Minister and Head of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung

It is another step toward building an e-government.

People in 63 cities and provinces can use the new online services on the National Public Service Portal to register births and deaths, pay electricity and water bills, declare and pay taxes, and perform other procedures.

Service efficiency

Minister and Head of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung said it is important to push ahead with implementing online public services. Since its inauguration 3 months ago, the National Public Service Portal opened 77,200 accounts and recorded 20.9 million visits. Its Call Center processed 5,700 calls and dealt with 4,500 issues.

Minister Dung said the government will continue to improve infrastructure and connectivity to better its service. “We are concentrating on e-payment of traffic fines, corporate taxes, and personal income taxes, and judicial matters. The National Public Service Portal is transparent, protects users’ interests, and enhances the responsibility of administrative agencies.”

Administrative reform and e-government building

Integration of public services on the National Portal is part of the Vietnamese government’s effort to streamline administrative procedures and build an e-government.

The Ministry of Information and Communications said every ministry, sector, and locality can now send and receive e-documents on the National Document Axis. The proportion of documents that are e-documents increased from 72% in 2018 to 86.5% in 2019, which is close to this year’s target of 90%. Last year, the government launched the National Document Axis, the e-cabinet system, a database for social insurance, and the National Public Service Portal.

The National Public Service Portal has helped ministries, sectors, and localities work toward the goals of a digital government, a digital economy, and a digital society. 

E-government building in Vietnam has been hampered by uneven levels of IT use among agencies and localities as the necessary infrastructure and databases are being developed.

Minister Mai Tien Dung said “Relevant agencies should work closely with the Government Office to push ahead with e-document connectivity at all administrative levels. The National Public Service Portal will be upgraded to interface better with provincial and ministerial information portals. Administrative procedures will be further simplified.”

The UN E-government Survey 2018 ranked Vietnam 88th of 193 countries. That means there is still a lot of work to be done. Vietnam will fine tune its e-government building strategy for the 2021-2025 period with a vision to 2030, and will issue decrees on database connectivity management, e-authentication and identification, administrative procedures in cyber space, and protection of personal information toward a revised Law on E-transaction and Archives.

Building an e-government is vital if Vietnam wants to improve transparency in governance, reduce corruption, improve its competitiveness, and boost labour productivity. VOV