Breakthrough, develop to new heights

In the recent past, despite facing many difficulties and challenges both internally and externally, VNU has always affirmed itself as a unified and increasingly developing organic entity. Under the leadership and direction of Party committees at all levels, the spirit of solidarity and community within the entire Party has been effectively promoted. Could you please elaborate on the outstanding results in political and ideological work in the past term?

First of all, the Party Committee and the Party Committee Standing Committee always thoroughly imbue and disseminate to all cadres and party members the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's policies and laws, especially in the fields of education and training, science and technology. In the process of organizing the implementation of the resolutions of the Central Committee and the Hanoi Party Committee, the Party Committee and the Party Committee Standing Committee have wisely selected the right and accurate issues, suitable to the practical conditions of VNU as well as of its member units and affiliated units to propose appropriate policies and decisions and resolutely lead and direct to effectively implement those policies.

Comrade Phung Xuan Nha - Alternate Member of the Party Central Committee, Party Secretary, President of VNU

The Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of VNU always identify that doing well in political and ideological work is a prerequisite for successfully carrying out the political tasks of the Party Committee. In recent times, in the context of the country's economic situation facing many difficulties and the complicated changes in the international situation, the Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee have determined that one of the prerequisites to overcome difficulties and challenges is to unite, unify, and highly promote the community spirit among all cadres and party members. To unite, it is necessary to liberate the mind, which must first start with the leaders and managers, especially the heads. Leaders must have a deep understanding of their roles and responsibilities for the common work. But the most important thing is that the leader must be truly courageous, pioneering, exemplary, regularly go deep, listen closely, grasp and promptly resolve the thoughts, aspirations and problems of cadres, party members, civil servants and public employees with specific solutions and actions to gather people's hearts, thereby creating a combined strength to successfully carry out the mission and goals set. In addition, through practice, it has been shown that, to create an environment that nurtures and promotes innovation and creativity, there must be a truly objective, impartial and fair recognition and assessment of the quantity, quality, work efficiency and dedication of each individual, from which there are both spiritual and material incentives, worthy honors, creating conditions for scientists to best promote their intelligence and creativity, arousing in each cadre and party member pride and responsibility to contribute to the development of VNU.

In fact, the implementation of major policies and strategies of VNU in recent times has been thoroughly discussed and debated within Party committees, authorities, and organizations at all levels, especially the organization of extensive consultation with cadres, party members, civil servants, and public employees, thus creating consensus in the implementation process. A typical example is the recent implementation of university admission innovation. This is a new and difficult task, the Party Committee had a policy very early, and during the implementation process, there was thorough discussion and debate within all units, thus creating consensus and promoting the combined strength of all units and individuals to successfully carry out this important task, creating trust among leaders at all levels, cadres, party members, civil servants, and public employees, and being highly appreciated by society. Another example is the implementation of the State-level key science and technology program serving sustainable development in the Northwest region. This is also a big and complicated task, initially not all scientists in VNU fully understood the Program. There were opinions that VNU's strength is basic science, while the Program's requirement is that research results must be transferred and applied in practice to develop the economy, culture, society, and ensure national defense and security in the Northwest region. So is it really appropriate for VNU to preside over the Program? In response to these questions, ideological work has become the key to explain and make scientists better understand the role, position, responsibility, and scientific potential of VNU in gathering scientists not only in VNU, but also with its prestige, VNU has gathered scientists from home and abroad to successfully implement the Program. The philosophy of “science for humanity”, combining interdisciplinary sciences in solving development problems, especially the deep sense of responsibility of VNU towards the difficulties of ethnic minorities in the Northwest region. Thanks to that, after a period of implementation, the Northwest Program has gathered a strong scientific team, implemented in the right direction and initially achieved positive results, recognized and highly appreciated by the provinces in the region.

These are just two of many examples showing that the Party Committee and the Party Committee Standing Committee attach special importance to innovation and improving the quality and effectiveness of political and ideological work by overcoming formalities and general slogans, but must have specific ways of doing things, taking into account the specific characteristics of VNU, in which the key point is to promote the spirit of democracy, ensure harmony of interests, all for the common goal of the organization.

Along with many action programs being implemented, studying and following Ho Chi Minh's moral example has been deployed and applied creatively and flexibly in all activities of VNU, especially the movements to improve the quality of training and scientific research, creating a widespread influence throughout the Party. At the same time, the work of grasping the ideological situation of students on major issues of the country, as well as on sensitive issues related to national sovereignty has been directed by the Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee to be done well through practical activities to help students have a correct and positive awareness of the responsibility of youth in the cause of building and defending the Fatherland.

