Adhere to putting the people at the center to enhance the balance and accessibility of public services

Analysis of Reason and Doctrine

Author: Zhang Qichun; Han Pugeng

Public services are related to people's livelihoods and connect with their hearts. They are an important guarantee for the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to "enhance people's well-being and improve their quality of life", and made arrangements to "focus on solving the urgent and difficult problems of the people, improve the basic public service system, improve the level of public services, and enhance balance and accessibility". This not only reflects the fundamental stance of putting the people first, but also provides action guidelines for doing a good job in public service work.

Enhancing balance and accessibility is a requirement for the development of public services in the new era

Public service is a fundamental function of the government and an important way to ensure and improve people's livelihoods. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China has continuously increased financial investment, deepened institutional reform, actively innovated supply mechanisms, and gradually improved the service system, achieving overall equalization of basic public services, effectively improving the level of public services, and enhancing people's well-being. The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to enhance the balance and accessibility of public services, clarifying the new requirements for the development of public services in the new era.

Enhancing balance has clarified a new direction for the supply side of public services. On the basis of continuously improving the level of equalization of public services, enhancing balance requires more attention to the effective allocation of public service resources between regions, urban and rural areas, and groups, reducing the differences in public service access among members of society, which is the expansion and enhancement of equalization. Enhancing balance requires greater emphasis on reform and innovation on the supply side of public services, which includes both the balance of public service supply and demand at the national macro level and the adaptation of public service supply and demand at various local levels, reflecting the balance of the entire process of public service input and output.

Enhanced accessibility highlights the experience of the demand side of public services. Public services are an important way to meet the needs of people for a better life. Enhancing the accessibility of public services aims to enhance the matching degree between supply and demand, improve the efficiency of public service utilization, and optimize the public service experience. Enhance accessibility, based on the comprehensive and multi-dimensional protection of rights, laws, policies, etc., emphasizing not only spatial accessibility and convenient access to public service facilities in spatial layout and distance, but also emphasizing content accessibility, availability of public service products, affordable prices, standardized quality, and regulated safety.

Enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services reflects a clear people-oriented stance

The people's position is the fundamental political position of the CPC. Adhering to the principle of putting the people at the center and clarifying the fundamental issue of who provides, relies on, and enjoys public services is the value basis for enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services.

Adhere to the position of the people as the mainstay. Adhering to the principle of people first is the historical experience of the CPC in its centennial struggle, as well as the starting point and foothold of our party's governance. Enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services essentially requires the use of a people-centered development philosophy to lead the entire process of public service supply, focusing on the most urgent, direct, and realistic needs of the people, striving to enhance their sense of happiness, gain, and security, fully reflecting respect and practice for the people's subject status.

Emphasize the role of people's participation. The people are the objects of public services, and only when the people actively and widely participate in the process of public services can the supply-demand coordination and quality improvement of public services be achieved. Enhancing balance and accessibility not only solves the urgent and difficult problems of the people, but also emphasizes the expression of their needs, process supervision, user experience, and quality evaluation in public services. It is an important guarantee for optimizing the public service system and improving the efficiency of public services.

Respond to changes in people's needs. Ensuring and improving people's livelihoods is a long-term task with no endpoint, only a continuous new starting point. With the changes in the main contradictions of Chinese society in the new era, public services for the people need to present diverse, multi-level, and multifaceted characteristics. Enhancing balance and accessibility, clarifying the scope and implementation requirements for the expansion of public service content, is a major measure to continuously achieve the needs of people's better lives and solidly promote common prosperity based on the new journey.

Exploring effective paths to enhance the balance and accessibility of public services

Enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services, with strengthening institutional supply as the prerequisite, optimizing the supply of basic public services and inclusive non basic public services as the core content, building a diversified supply pattern as the key link, and improving the grassroots supply network as the key task, we will coordinate and promote it comprehensively.

