Hanoi (VNA) - The Vietnamese Ministry of Home Affairs and the French Ministry of Public Sector Transformation and the Civil Service on March 31 signed a cooperation agreement in the field of public services and administrative modernisation.

The pact was inked by Vietnamese Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra and French Ambassador to Vietnam Nicolas Warnery on behalf of the two agencies.

Under the agreement, the two sides will exchange experience and real-life practices in a range of aspects, including digital government and e-government building, digital transformation of public administration, management of document and digital data, gender equality policy, and leadership capacity support.

They are expected to work together regarding wage-reated issues and human resources training; exchange experience in the organisation of local administrations in urban, rural, and island areas; and build a legal framework and a system of public service ethics control.

Particularly, the cooperation will be carried out through the professional exchange in salary system for public servants, training for local public servants, e-learning, and distance training.

During 2022-2025, both sides will organise conferences to discuss measures for human resources development as well as provide technical support, while arranging delegation exchanges to share information and documents.

The signing is part of the joint statement issued by the two governments during Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh’s visit to France in November 2021.

In her remarks at the signing ceremony, Tra said the signing of the agreement aims to boost experience sharing in administrative management and set out cooperation orientations in the time to come for mutual benefits.

She said that at a working session before the event, the two sides and France’s Normandy University agreed to soon launch joint activities under the pact, particularly serving the Vietnamese ministries’ capacity training for young leaders of localities and ministries in the 2022-2025 period.

For his part, Warnery affirmed the three-year agreement was the result of cooperation in the administrative field between the two countries during the past two decades. It has highly ambitious content, such as training, wage issuance, and public service ethics, he added.

The ambassador said France is ready to work with Vietnam in implementing the contents, unveiling that in the near future, there will be training courses on decentralisation and exchange of views from experts in digital transformation.

According to Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra, there were positive changes in the satisfaction of people and organisations about State agencies as well as the 2021 public administration reform (PAR) index in spite of the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Particularly, people's satisfaction of administrative agencies improved. The average value of this index was 87.16 per cent, higher than the figure of 2020.

Public administration reform has made positive changes, especially in institutional reform. Online public services provided at level 3 and level 4 (the highest level) increased to 76 per cent.

Also, the restructuring of the state apparatus and the streamlining of personnel fulfilled the set targets.

National digital transformation was promoted, contributing to the construction of the e-government and e-administration.

In the context of special difficulties of 2021 due to impacts of the pandemic, the Government, the Prime Minister, ministries, sectors and localities paid great attention to promoting administration reform.

Although administrative reform has gained positive results, it has still failed to meet expectations. The development and implementation of institutions, policies, and laws failed to meet requirements. This is also a factor hindering socio-economic recovery and development.

Shortcomings in implementation of administrative reform also affect investment and the business environment as well as people's expectations./.

 

VNA