ABSTRACT

Our grassroots society exists some problems that it is hard to adapt new situation of interest entity diversification, prominent contradiction, governance system and modes, whose reasons lie in insufficient participation of residents and incomplete formation of society multi-governance to some large extent. With the analysis of “Wuzhen housekeeper” modes, we find that the modes of “Wuzhen housekeeper” realize the upgrade from “single rules and regulation” to “participation in the entire process” to ensure that the public can be got full participation. The practice shows that “internet+ social governance” is not only a direct and shortcut platform of participation in supervision, but also an important path to innovate grassroots social governance. In the process of grassroots social governance in future, “internet+ social governance” urgently needs to consummate channel of participation and incentive mechanism, pay more attention to change government ideas to expect to build new modes of grassroots social governance among society, resident and government and improve the levels of grassroots social governance.

Keywords:

Grassroots Social Governance, Internet+, Modes of “Wuzhen Housekeeper”

1. Introduction

The importance and urgency of grassroots social governance to healthy operation and coordinated development of whole society has been recognized by more and more people, however, the way of public participation with grassroots social governance is still relatively narrow and lacks correct leadership. Our country is on the complex period of economic transition, social transformation and government function transformation. The core problem of grassroots social governance is the expression channel of unobstructed grassroots appeals [1] , therefore, the expression channel of unobstructed grassroots appeals has important significance. In the year of 2017, the 19th CPC national congress puts forward the idea of building a social governance structure for joint governance and sharing; strengthening the construction of social governance systems and improving the social governance system of party committee leadership, government responsibility, social coordination, public participation, and the protection of the rule of law; and improving social governance, socialization, legalization, intelligence, and professionalism; strengthening the construction of community governance system; promoting the focus of social governance down to the grassroots level; giving play to the role of social organizations; achieving government governance and social adjustment and benign interaction among residents, which not only stipulates fundamental direction for grassroots social governance but also clarifies breakthrough point of grassroots social governance innovation. The key problem at present is how to innovate the efficient countermeasure of operation on the practical level to make the top design of the Party Central Committee implement to push social governance stride forward to modern social governance model of diversification of mutual treatment and benign interaction.

In fact, the “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China” adopted at the Fourth Session of the Twelfth National People’s Congress before the Nineteenth National Congress put forward a specific path for the innovation of social governance in China: “Innovative Government Concept―strengthen awareness of the rule of law and service awareness; integrate management into service; promote management through service; improve government governance methods; make full use of modern science and technology to improve social governance methods; promote refined social governance; strengthen source governance, dynamic governance, emergency response, and specimens”. We will improve the government information release system, strengthen grass-roots government service capacity building, establish a national population basic information base, strengthen population management, real-name registration, credit system, crisis early warning intervention, etc. and improve the government’s social governance assessment accountability mechanism [2]. In practical field, there are also some provinces to start exploring the methods that grassroots social governance focuses downward, such as General Office of Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and general office of the provincial government issued in 2016 “guideline opinions of strengthening construction of four platforms in township (street) and consummating grassroots governance systems”. It can be seen as above reports that the role of internet database in social governance is more and more emphasized by top designer. Therefore, to solve the difficulties of grassroots social governance at present and to innovate grassroots social governance must pay attention on functions and role of internet. In fact, since the “Internet” action plan is put forward formally in 2015, a large amount of innovation ideas emerges, for example, “internet+ government affairs”, “internet+ education”, “internet+ live out one’s life in retirement”, etc. The internet was put into our lives deeply, and had influences on the every field of grassroots society. Therefore, “internet+” is not only an indispensable tool of importance but also innovation factors of innovating grassroots social governance [3] , which is an important means of broadening grassroots needs and channels of expression.