Strengthen the supply of public service system. Since the reform and opening up, China has taken the reform of the registered residence system as a breakthrough, aimed at eliminating the differences in public services attached to urban and rural areas, regions and identity differences, and continued to promote the reform of the public service system and make new progress. However, institutional inertia and institutional gaps still exist to varying degrees, and it is urgent to focus on new challenges, problems, and demands in the new development stage, in order to provide guarantees for enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services. On the one hand, we should establish a forward-looking awareness, optimize the channels for the people to participate in the design, implementation, and evaluation of public service systems, and work together to break down the institutional barriers of public service co construction and sharing, and build a more fair and efficient Chinese characteristic public service system. On the other hand, we should grasp the key points of equal rights and responsibilities and rights protection, focus on solving the problems of gaps and lagging in the public service system, and accelerate the formation of a comprehensive and integrated institutional system that connects and supports all aspects of basic public services and inclusive non basic public services.

Optimize the supply of basic public services and inclusive non basic public services. Since the new era, China has made historic achievements in the supply of public services, but there are still gaps in basic public services between urban and rural areas, regions, and populations. The supply-demand contradiction of non basic public services is still prominent, and it is difficult to fully achieve inclusiveness. We should do our best to enhance the balance and accessibility of public services, and continue to promote the reasonable growth of public service volume and effective improvement of quality. To this end, the supply of basic public services should focus on improving quality and efficiency, achieving equal accessibility, coordinating the level of economic and social development and fiscal capacity, dynamically adjusting service standards, promoting the extension of service resources to grassroots, rural coverage, and tilting towards remote areas and disadvantaged groups, accelerating the filling of shortcomings, strengthening weaknesses, and improving quality. The supply of inclusive non basic public services should focus on improving quality and expanding capacity, balancing accessibility, and supporting social forces to expand the supply of inclusive and standardized services in key areas such as elderly care, childcare, education, and medical care. The comprehensive service radius, service population, resource carrying capacity, and actual needs of the people should scientifically allocate high-quality service resources to promote the use, affordability, availability, and good use of inclusive non basic public services.

Build a diversified supply pattern for public services. During the 12th and 13th Five Year Plans, the national public service supply goals focused on equalization of basic public services, emphasizing the responsibility of the central government and support for central transfer payments. With the inclusion of inclusive non basic public services in key areas during the 14th Five Year Plan period and the proposal to enhance the balance and accessibility of public services, the diversification of public service supply entities has become inevitable. This objectively requires the creation of a diversified supply pattern of public services with the government guaranteeing basic needs and the participation of social enterprises. To this end, it is necessary to clarify the boundaries of the responsibilities of the government, market, and society in the supply of basic public services, strengthen the leading responsibility of the government to ensure the quantity and quality of supply, innovate the normalized supply mode of fiscal support, and guide market entities, public welfare social organizations, and citizens to supplement supply. Better leverage the resource allocation advantages of the market in the supply of inclusive non basic public services, further open up market access in related fields, strengthen government supervision and financial support, and continuously enhance the combined force of inclusive non basic public service supply.

Improve the supply network of grassroots public services in urban and rural areas. Urban and rural grassroots are the closest places to the people and also the most concentrated areas of public service demand. In the past, due to the increase in financial and personnel management authority that matched the authority of public services, the supply of grassroots public services was "weak". In the new era, enhancing the balance and accessibility of public services requires a focus on the sinking of public services, and building a grassroots public service supply network centered on townships, radiating villages and village groups, and covering both urban and rural areas. Specifically, it is necessary to clarify the responsibilities of the main providers of public services within the scope of townships, clarify the authority and expenditure responsibilities of public services between the central and local governments, especially county and township governments. From the aspects of county and township administrative structure establishment, financial system reform, personnel change management, etc., promote the rational distribution of various resource elements, and support the establishment and operation of grassroots public service supply networks. Give full play to the subjective initiative of the people, explore the "co creation" model of decision-making, development, construction, effect evaluation, and achievement sharing, so as to base public service supply on grassroots fields, focus on people's needs, and stimulate the endogenous driving force of grassroots public service supply network construction.

Guangming Daily