Dispatched Responsibilty: An Effective Mechanism of Responsive Government Construction

Based on the research on the operation mode of the “12345” citizen hotline of the Shanghai Municipal Government, this paper finds that the strong responsiveness of the Chinese city government stems from the use of technology platforms to establish an effective “dispatched responsibilty” centered on work orders, which realized the reengineering of government processes and the reshaping of the responsibility mechanism, and thus forming a new logic of governance. Citizens express their appeals through the hotline platform and establish direct contact with the municipal government; the appeals are transformed into “work orders”, and the hotline platform represents the municipal government in the form of “dispatched work orders” to clarify the subject of responsibility and the boundaries, and adopts “time-limited settlement mechanism” “coordination and supervision mechanism” “evaluation and feedback mechanism” and other incentive and restraint mechanisms to ensure that the government’s responsiveness remains at a high level.