According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the rate of using online public services has doubled, climbing to 24% since March. Meanwhile, after the previous 20 years of developing e-Government, the rate had only reached 12%. The promotion of e-Government among ministries and sectors has not been much affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but is tending to be accelerated due to the strongly emerging needs for information exchange and document sending/receipt on the axis for integrating national documents, as well as for online meetings at all levels in response to the disease. It can be said that COVID-19 has adversely affected many aspects of socio-economic life, but from a different perspective, it has brought opportunities to some areas, including e-Government.
In recent years, Vietnam has made great efforts to develop e-Government, in which the rate of providing online public services (on public service portals) is one of the important indicators when taking people as the centre of state agencies’ service. Online public services are provided to people anytime and anywhere, contributing to saving time and costs, ensuring transparency, improving the efficiency of state agencies, preventing and combating corruption, and promoting comprehensive administrative reform. According to calculations, Vietnam has saved nearly VND6.5 trillion (US$281.365 million) per year thanks to the operation of public service portals at all levels, including VND3.036 trillion (US$131.42 million) through the national public service portal (NPSP). Since December 2019, nearly 250 level-3 and level-4 online public services have been provided on the NPSP, with over 100,000 registered accounts, 4.3 million records of synchronised status and 27.5 million visits to explore information and services. At present, the facilitation of providing level-3 and level-4 online public services is becoming more and more urgent.
The Government Office has recently instructed and encouraged the restructuring and integration of online public services on the NPSP, calling on individuals, organisations and businesses to use level-3 and level-4 online public services on the national, ministry and provincial-level portals in order to minimise travel and direct contact. Accordingly, ministries, sectors and localities will prioritise resources to complete the integration and provision of 30% of the level-3 and level-4 online public services within their 2020 plans on utilising the NPSP to serve people and enterprises. The Government Office will also assist localities in integrating and providing online public services on the NPSP.
At the same time, to promote e-Government development and increase the rate of using online public services, the Prime Minister asked ministries, sectors and localities to immediately and effectively implement the Government’s Decree No. 45/2020/ND-CP on the observance of administrative procedures on the electronic environment, focusing on maximising the steps of implementing administrative procedures on the electronic environment to save time, costs and efforts of organisations, individuals and authorised agencies.
The response of individuals, organisations and the business community will help in optimising the advantages from e-Government information systems that have been implemented in recent times, thus ensuring that essential requirements in the production activities of businesses and the people are satisfied.
