Digital government helps fight work overload

Amid the novel coronavirus outbreak in Ho Chi Minh City last year when Trinh Thi Thuy Hien in District 8 gave birth to her first child, she was quite worried about doing all kinds of documents for her children. Surfing on the internet to find out more information including birth registration, she learned that this procedure is now very simple, just go to the National Public Service Portal to register an account, then follow the instructions. She posted relevant documents such as hospital discharge papers, birth certificates, marriage registrations, parents’ identification papers, and a photo on the portal, she received a message confirming receipt of the application, then a ward officer contacted her to ask for some more details and set a date to the local People’s Committee to receive the documents. In addition to the birth certificate, she also received a health insurance card and registered permanent residence for her child at the same time.

More and more people are choosing to carry out online procedures instead of going to do it in person. Ho Chi Minh City has so far implemented 805/1,764 online public services in administrative procedures.

The number of dossiers provided with level 3 and level 4 online public services is nearly 800,000 records. In the upcoming time, Ho Chi Minh City deploys the city Public Service Portal which will be connected with the National Public Service Portal, then people will not have to re-declare the information already in the National Population Database, but only use their unified identity account to use online public services.

Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Duong Anh Duc emphasized that the implementation of this system is both a political task under the Project 06 and a top task to improve the quality of administrative reform, associated with digital transformation, building a digital government of the municipal People’s Committee.

Recently, in order to increase the use of electronic records, the People’s Committee in HCMC's District 1 has implemented a paperless application procedure. Documents and records have been posted on the internet. Currently, the district is focusing on taking steps to implement the e-license for the temporary sidewalk licensing procedure. As for the procedures for granting business household registration certificates and environmental permits, the district is currently asking for the city's approval of the legal basis for implementation.

Not only in District 1, but many localities and units have also been gradually implementing a digital work environment – a place where employees easily collaborate and communicate, where processes enable them to be more effective, and where technology helps them innovate. For instance, District 7 has used the specialized softwares 'Online District 7' and 'Online civil servant' which prove to be very effective in handling tasks including granting construction permits and food hygiene and safety certificates.

The district has also built a geographic information system that integrates data on land, construction, planning, household businesses, food hygiene and safety. District 7 has now completed digitizing documents at the district archives in phase 1, preparing to put them into use.

Moreover, judicial officers of districts and wards are now able to exploit and use civil status data to solve administrative procedures for people. The district People’s Committee is also developing data on urban traffic such as apartments, alleys, bridges and roads, data on economic activities such as business households, enterprises, taxes, and data such as poor households, and near-poor households.

Vice Chairman of District 12 People’s Committee Nguyen Van Duc said that so far the district has received and returned more than 35,600 online applications. Amongst them, the district level admitted and returned more than 20,000 records in various fields, especially files related to doing business. The district also collected fees and charges for administrative procedures via MoMo e-wallets, and VNPAY and maintained channels of interaction with people via Zalo, and Facebook.

In Thu Duc City, the district's Smart City Operation Center is gradually perfecting the automatic system for reporting and integrating existing data from specialized software of agencies and units, and integrated intelligent management systems from departments and sectors. Moreover, the district has integrated data from the health sector, switchboard 1022, and is integrating data from departments: Education-Training, Transport, Information and Communications.

In the next phase, Thu Duc City People’s Committee will integrate all existing cameras to meet the requirements of this center. At the city level, now with the Gate 1022, leaders of Ho Chi Minh City can monitor the receipt time and resolution of the district, ward, and commune on inhabitants' opinions and complaints. These transformation steps have shortened the processing time for administrative documents, bringing many benefits to people, businesses and civil servants.

Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Duong Anh Duc affirmed that the implementation of the Ho Chi Minh City Public Service Portal will help improve the quality of administrative procedures, provide online public services and implement the Project 06 – a Development project on the application of data on population, identification and electronic authentication for national digital transformation in the period of 2022-2025 with a vision to 2030.

Accordingly, the portal will provide all online public services at level 3 and level 4 with qualified administrative procedures comprising 403 online public services at level 3, level 4, and 25 other essential public services under the Project 06.