Illustrative image (Photo: VNA) The findings were shared at a thematic discussion jointly organised by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam and the Centre for Education Promotion and Empowerment of Women (CEPEW) in Hanoi on March 9.
Accordingly, there was an increase in the number of district-level land use plans and provincial-level land pricing frameworks available online on local government portals in 2022 compared to 2021. At the same time, local authorities have become more responsive to citizen requests for land information.
However, despite these changes, the difference between the two reviews was not significant, indicating that more needs to be done by provincial and district authorities to meet the mandate of disclosing information online.
Regarding the disclosure of the provincial land pricing frameworks, as of October 6 last year 41 out of the 63 provinces and centrally-run cities (65%) publicly posted the land pricing frameworks on their websites, an increase of 22.2% compared to the review findings in 2021. However, information in some of these portals is stored in the form of compressed documents and archived non-systematically, leading to difficulties for users who want to search for land pricing frameworks.
Regarding the disclosure of district-level land use plans, as of October 6 last year, 389 out of the 705 the district-level People's Committees (DPCs) (55.2%) disclosed this information last year on their portals. Among these 389 districts, 19 DPCs (4.9%) that publicised the district-level land use plans in 2022 issued the land use plans on time. Compared that with the review findings in 2021, the number of DPCs that publicised land use plans on their portals/websites increased slightly, about 7%.
In terms of the disclosure of district-level land use master plan information - a new content assessed in 2022, by October 6 last year, 345 out of the 705 district-level localities nationwide (nearly 49%) publicised this information for the period of 2021-2030. Specifically, among these 345 DPCs, 105 were recorded to have disclosed such information on time; 116 did not disclose on time; and 124 were unidentifiable in terms of the disclosure time.
With regard to completeness, 171 out of the 345 DPCs (49.6%) fully disclosed three documents: approval decision, explanatory report and map of land use master plan.
According to the review findings, only 53 DPCs (0.75%) met all the five criteria: information disclosure, searchability, timeliness, completeness, and usability.
This study is part of an annual series of action research on land information disclosure in Vietnam by local authorities from 2021 to now. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Embassy of Ireland, and the UNDP jointly funded this study through the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) Research Programme of UNDP.
The level of land information disclosure of the provincial and district authorities is evaluated based on five criteria: information disclosure; searchability; timeliness of information; completeness of information (for district-level land use master plan and annual district-level land use plans); and information usability (easy to read, understand and readable with common softwares)./.
VNA
