Every morning, many people leave home with very mundane questions: is the road clogged today, is it flooded, are the children happy after school?
These questions still follow many people when choosing a place to live or buying a house. I have a habit of using the Pugh matrix as a decision-making reference: listing the options, scoring each criterion, then adding up the total. Scores are important, but the weight of each criterion is decisive. Young people can prioritize job opportunities. Older people prioritize a peaceful environment. Families with young children value good schools. As for me, I give the highest weight to places near my hometown.
If people have a "scorecard" for their lives, then the government also needs a "scorecard" to measure their executive capacity. Hanoi has just done what few Southeast Asian urban governments have dared to try: put happiness and quality of life on its public governance scorecard. This is the right step, but is the measurement toolkit sharp enough to turn vision into reality?
With Decision 3489 on the "Socialist Communes and Wards" model, for the first time the Capital built a comprehensive set of indicators on local governance and development. With 54 criteria, the project moves from thinking about measuring output to measuring beneficial results. Instead of just counting "how many parks to build", the criteria set asks more practically: "Do people really enjoy safe green space" - because a park on paper can still be occupied or abandoned in reality.
The pilot model in Thu Lam and Phuc Thinh communes aims to be replicated to build a "socialist capital" by 2035. If successful, this can be a reference for many localities, so it needs to be completed from the beginning.
Because the name has an ideological color, people who have not read it can easily think of public ownership or collective economics. But when we open each page of the text, we see a modern urban governance model, absorbing the principles of Good Governance, Human-centered, or Outcome-based Governance. Although happiness is only one criterion, the goal of taking people's happiness and satisfaction as the highest measure is affirmed throughout.
The biggest challenge, though, isn't the vision - it's the measurement architecture.
From experience in researching many international urban assessment systems, I find that this set of criteria partly integrates the principles of the UN SDGs, international quality of life indices such as the OECD's Better Life Index, Happy City Index, and Bhutan's philosophy of Gross National Happiness. The intersection is an approach that takes transparency, citizen participation, quality of life and happiness as metrics. But when looking closely at the architecture of the criteria set, there are three points worth thinking about.
The first and biggest shortcoming is that the criteria are not weighted, making the secondary criteria equal to the ultimate goal of "happiness". More ironically, "happiness" only gets a maximum of 3/100 points, on par with some difficult-to-scoring criteria such as "quality of Party grassroots organization", "speed of labor productivity growth" or "proportion of cultural industry". If combined by group, "happiness" and "satisfaction" only account for 5/100 points, while the Economic group gets 20/100. This disparity creates a "motivation trap", making it easier for localities to pursue growth rather than quality of life. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the method of measuring the Happiness Index to ensure objectivity and international standard comparison, especially when the threshold "reaches" 9.5/10 points. Imagine a suburban commune with booming business revenue, but people have to live amid dust and garbage. If mechanical points are added, the locality still "reaches the finish line" thanks to economic points that compensate for the plunging environment.
The second problem is that the scope of assessment is too comprehensive at the commune level, with goals beyond authority such as public transportation or average life expectancy. A good set of criteria needs to properly delineate responsibilities. In addition, the linear scoring method is equal to four layers of management: from input (infrastructure, public wifi), output (procedure resolution), to results (satisfaction) and impact (happiness). When the ultimate goal such as "satisfaction level" is only 2/100 points but wifi coverage is 1 point, the system easily falls into the state of "hunting points" from secondary things and neglecting the main thing. Some criteria use qualitative thresholds such as "pass", "good", "effective". There are items that only mark "yes/no" instead of quality, so it's difficult to evaluate objectively. For example, there is wifi but it's congested and unstable, which is meaningless. Many targets set a threshold of 100% achievement, which easily creates pressure to chase achievements rather than continuously improve.
The final inadequacy only becomes apparent when scaling up. Even if 126 communes and wards all meet the standards, it does not mean that Hanoi will become the "Socialist Capital". A football team or orchestra is not naturally excellent just because each member plays well. Because urban competitiveness is also determined by factors at the city governance level - from inter-regional transportation, green areas to innovation ecosystems. Therefore, the "scoreboard" for the Socialist Capital cannot just be an expanded version of the commune-level "scoreboard".
This is a pilot step so we cannot demand perfection from the beginning. But piloting the wrong method only creates more thick reports, while piloting the right way creates valuable data that helps improve policy. Therefore, the following three adjustments should be made right from this stage.
First of all, we must turn the Happiness Index into a "hard threshold" for veto, instead of just a modest level of 5/100 points. It is necessary to establish a "veto vote": if the happiness and satisfaction score of the people is below a "failing point", that locality immediately "fails" - no matter how brilliant the economic score is. When the people's hearts become the supreme filter, the disease of pursuing economic achievements at the expense of the living environment will eliminate itself.
Next, it is necessary to move to a weighted multi-level measurement system because each criterion has different importance and priority. The key is not to change the scoring scale, but to change the scoring logic. The "happiness" and "satisfaction" of the people must have the highest weight. It is necessary to measure the effectiveness of resource use, not just the results achieved.
Promoting digital transformation will quantify difficult-to-measure criteria such as "proportion of people participating in policy comments", transparency and accountability through public digital platforms.
When writing the article "Measuring people's happiness", I read many comments that people do not need big slogans, they just need to see life getting better in many aspects every year.
Whether a city is more livable or not will be reflected in the mood of the people who go to work every morning and return home every afternoon.
