Vietnam accelerates digital transformation drive

Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)

Hanoi (VNA) – Ministries, agencies and localities will continue with digital transformation programmes for the new period in the near future.

The Prime Minister has agreed with the policy of building and developing e-Government, with stepping up administrative reform on the back of advanced technologies while improving openness, transparency and placing the people and businesses at the centre.

Over the past years, a number of legal documents have been issued, laying an important legal foundation for the building of e-Government.

The Government Office partnered with ministries, agencies and localities to build the national public service portal linking with the national database system, specialised database system, and ministry- and provincial-level information portals.

Since the Prime Minister launched the national public service portal on December 9, 2019, with eight initial public services, over 2,800 public services have been integrated, drawing over 116 million visits and more than 468,000 registered accounts, saving nearly 351 million USD each year.

Another highlight was the launch of the national reporting platform which played an important role in smart digital infrastructure.

According to the Government Office, the above portals and systems help save more than 9.9 trillion VND (430.4 million USD) annually.

At a customer care centre (Photo: VNA)

The Ministry of Information and Communications reported that last year, data networks of the Party and State agencies were connected with all ministries, agencies, centrally-run cities and provinces, and 98 percent of townships, communes and districts.

As of December 2020, about 40 “Make in Vietnam” platforms had debuted. On February 25, 2021, the national database on population was inaugurated.

According to the 2020 UN E-Government Survey, Vietnam ranked 86^th out of the 193 nations in terms of e-Government development, up two places from 2018. However, the country still stayed at the sixth place in Southeast Asia due to insufficient legal documents in the field, low rate of Level-4 online public services, and behind-schedule progress of specialised database system.

During a meeting of the National Committee on E-Government on March 10, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked for stepping up mechanism building, online public services and effectively carrying out the national population database.

All State agencies were also required to measure the safety level of their information systems and propose measures to ensure their smooth operation./.