Speaking at the closing session of the 14th National Party Congress, General Secretary To Lam emphasized the spirit of “say it and do it, do it immediately, do it right, act decisively, see it through, and deliver results.” The Central Committee has issued an action program to implement the Resolution of the 14th Party Congress. And the issue of accountability of heads of agencies has once again been placed squarely on the table.

Legal basis for personal accountability

Clearly, as phrases like "fear of mistakes," "passing the buck," and "evasion" become hot keywords in the assembly halls, the story of leadership responsibility has been stirred up intensely. Public service ethics and a daring spirit are always affirmed, but Vietnam needs a transparent tool to measure them. That tool is a quantitative set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), where the political fate of "commanders" is tied to eloquent figures.

In traditional governance thinking, a leader's position is often viewed through the lens of power and political qualities. However, the New Public Management (NPM) wave has been completely changing this concept globally. NPM views citizens as customers and the leader as a CEO hired to run the apparatus.

Under this approach, a leadership position is not a “privilege” or a reward for seniority, but a “public service delivery contract.” This shift requires the relationship between the State and the head of the agency to be governed by numbers rather than trust or voluntarism alone. Theory shows that without output monitoring tools such as KPIs, leaders, who possess superior information, tend to choose safe options, remain inactive, or maximize personal interests instead of the public interest.

In Vietnam, Decree 90/2020/ND-CP and Politburo regulations on cadre evaluation are already in place. In practice, however, qualitative criteria still outweigh quantitative ones. A department director may be rated excellent in political qualities, yet the sector’s public investment disbursement rate remains low or citizen satisfaction indices fall.

Globally, applying KPIs to senior leaders is no longer novel. For developing countries with contexts similar to Vietnam, technology and transparency are the key.

Malaysia applies a model in which ministers and their teams work together for six weeks to map out detailed, step-by-step plans. Once the plans are finalized and made public, ministers cannot claim that targets are unachievable. Ministers’ KPI results are published annually, creating intense social pressure.

India addresses the chronic problem of “file stagnation” through the SPARROW system. If a superior fails to complete a subordinate’s evaluation by the deadline, the system automatically locks and records the fault. Everything is transparent on a digital platform, eliminating subjective, closed-door assessments.

No more “holding hot seats while avoiding hard work”

Vietnam does not lack talent, but lacks a sufficiently strong “measurement institution” to unlock that talent. The absence of KPIs for top leaders is the key bottleneck. To remove it, Vietnam needs a governance mindset shift, from “cadre management” to “performance management.”

Based on international experience, a roadmap for building KPIs for leaders can be outlined around three main pillars.

First is institutionalizing the “responsibility contract.” It is time for a mandatory legal instrument requiring heads of administrative agencies to sign a “responsibility contract” (or performance commitment) with their direct superior at the start of the term and at the beginning of each year. This contract must include quantitative targets, such as reducing traffic accidents by 5 percent, increasing online application rates by 10 percent, or disbursing 100 percent of public investment capital.

Most importantly, the contract must separate individual accountability from collective achievements. If targets are not met, the head bears primary responsibility and cannot hide behind the shield of “collective decisions.”

Second is applying a “balanced scorecard” to avoid overheated growth. Learning from China’s experience, where localities chased GDP at the expense of environmental indicators, Vietnam’s KPI framework should be balanced, with proposed weights including executive effectiveness (40 percent), covering disbursement rates, PAPI/PCI indices, and administrative reform; social impact (30 percent), covering economic growth, social welfare, and poverty reduction; and capacity building and integrity (30 percent), covering succession training, digital transformation, and, crucially, zero corruption within the unit.

Third, the Politburo’s Regulation 41-QD/TW on dismissal and resignation has opened a new path. To bring this regulation into real life, concrete KPI-based evidence is needed. Clear rules should stipulate that if, for two consecutive years, a leader achieves below 70 percent of the KPI targets in the responsibility contract, resignation or dismissal becomes mandatory. At that point, resignation is no longer a matter of “self-respect” or “sensitivity,” but a routine technical process of the administrative system. This would eliminate the mindset of “holding hot seats while avoiding hard work.”

Nguyen Phuoc Thang, Hoa Binh University