“Internet+” is the use of the Internet to transform existing industries and create new industry models. From a social perspective, this “restructuring” is reflected in: reducing the level of social connectivity, establishing new and convenient social connections, and strengthening the effect of social connections, as well as revolutionary innovations in the traditional model [4]. With the development of the overall level of our country and the general improvement of the education level, the grass-roots people are gradually realizing the exercise of their own rights. However, the existing grass-roots appeal expression channels have been unable to meet the diverse demands of the grass-roots masses, leading to contradictions at the grass-roots level and affecting social stability at the grass-roots level. It is precisely based on the above problems that it is particularly important to apply “Internet Plus” to broadening the channels for expressing appeals at the grassroots level.

2. Practical Cases of Innovating the Grassroots Social Governance: Wuzhen Housekeeper Mode

In December 2015, Wuzhen housekeeper mode began to operate in trial and completed the upgrade in May 2017. The project applied the thoughts of “internet+”, and replied on the powerful support of Wuzhen information establishment, utilized the smart mobile phone with the hands of citizen, reported the problems by the way of “taking the photos with hands and transmitting on time”, relied on the existing grib network platforms of the two levels of street (village) towns to promote street(village)towns and their functional departments to solve the problems as soon as possible and formed the new mode of problem-oriented grassroots social governance which were the strong measures of “forward, concurrent, and feedback supervision” [5].

2.1. The General Profile of “Wuzhen Housekeeper” Mode

2.1.1. The Information Officer of “Wuzhen Housekeeper”

“Wuzhen housekeeper” is just to let the mass participate in the grassroots social governance by setting out grassroots people, to maintain the local social order and make sure that local productive life is progressing in order. It combined with grassroots web information officer and unit industry information officer in accordance with allocation of the information officer of “ten person per ten families and one person per one ladder”. In the management group of “Wuzhen housekeeper” found in every village and every community and the group can be divided into several working stations which establish several contact groups under it to establish grid management system.

At present, the main tool transmitting on the Wuzhen housekeeper is mobile terminal, on which mainly uses the We Chat public account of “Wuzhen people’s condition” APP and “Pingan Zhejiang” APP to reflect the problems.

2.1.2. “Wuzhen People’s Condition” Public Account

This account is set with three columns: Wuzhen information, Wuzhen school and Wuzhen housekeeper, whose main function is that firstly, problems report. Residents can report grassroots social problems such as dynamic events of public facilities, security hidden dangers and sudden problems through locating address, taking photos, phonetic text and other methods and judging the personal issues (express, emergency, routine). On the basis of currently existing residential hotline, grid active discovery, new channel will be expanded on social problems at the grass-roots level. Secondly, it is information service. The residents can easily obtain relative dynamic events and civilian information for the people with issue by public accounts. Thirdly, it is residential education. Public accounts “recharge” the residents by publishing advanced personal events, law cases, healthy information and etc. to enhance residents’ cultural connotation and personal qualities. Compared with other similar public, “the condition of the people in Wuzhen” increase the functions of superintend, interaction and information service on the basis of single acceptance and disposal of residents’ report and realize the expansion from single and disperse application to comprehensive and muti-functional application to establish the new modes of grassroots governance that residents can participate in, manage and superintendent.

2.1.3. Wuzhen Housekeeper Linkage Center

On the back of Wuzhen residents dealing with feedback problems is for Wuzhen housekeeper linkage center of “brain” to quickly recognize the problem of grassroots. This linkage center was founded on March 2017 and innovated mode of “1 + 4 + X”. “1” refers to “one center”, which is combined social service governance linkage and three-dimensional prevention and control of public order; “4” refers to “four platforms”, which is combined with social comprehensive governance, administrative enforcement of law, market supervision and convenience services. In addition, the center integrated with the basic data of governance security, fire fighting, traffic, security supervisor, Wuzhen people’s situation, link with 25 departments to form a piece of “social governance network”, which is “X”. Applying the grid management to the basic level to broaden the channel of grassroots feedback problem and laid solid foundation on promoting grassroots social governance.

