A Wasteful Project

Project 112 was issued by the Prime Minister on July 25, 2001 with the hope of bringing Vietnam to e-government. Five main objectives of the project were building the State administrative management computerisation systems; organising the establishment and integration of national databases; computerising public services; training IT; and boosting reform of administrative procedures. However, in a recent meeting, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung pointed out that the Project 112 failed to achieve the expected objectives in computerising the State administrative management.

 

According to the report released by the Science, Technology and Environment Committee, one of the main reasons leading to the failure of the Project 112 was its Steering Committee had no State function of information technology management, but still organised evaluation software projects and instructed steering boards in provinces and cities to evaluate technical designs. This is contrary to decrees and regulations on infrastructure construction investment management. Or in other words, the Steering Committee evaluated its investment activities and achievements on its own. According to experts, this caused a big waste in applied localities.

 

 

Two years ago, the Steering Committee for Project 112 signed agreements to apply three common software programmes for centrally-run provinces and cities. These software programmes were a social and economic information generalisation system; a document and record management system; and an electronic information management programme. More than 40 provinces and cities installed all three common software programmes with a combined cost of more than VND180 billion (US$10.12 million). However, half of them reported only 34 - 36 per cent operation.

 

IT experts said the common software programmes were helping State-funded units to digitalise document management, but these were not enough. A valid document had to be signed, but electronic signatures in Vietnam had little reliability. In addition, security, antivirus and anti-hacking measures failed to meet the expectation and size of the project. Many said it was better not to inject large sums of money into equipment and technical infrastructure. If that money had been spent on human resource training, the effectiveness would have been higher.

 

With regard to expenditure for the Project 112, the report of the Science, Technology and Environment Committee said the investment decentralisation approved by the Prime Minister in the project enabled the activeness of ministries, branches and localities. However, during the instruction, the Steering Board for Project 112 failed to determine a standard framework for the computerisation systems at ministries, branches and localities, and failed to determine the maximum and minimum points in investment, leading to free investment by beneficiary units. Many localities made big investment, while some did not do anything but waited for State financial support for the project.

 

According to the Decision 112/2001/QD-TTG, the State Budget would spend no less than VND1,000 billion (US$62.5 million) for the entire 2001-2005 period but, according to the report from the Steering Committee for Project 112, the expenditure reached VND3,730 billion as of September 2003.