Grassroots Units,” which formulated institutional specifications for reducing the burden on grassroots units in the form of Party regulations for the first time. It firmly demonstrates the attitude of holding high standards to rectifying formalism at all levels of the Party and government to the whole Party and the whole society. The “Regulations on Rectifying Formalism to Reduce the Burden on Grassroots Units” firmly grasp the “burden reduction for grassroots units” as a key measure, respond to the concerns and expectations of grassroots cadres and masses, focus on setting “hard constraints” through “small entry points”, pay attention to refining practical measures and requirements, implement a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, compress vague working space, establish clear institutional specifications, and promote rectification work to run in line with institutional tracks.
In recent days, many grassroots cadres who were interviewed expressed that reducing workload and clarifying responsibilities have made their work more focused, allowing them to spend more time serving the masses.
Phone “weight reduction”
Grassroots cadres feel most about the reduction of workload brought by rectifying formalism.
On December 4th, 2024, Xuge Street Party Committee Secretary Xu Weiguo’s schedule was full:接待来访群众解决信访事项，随后与班子成员碰头研究工作，中午简单吃了几口稍作休息，迎来客商洽谈项目。下午，他掐点赶到区行政中心参会，汇报今年工作收官和明年工作谋划等情况。
“In the past, such meetings usually lasted for a whole day and required full participation. Now, with refined document management and meeting simplification, only relevant议程are required to participate in upper-level meetings. The efficiency is significantly improved.” Xu said.
“In the past, I was afraid of forgetting to attend meetings, so I filled my phone with reminders even for those not directly related to my work. Now that I have fewer meetings at the upper levels and less frequent attendance by street community cadres means more time has been saved to focus on solving real problems.” Said Du Zhenghua, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of a sub-district in Dafen Community in Yancheng City. The words ‘meetings’ in text messages are gradually being replaced with words like ‘work efficiency’ as they are no longer seen as an important part of daily work for grass-roots cadres. “The essence is to give cadres more time to implement tasks.” Yancheng has formulated relevant measures to effectively prevent unnecessary burdens at grass-roots level through systematic planning and deployment. Measures like strict plan management and total control of volume, coordinating meeting activities, advocating for multiple meetings in one session… Since 2024, Yancheng’s departments at all levels have effectively reduced total volume of document issuance and meetings compared to previous years, and this trend continues to decline. Similarly, grass-roots cadres in cities like Nanyang in Henan Province have also noticed a significant reduction in workload brought by documents and meetings over the past year as they focus more on practical work such as carrying out tasks and fulfilling duties rather than being trapped in offices responding to emails or attending meetings all day long as before. As a result of initiatives like “one form sharing” implemented in cities like Fengcheng in Jiangxi Province where data from different departments are fully integrated into one form across different lines of work, grass-roots cadres now only need to update this form annually with data once a year instead of filling out numerous tables throughout the year which significantly reduces their workload while ensuring accurate data reporting at the same time as before. Zhao Mengyao who serves as the General Office Director of a sub-district in Fushan County in Shanxi Province recalled that they used to receive up to four inspections in a day with over ten report forms to