2.2. Operating Mechanism

Wuzhen applies the thoughts of “Internet+”, depending on platform of Wuzhen housekeeper linkage center to rely on we-chat, mobile APP to fully develop the detective role on grassroots social governance of “Wuzhen housekeeper”, collect problems information timely, integrate and optimize the material allocation, improve work weak links to form the working integration and construct the new pattern of joint management between the lines.

2.2.1. Joint Management and Joint Governance with Interaction of Residents

Wuzhen will move forward the gate of supervision, fully developing the characteristics of large amounts, wide spread and frequent move of “Wuzhen housekeeper”, to promote the effects of grassroots social governance by the mass. “Wuzhen housekeeper” can be combined with basic grid management and the mass of society. The whole town can be divided into 103 grids with more than 3000 members. “Wuzhen housekeeper” utilized the advantage of familiarity to the general conditions of grids to collect exsiting problems in time by the channel of “Wuzhen civilian condition” of we chat public accounts, and “Pingan zhejiang” APP. Such as the broken well cover, building against laws, small advertisement and ect. “Wuzhen housekeeper” becomes the front guards of Wuzhen grassroots social governance by “tradition + technology” “grid + industry” “housekeeper + management” to realize the application of whole covers, no missing and strengthening grid management mechanism in the small town social governance practice.

2.2.2. Integrated Resources and Joint Department

Wuzhen housekeeper linkage center can be combined with 1 + 4 + X, that is, four platforms and twenty two departments. This center integrates four platforms, such as social comprehensive governance, administrative overall execution, market supervision and convenience service and utilizing with sharing together of public, transportation, sanitation, environment protection to realize “one network linkage”. The center carried out the business procedures of “problems reports-central dispatch-department disposal-information feedback-evaluation examination (Figure 1), and every steps can be done by mobile APP or PC terminal, whose full name is the operation of network and indentation, make sure that renovation work in time and efficient that is traceable and evaluated. This center has 4 teams of normal management and 19 persons of team members. The personnel are interdepartmental, mainly composed of the traffic police brigade of the municipal public security bureau, the administrative comprehensive law enforcement bureau, the market supervision and administration bureau and other departments. Normal control teams are mainly responsible for urban order renovation, including disorderly occupation of roads, cars and spreading and other phenomenon. This center organizes management and control team through inter departments, make up working short board of single enforcement and dispersed strength to solve the outstanding contradictions of unclear responsibilities and arguing back and forth to enhance the working efficiency.

Normal management and control team need to upload the innovation pictures, video and summary to platform of system to accept the central examination and mass superintendent. Since the foundation of joint center of Wuzhen housekeeper, there are 103,954 cases of disorderly handling of roads, 5883 times of disorderly handling of cars and 13,147 cases of disorderly pendulum with 100% problems of disposal rate that have improved the basic level of governance significantly.

2.2.3. Interaction with on Line and off Line

Firstly is combined with patrolling police on line and the management control off line to carry out normal enforcement joint mechanism to do normal management and control for the phenomena of disorderly occupation of roads, cars, stalls, etc. Secondly is mutual combination of collecting information on line and off line”. “Wuzhen housekeeper” online reporting problems to the linkage center, multi-department line-based joint law enforcement problems. Thirdly is online problem lists combined with offline leadership superintendent and the problem lists that town administration office found for leadership inspection and daily patrolling inspection with online notification, offline supervision by the leadership to implement the responsible department to solve the problem within the specified time. Until now, we have already completed 10,000 items of problem lists. Fourthly is combination of online comprehensive research and offline comprehensive treatment. The center set up information research department, develop information analysis research judgement at specified period and master working status at any time. Offline is to offer the responsible department to carry out special rectification and get the feedback of the results after dealing with.

There is old saying in society “there is an old lady in Chaoyang to the north and there is Wuzhen housekeeper to the south”. “Wuzhen housekeeper” is the same with “Chaoyang old lady, which plays huge role in the developing grassroots social governance. However, “Wuzhen housekeeper” is different from “old lady in west city”, “Wuzhen housekeeper” has the membership of more extensive, more information and provide grassroots social governance with better practical cases.

