The Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee’s Commission for Information and Education held a conference on the morning of November 3 to gather feedback from experts, scientists, intellectuals, and artists on a draft framework entitled “Ho Chi Minh City People’s Value System in the New Era.” The draft proposes 12 core values aimed at establishing standards of conduct in daily life and public service.
The Commission for Information and Education of the city collaborated with relevant agencies and units to summarize practical experiences, incorporate outcomes from scientific seminars, and analyze public opinion surveys to formulate the proposal. The third draft comprises 3 groups encompassing 25 component values, condensed into 12 core values categorized across 4 key pillars, including Patriotism–Solidarity–Compassion; Honesty–Responsibility–Discipline; Dynamism–Creativity–Civility; and Self-Reliance–Pioneering–Integration.
The conference focused on the draft's theoretical and practical foundations, the process of distilling 25 constituent values into four thematic pillars, and the extent to which these values reflect the characteristics of Ho Chi Minh City residents today. One issue raised for discussion was how to word each value in a way that is easy for the public to understand, apply in practice, and assess through specific behaviors.
The draft proposes using the value system as a “cultural filter” to help the community identify and address behaviors such as violations of public order, wastefulness, evasion of responsibility, and uncivilized conduct on social media.
For intellectuals, the conference highlighted the need to integrate the value system into research, teaching, and the cultivation of public service ethics.
For artists, the challenge is to portray these qualities through artistic representations, thereby contributing to the development of the Ho Chi Minh Cultural Space.
Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Cadre Academy, Pham Ngoc Loi, proposed translating the 12 core values into specific, observable behaviors that could be assessed according to the titles and job positions of cadres, civil servants, and public employees.
According to him, the academy will work with relevant agencies and local authorities to develop a database of public service scenarios covering citizen reception, complaint resolution, handling public feedback, inter-agency coordination, digital transformation, and urban management. By working through these scenarios, officials can strengthen their political resolve, public service ethics, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
Following the conference, the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee’s Commission for Information and Education will compile the feedback and revise the draft. It will then seek further opinions from former city leaders, local authorities, and relevant agencies and organizations before submitting the revised draft to the city's Steering Committee for Vietnamese Cultural Development and the Standing Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee for consideration.
