The Anhui Provincial Government recently issued Government Order No. 300, the "Regulations on Major Administrative Decision-Making Procedures in Anhui Province", which will come into effect on March 1, 2021.
According to regulations, major government administrative decisions must go through multiple links including public participation, expert argumentation, risk assessment, fair competition review, legality review, and collective discussion decisions.
If the decision-making agency violates these regulations and causes serious mistakes in decision-making, or if it should make a timely decision in accordance with the law and delays making a decision, causing heavy losses or adverse effects, it shall be inverted to investigate the responsibility and implement lifelong accountability, and the administrative head of the decision-making agency shall be held responsible Other leaders and directly responsible personnel shall be held accountable according to law.
Major decision-making matters should be publicly solicited for opinions
The "Regulations" require that important planning, important reform plans, major policy measures, key engineering projects and other decision-making matters that involve the vital interests of the masses and need to be widely known by the society should be publicly solicited or held by the public to hear opinions.
Public opinion surveys shall be adopted to listen to opinions on major people's livelihood decision-making matters such as cultural education, medical and health, resource development, environmental protection, and public utilities.
Decision-making matters that are publicly solicited from the public can be made public through the portals of decision-making organs and decision-making undertaking units, newspapers, radio, television and other media, new government media such as Weibo, WeChat, news clients, and press conferences. The draft decision and its description and other materials clarify the way and channels of public feedback and suggestions.
Establish an expert database for decision-making consultation and argumentation
For professional and technical decision-making matters, the decision-making undertaking unit shall organize experts and professional institutions to demonstrate the necessity, feasibility, and scientificity of the content, and provide necessary guarantees for economic and working conditions.
Experts and professional institutions shall independently carry out the demonstration work, put forward their opinions objectively, impartially, and scientifically, and perform the obligation of keeping secrets of state secrets, commercial secrets, and personal privacy known to them in accordance with the law; if they provide written opinions, they shall sign and seal them.
In addition, the Provincial People's Government should establish an expert database for decision-making consultation and demonstration, standardize the operation and management system of the expert database, and improve the expert integrity assessment and withdrawal mechanism.
Experts in the decision-making consultation and argumentation expert database should have rich experience, high visibility and greater influence in the fields of teaching, research, practice, etc. they are engaged in; they are enthusiastic about social and public affairs, and have the necessary time and corresponding energy to perform their duties, etc. .
Serious mistakes in decision-making will be held accountable for life
According to the "Regulations", major administrative decisions made in accordance with the law must not be changed or suspended without legal procedures.
If the decision-making organ violates the regulations and causes serious mistakes in its decision-making, or if it is required to make a timely decision in accordance with the law and the decision is delayed for a long time, causing major losses or adverse effects, it shall be investigated for responsibility, and lifelong accountability shall be implemented, and the executive head of the decision-making organ shall be held responsible Other leaders and directly responsible personnel shall be held accountable according to law.
If the decision-making unit or the unit that undertakes the work related to decision-making fails to perform the decision-making procedures in accordance with these regulations, or neglects their duties or falsifies when performing the decision-making procedures, the decision-making organ shall order corrections, and the responsible leaders and directly responsible persons shall be held accountable in accordance with the law.
Experts, professional institutions, social organizations, etc. who undertook the evaluation work shall be notified and criticized for violations of professional ethics and these regulations, and shall be ordered to rectify within a time limit; if serious consequences are caused, the evaluation qualification shall be cancelled and corresponding liabilities shall be assumed.
(CCTV reporter Zhang Tengfei)