E-Government Development: Driving Collaboration, Transparency and Citizen Engagement

This is the overarching theme of the 11^th Vietnam E-Government Symposium organised by International Data Group (IDG Vietnam) and CEO&CIO Club upon the approval of Office of National Steering Committee on Information and Communications.

 

Mr Le Thanh Tam, CEO of IDG, said cumbersome and non-transparent legal procedures, heavily bureaucratic administrative procedures, and laggard approval of projects and policies are major barriers to foreign enterprises when they invest in Vietnam.

 

He cited evidence in IDG’s satisfaction survey into foreign-invested businesses in Vietnam conducted since February with more than 1,500 respondents. Accordingly, 43 percent of foreign-invested enterprises in Vietnam offer public services with direct methods, 18 percent do them via telephone and postal mails, and 31 percent via internet and email. Among most frequent services, 43 percent are tax services (tax declaration, tax payment, tax procedures, etc.), 25 percent are customs services, 20 percent are business registration services, and the rest are other services. According to foreign-invested enterprises, the implementation of online public services in Vietnam is quite difficult because registration and feedback stages are not interconnected, documents are frequently modified, and forms are inconsistent.

 

Mr Tam said, “To attract foreign invested companies, public administration reform and public service quality improvement at local government levels must be focused on with care and implemented effectively."

2013 is the third year Vietnam has implemented the National Programme for IT Application in State agencies (2011-2015) and the Overall National Programme for Administrative Reform (2011-2020). The objectives of e-government development at this stage is to further strengthen modern technological application to improve operating quality of government agencies, set up a comprehensive, transparent national information system, improve public services, and strengthen the engagement of citizens and businesses, aiming to build a more efficient and effective e-government.   During the last three years, the painstaking efforts of engaging modern technologies to leverage the operation of Government entities, to build up the information system and to improve the quality of public services have generated positive outcomes: All 22 ministerial-level agencies, all 63 provinces and cities have electronic information portals. 90 percent of units affiliated to ministries, departments and districts have email. 95 percent of ministerial-level agencies, 98 percent of Provincial People’s Committees and 54 percent of District People’s Committees use document management software and perform management in a network environment.

In fact, e-government is not just a collection of individual solutions based on web applications, but it is expected to create a unified interactive electronic environment for State agencies and citizens and businesses. At present, there are many different e-government development trends. But, these trends share the common contents of social satisfaction enhancement, performance improvement, government operation transparency, and guaranteed fairness and standards in State management.

 

Speaking at the symposium, a representative from the National Assembly’s Commission for Science, Technology and Environment, said, in recent years, the development, convergence and interaction of technological trends, especially four typical technological trends of social networking, mobile computing, cloud computing, and big data, have strong impacts, changed modern IT operation, administration and application modes at the Government sector. In the process of e-government development, depending on model and prioritised development strategy, e-government is called with different names like cooperation government, connected government, mobile-based government, transparent government, public service reform, and civic - business engagement. But, the important common objectives that all e-government models share are capacity improvement, transparency enhancement, citizen cooperation and engagement.

 

According to experts at the meeting, the construction of e-government is not a simple task, as it requires great effort of State agencies and civil society with the synchronised perfection of three important aspects: technology, legal system, and personnel qualifications.

 

Mr Do Doan Hop, Chairman of Vietnam Digital Communications Association, said to boost the development of e-government in the coming time, Vietnam needs to promulgate management policies and strengthen inspection at all levels.

 

Incorporated with the symposium, the National E-government Exhibition 2013 will showcase and introduce practical technological solutions to e-government deployment like communications infrastructure, database centre, national authentication system, connectivity centre, electronic authentication and digital signature; data management and sharing solutions, information security, and online services like online training.