With the specific actions and outstanding results achieved in the past time, it shows that under the leadership and direction of the Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee, the political and ideological work at the Party Committee of VNU has had clear innovations, going into depth, being practical and effective. This has contributed to creating a common cultural community, a harmonious academic environment, where lecturers, scientists and students live and work together openly, friendly and creatively.

Thus, political and ideological work has created the premise and become the “support” for VNU to continue to reap great successes in implementing the set political tasks. Could you please tell us more about some outstanding results in implementing VNU’s political tasks in the past term?

With a spirit of high determination, daring to think, daring to do and most importantly daring to boldly change in leadership and management thinking that is no longer suitable, VNU has achieved many positive results in implementing political tasks according to the Resolution of the 4th VNU Party Congress.

First of all, it is the development and promulgation of strategies, planning and plans for the development of VNU in accordance with practical conditions and new development trends. The Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee have closely directed the development and promulgation of the VNU Development Strategy to 2020, with a vision to 2030, in which the goals, targets, tasks and solutions must be specific, clear, quantifiable and especially take into account the implementation conditions to ensure feasibility and effectiveness. Along with that, it is necessary to direct member and affiliated units to develop and promulgate their development strategies based on the common goals and targets of VNU. Development plans as well as action programs have been developed and gradually implemented effectively.

General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visits VNU

In the work of organizing and developing the staff of civil servants and public employees, the outstanding result is the implementation of the Project on adjusting, rearranging and developing the organization in VNU. This is an important political task that has received the support and consensus of a large number of cadres, party members and scientists. Therefore, the implementation process has been smooth, the number of focal units has been reduced from 43 to 30 units, ensuring streamlining and avoiding overlapping functions and tasks between units, contributing to gradually perfecting VNU as an organic entity, focusing resources on development according to the research-oriented university model. The work of developing the staff of civil servants and public employees, especially the team of scientists in the recent term, has been focused on and promoted. A number of policies to attract good staff from outside and "retain" existing staff have been issued and implemented relatively effectively. Thanks to that, the number of scientific staff of VNU with PhD and Doctor of Science degrees increased significantly, from 38% in 2010 to 47% in 2014, especially in the fields of natural sciences, technology and economics, this rate reached over 70%; the rate of scientific staff with the title of professor and associate professor reached 20.6% of the total number of scientific staff, about 3 times higher than the average rate of the whole country.

In addition, the Party Committee Standing Committee has also focused on leading and closely directing the development of the Science and Technology Development Strategy to 2020; implementing the planning of science and technology activities according to four main groups of fields (Social and Humanities, Natural Sciences and Medicine, Engineering and Technology, Interdisciplinary Science); planning strong research groups associated with specific research programs; planning training majors and majors, accordingly, training majors and groups in VNU are arranged in association with specific science and technology fields and the needs of the labor market. Through practical implementation, it shows that the "map" of training majors and majors associated with science and technology activities and conditions for quality assurance at VNU has become more coherent. This is also an important basis for investment stratification in the coming time, bringing benefits and creating equality for units and scientists, especially the social and humanities sector, which has not had the conditions to receive investment commensurate with the importance of this field.

In addition to strong human resources, to achieve development goals, it is necessary to have appropriate financial resources and facilities. Therefore, VNU has paid special attention to improving scientific and technological potential, providing maximum support to scientists within its capacity through investing in building a laboratory system, modernizing research equipment, or connecting with domestic and foreign partners to attract and increase resources to serve the development tasks of VNU and its units. Although the progress of the implementation of the VNU-Hoa Lac Construction Project is still slow, the leaders of VNU-Hoa Lac have been trying very hard, with high determination, proactively coordinating with the Ministry of Construction to complete a number of construction items and put them into use, creating a premise to promote the progress of the Project in the next term. Solving this "bottleneck" will create the conditions for "take off". Therefore, the leaders of VNU have traveled to many places, worked with many domestic and foreign partners to mobilize financial resources in the form of public-private partnership (PPP) and initially achieved positive changes. I think the lesson learned here is that there must be high determination and drastic action based on analysis, correct assessment of reality and gaining support from relevant parties.

President Truong Tan Sang attends the groundbreaking ceremony of Vietnam - Japan University (VNU)

With such successes, the Party building work of the Party Committee of VNU must have profound changes. Can the Secretary elaborate on this content?

