HCM City authorities plan to expand e-government services this year, the Vice Chairman of the city’s People’s Committee said during a recent teleconference on administrative reform.

Tran Vinh Tuyen said the city targeted having 40-50 percent of public services online this year, with all state agencies from the city to grassroots levels setting up a system to collect opinions from the public.

All city government offices will have to reduce the number of delayed application files by 50 percent, and offices that harass individuals or enterprises will be strictly punished.

The city’s Department of Information and Communication will also be expected to use electronic signatures and connect all city government offices’ websites, he said.

The city provides 1,700 online level-2 public services, 426 level-3 services, and 46 level-4 services. Level-1 services are not provided online.

The city expects all online services to provide necessary information about administrative procedures.

Level-2 services allow people to download and fill out application forms and send them directly via the internet or post office.

Level-3 services allow people to pay charges, if necessary, and receive results via the internet, while level 4 receives results via the internet or post office.

Colonel Nguyen Van Anh, head of the city police’s immigration division, said that initially 3,000 people had applied for passports on peak days.

He said that the division had issued passports via the internet at level 3 since August 2015.

However, after three months of implementation of issuing passports via the internet, only 4-6 percent of people have applied online, he said.

Since February of last year, the immigration division has increased communications about the service to the public, with the aim of increasing the number of online applications to 74 percent.

Twelve hours after application, the person will receive results, thus saving time and transport costs.

Last year, the immigration division provided 153,000 passports.

Anh said the procedures had helped to prevent corruption and improve administrative procedures.

Le Hoai Trung, deputy head of the city’s Department of Home Affairs, said that many departments and people’s committees in districts had not updated administrative procedures or had provided insufficient information.

Several government offices and people’s committees have carried out administrative procedures slowly via the one-door online portal, Trung said.

The rate of feedback on public administration services has been rather high. From April to November last year, 2,857 people evaluated the quality of administrative procedures via the websites of city departments and postal services.

Moreover, more than 30,000 attendees were surveyed by the city’s Institute for Development Studies via telephone or directly interviewed, according to Trung.

Of these, more than 94 percent were satisfied about the city’s administrative procedures, with the remaining 5.89 percent dissatisfied.

Tuyến said the city would improve its hotline quality so that feedback from residents could be received in a timely fashion.

The committee has assigned the Department of Home Affairs to work with the Vietnam Fatherland Front to monitor city government offices’ activities.

The city will also organise conferences for enterprises to introduce their IT products online, he said.

In addition, leaders of city government offices will receive commendations for providing quality online public services, and more online meetings will be carried out, he added.

VNA