3. The Running Effects and Significance of “Wuzhen Housekeeper Modes”

3.1. Broaden the Governance Channels of Grassroots Social Governance

In the previous year, the forms of participation of public are mainly petition letter and mayor’s phone, etc. Here exists many problems of too much procedures and low efficiency. On one hand, “Wuzhen housekeeper” make grassroots’ reflection have “direct train”, reduce the intermediate links and management levels to realize the management plebification and have more wide and unobstructed channel. On the other hand, it is convenient for the mass to superintendent and increase the feedback in time to enhance the efficiency of participation to form good interaction between grassroots masses and grassroots government and pattern of common governance.

3.2. Promote Governance Efficiency of Grassroots Social Governance

“Wuzhen housekeeper” modes fully develop the main role between company and civilian and role between county autonomy and co-management to realize the working pattern of “Big management and small law enforcement”. The innovation of management, firstly is to dynamically master the management subject’s basic condition, dynamic information and hidden problems, which is the society of human condition in grassroots. The people who are very familiar will chat for each other, which can assist in familiarizing with their grid “Wuzhen housekeeper” to effectively grasp the information of each household; Secondly knowing about public opinions. The public borrowed himself/herself or to others ‘mobile phone to upload his/her problem or others’ problem to the information processing center; or reflects the problems to Wuzhen housekeeper and then reflect the problems to the information processing center. This process can reduce the transmission of information level and Avoid information distortion or delay. Next, maintaining the steady of social order. Wuzhen housekeeper can find problems to some large extent and reflect the problems to information processing center so as to get the solution of relative department and eliminate the problem in the bud or keep the impact to a minimum. Lastly, grid management can collect social problems effectively and timely to enhance the timeliness of solving the problems. On one hand, government reduces the needs of staffs due to the Wuzhen housekeeper so as to lower the cost of government; on the other hand, because Wuzhen housekeeper can help government obtain large amount of information so as to enhance government’s efficiency.

3.3. The Ideas of Innovation Grassroots Social Governance

“Wuzhen housekeeper” mode depends on the social governance of the mass, representing the ideas of “social coordination and public participation”. Firstly, it embodies the diversification of main body. “Wuzhen housekeeper” has a wide range of information staff, i.e. APP and We-chat and other mass media are facing to the grassroots mass, which plays great role in grassroots social governance. Secondly, the concept of government service. Government has led grassroots governance works in grass-roots social governance to make sure the orderly process of grassroot social governance. However, the service role of government should be far greater than its leading role, which serves for grassroots, provides grassroots with good living environment.

“Wuzhen housekeeper” had unique running modes with its own, and got fruitful results in the Wuzhen grassroots social governance and had important significance in the practical exploration in the grassroots social governance, which provided other regional grassroots governance with good experiences which has important practical significance.

4. The Countermeasure and Suggestion of Grassroots Social Governance

From the practical perspective of “Wuzhen housekeeper”, it provided good samples with grassroots that participate in the grassroots social governance, which is valuable experience of promoting grassroots to participate in grassroots social governance, comprehending its own conditions and other place’s experience and playing great role in Wuzhen social grassroots governance. Author thinks, the practice of “Wuzhen housekeeper” effectively encourage grassroots to participate in grassroots social governance and it is the valuable experience for all the levels of the people. At the same time, author explored in the practical basis of “Wuzhen housekeeper” and tried to solve the problems for grassroots social governance.

1) Using fully effective media to provide the channel for grassroots to participate

The role of Internet in the social governance has been recognized widely in government and circles of society. The internet technology breaks through the time and space limitation of information and thoughts transmission, which can bring the public into public space at any time, and the public also can come in and go out the different public space as you wish, to keep the public’s voice ringing and urge government to be responsible for policy and measures [4] [6]. The development of media technology provided the public with an effective pathway. By the Dec. 2017, the number of Internet users in China was 772 million, the scale of mobile phone users reached 753 million, and the scale of online government service users reached 485 million, accounting for 62.9% of the total netizens. The utilization rate of obtaining government affairs services through Alipay or WeChat Public Services platform was 44.0% [7]. The grassroots of government’s department can cooperate with internet company to speed up line of government affairs service to continuously combine big data, artificial intelligence and government affairs service and to improve grassroots social governance intelligent, precise and scientific. Fully utilizing city service of Wechat, official accounts of government affairs and government affairs Weibo, government affairs headline and other platform of media and service, to broaden channel of public participation with grassroots social governance.

