VietNamNet Bridge – Minister of Information and Communication  -- Nguyen Bac Son, has stated that the ministry would take actions to boost the exchange of e-documents among state agencies.

Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Director of the Information Technology Application Agency, said that 90 percent of state officers at central agencies and 80 percent of officers at local agencies now exchange documents via emails. However, the proportions are different in different localities.

In some localities, such as An Giang province in the south, 90 percent of state officials send and receive electronic documents, while in many others, including Lai Chau in the north, the proportion is just 5 percent.

In HCM City, An Giang, Phu Tho, Vinh Long and Dak Nong, the provincial authorities have clearly stipulated what kinds of documents must be sent and received via emails, not in written documents, such as the notice, duty schedule, invitation cards and conference documents.

However, a lot of central and local agencies still have not paid appropriate attention to the implementation of the regulations. A report showed that in 2012, only 20 percent of documents were sent and received within agencies purely in electronic version, while 30 percent were in both email and printed versions.

Meanwhile, the proportions were much lower for inter-agency document exchange, at 10 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

Analysts have noted that the level of readiness to exchange information through e-documents much depends on the determination of the heads of local authorities or agencies. If the heads do not take drastic measures to apply high technologies in the administrative works, it would be impossible to create a large “e-document exchanging environment.”

Son said that in 2013, some groups of inspectors would be sent to some provinces to find out the real situation of utilizing digital technology in the administration works. Meanwhile, the local situations and the ranking would be assessed quarterly.

The Ministry of Information and Communication has completed the drafting of the Prime Minister’s Decision on the roadmap for the e-document exchanging in 2013-2015, under which, from the second quarter of 2013, except top confidential documents, 100 percent of the documents to be submitted to the government or Prime Minister must be sent in soft copies together with printed documents. 100 percent of state agencies must send soft copies to the higher level agencies.

In 2007, the Prime Minister released the Decree No. 64 on utilizing the information technology in the activities of state agencies, affirming the legitimacy of e-documents. The document stipulates that e-documents have the same legal value with printed documents in the transactions among state agencies.

Electronic signatures are not required for the e-documents sent to state agencies, if there is clear information about the senders and the documents can meet some requirements. State agencies have the responsibility of confirming with the senders that they receive the documents.

However, to date, printed documents remain the major method of document exchange among state agencies.

One hundred percent of the documents are now prepared on computers, then they are printed to be sent to other agencies. This happens that when documents come from other agencies, office clerks have to scan the documents then save the soft copies of the documents at their computers. In this case, only image pictures can exist, while there is no original version of the documents.

Buu Dien