Party building work has always been a top priority for VNU, considered a key task, in which, in addition to focusing on leadership and direction of political and ideological work, the Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee also pay special attention to personnel work, because people are the decisive factor for success. The Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee of VNU have led and directed the innovation of a number of stages in personnel work, ensuring the correct principle of the Party's unified leadership of personnel work and management of the staff. The work of appointment, transfer, rotation, use and personnel policies has been carried out in accordance with regulations, ensuring the correct principles. The Party Committee has concretized the Party's regulations on personnel work for unified implementation throughout the Party. The work of training and fostering cadres according to the plan, especially young cadres, has been given attention; The work of rotating cadres, creating conditions for young cadres to have time to challenge and gain experience at grassroots units has contributed to standardizing and creating a source of leadership and management teams at all levels, meeting the development requirements of VNU. The grassroots party organization regularly consolidates, improves, and gradually improves the leadership capacity and fighting strength of grassroots party organizations, party committees, cadres and party members to build a clean and strong party organization with enough capacity and courage to successfully lead the proposed political tasks. Cadres and party members, first of all leaders and managers, must be exemplary, go first, say what you do, say less, do more, and work with specific results.

The good news is that in the last term, the Party Committee and the Party Committee Standing Committee have led and directed the implementation of the work of planning and creating cadres, especially the creation of young cadres through the activities of the Scientists' Club. The leaders of VNU advocate that planning and creating cadres must not only be based on records but must be trained in practice and evaluated and screened through practice. As a result, we have proactively developed personnel plans for the Party Congresses of the units and VNU with a rich and quality planning source. The comrades included in the planning are all carefully prepared and must be attached to leadership and management positions. In addition, the work of mobilizing, appointing and rotating cadres has been effectively implemented in the spirit of fairness, impartiality, objectivity, taking work efficiency as the main measure. Up to now, this work has been carried out smoothly, receiving the consensus of a large number of cadres, lecturers and scientists.

In addition, the Party Committee of VNU has seriously implemented the Resolution of the 4th Central Committee (11th tenure) "Some urgent issues on Party building at present". Accordingly, collectives and individuals have reviewed, self-criticized and criticized with a serious, open-minded and frank attitude; after the review, Party committees at all levels focused on leading and directing the implementation of plans to overcome and correct the limitations and shortcomings pointed out during the review process and have achieved some important results. The innovation of leadership and direction methods has made great strides. The contents and programs have been carefully prepared, concise, practical and democratic, clarifying the responsibilities of the head, of each Party Committee member, as well as the members of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee. Therefore, many major issues of the Party Committee of VNU are discussed and agreed upon before implementation, so cadres, party members, civil servants, public employees and workers all feel respected and excited to participate in deciding on important tasks of VNU.

Regarding the activities of mass organizations, in the last term, there has been a smooth and effective coordination with all levels of government in the whole VNU to maximize the combined strength and successfully carry out important political tasks of VNU. In which, the legitimate rights of cadres, civil servants, public employees and workers have been guaranteed, contributing to creating excitement and encouraging the spirit of dedication to the common development of VNU. However, along with the achieved results, the practicality of some activities of mass organizations is still not high. The reason is that the work of defining tasks and implementation conditions; the urging and supervision are still not good. In the coming time, this limitation needs to be overcome so that mass organizations in VNU can promote their role, making practical contributions to building a clean and strong Party Committee, as well as the development process of VNU.

From the achievements of the last term, what expectations does the Secretary have for the development of VNU in the coming period?

Under the close leadership and direction of the Party and the State, the effective support and cooperation of ministries, branches and domestic and foreign partners, the solidarity, efforts and determination of the Party Committee and the Standing Committee of the Party Committee, basically all the tasks set out at the 4th Congress were successfully implemented, some of which exceeded the set targets. This is an important premise for VNU to develop even more strongly in the coming period.

I believe that, under the leadership and direction of Party committees at all levels, the effective management of authorities at all levels, the participation of mass organizations, together with the solidarity, unanimity and high determination of cadres, Party members, civil servants, public employees and workers, we will continue to promote our strengths, overcome limitations and weaknesses to create new achievements, in particular, successfully implementing two breakthroughs in developing staff, especially highly qualified scientific staff and developing facilities, in which priority is given to promoting the progress of the Project to build VNU in Hoa Lac, meeting the requirements of developing VNU into an advanced research university. By implementing these two breakthroughs well, VNU will truly make a breakthrough and develop to new heights.

Faced with great goals and new opportunities, I hope that all cadres, party members, scientists, lecturers and students of VNU will continue to join forces, be united, innovate and be creative so that VNU can continue to develop rapidly and make breakthroughs, achieving achievements of the new period with even greater stature. Only then will VNU be worthy of the trust and expectations of the Party, State and People.

Thank you very much, Secretary!