2) Establishing the reward mechanism to promote positiveness

Incentive theory of behaviorist holds that the essence in the process of management is motivation, which induces human behavior by means of motivation. Under the guidance of the theory of “stimulus-response”, the task of the motivator is to select a set of appropriate stimuli, that is, incentives, to induce the corresponding response criteria of motivator and stereotyped activities [8]. As a profit-oriented person, the pursuit of personal interests is the instinct of natural persons, voluntary activities of long time will discourage the positiveness of participation. Imagine that your basic interests are not satisfied, who will participate in other things. Therefore, the grassroots participation cannot be separated from the corresponding incentives. Grass-roots social governance departments should consider corresponding incentive programs to promote grass-roots people to participate in grass-roots social governance. For example, for those who discover serious security risks and report them to the information command center in a timely manner, or those who respond promptly and proactively help the relevant departments to solve the problems, through telephone fee subsidies, labor subsidies, and so on, to give certain material reward or spirit reward, satisfy their reasonable demand, encourage their behavior, thus form a kind of virtuous circle. i.e.: grassroots group public participation-information command center and departments-solve problems-feedback grassroots-masses participation again.

3) Formulating the regulations on grass-roots social governance to provide Institutional guarantee for the participation of the grassroots people

In accordance with local basic conditions, we formulate the suitable regulations of management to make grassroots people participate in the grassroots social governance with guarantee and also standardize the participation of the grass-roots masses. During formulating this regulation, firstly is to fully seek the opinions of the grassroots, invite grassroots to take discussion and then make summary according to various opinions. Secondly, is to invite the scholars and experts of this field to demonstrate and develop appropriate management regulations [9]. Lastly, regulate in trial.

4) Transfer the concept and modes of government management

“The disciplinarian must keep the discipline first, and be strict with yourself before you are strict with others” [10]. Government has no its own interest to realize social public interest as starting point and ending point. Under the new situation, it is very important to change government’s concept and management modes. First of all, adhere to the position of service-oriented government. Government is people’s government and its purpose is to serve the people. To guarantee the physical and mental health of the people and the safety of their lives and property, is just to satisfy the people’s requirements, which are basic responsibility of service-oriented government. Secondly, strengthening and innovating social governance work into party committees at all levels, comprehensive evaluation system for government objectives to further clarify responsibilities of relevant functional departments and strengthening the sense of social management innovation and serving the masses of leading cadres at all levels. Thirdly, is to encourage the grassroots to participate in the social governance and ensure the relative right of the mass.

5. Conclusions

This study provides some theoretical references for grass-roots social governance innovation. It broadens participation channels, improves incentive mechanisms, formulates regulations for participation of the masses, and transforms government concepts, so as to build a new model for grass-roots social governance in which the society, residents, and government are interacting positively, and improve the level of grass-roots social governance.

With the development of economic society in our country, government is on the key period of transformation, and the importance of social governance is increasingly prominent, and the grassroots social governance is top priority. While the government in transition cannot be fully responded to complex social relationship, and must further liberate thoughts, create concepts to innovate social governance from system, mechanism, organs, methods and so on. At the same time, it needs to continuously broaden the space of social management, fully develop the role of diversified social management subject, strengthen environment establishment of social management, make great efforts to realize the full coverage of social management file and constantly improve the scientific level of social management.

Cite this paper

Li, K. (2018) Innovative Study of Grassroots Society Based on “Internet+”. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 133-143. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2018.65011

References