According to a report reviewing one year and six months of implementing Resolution No. 57-NQ/TW by the Standing Board of the Central Steering Committee for the Development of Science, Technology, Innovation and Digital Transformation, there remains a large gap between central and local levels in the implementation of online public services. Local indicators are high, while the rate of online dossiers at ministries and sectors has reached only 34.24%, the digitisation of dossiers 19.23%, and the rate of data reuse just 5.29%.
Digital government can only prove effective when data is interconnected, traceable and reusable. People and businesses should not have to provide again information that state agencies already have. Data reuse is, in essence, a prerequisite for cutting procedures, reducing manual data entry, and improving public-service productivity at the grassroots level. To thoroughly address the situation of “digital interfaces but manual processing” and ensure that data meets the requirements of being “accurate, complete, clean, and live”, international experience and practical implementation in localities show that the once-only principle must be fully enforced.
Ha Noi is among the localities at the forefront of institutionalising and implementing this principle. The city has reorganised its apparatus towards greater streamlining, linked with simplified procedures, and has rolled out a centralised, unified Public Administrative Service Centre model that is no longer dependent on administrative boundaries.
Nguyen Van Phong, Deputy Secretary of the Ha Noi Party Committee, said: “Ha Noi prioritises redesigning the way services are provided to people, following the principle of standardising before digitising. Responsibilities must be interconnected throughout the entire process of serving people and businesses. Old procedures must not simply be transferred unchanged to the electronic environment.”
As of July 2026, Ha Noi had completed the restructuring of more than 2,000 administrative procedures, processed more than 700,000 dossiers regardless of place of residence, and raised the data reuse rate to more than 97%. Thanks to application programming interface (API) connections from commune-level one-stop-shop units to national databases on population, land, civil status, and insurance, alongside the removal of redundant information fields, people no longer have to resubmit copies of documents. Meanwhile, compliance time and costs have been significantly reduced. Through process restructuring and application of the “once-only” principle, Ha Noi alone saved around 1.6 trillion VND for people and the state budget in 2025.
For the “once-only” principle to function smoothly, the shared Data Lakehouse plays a decisive role as the technical infrastructure. It gathers data from departments, sectors, communes, and wards, with strict authorisation and automatic monitoring logs, serving as a platform that enables grassroots officials to access information in real time.
However, building a data warehouse is only a necessary condition. The sufficient condition is that the data inside must meet the standards of being “accurate, complete, clean, live, unified, and shared.”
In Phu Tho, the locality has developed a Digital Transformation Project for the 2026-2030 period, implemented a real-time data-based management method, interconnected four axes at two levels, and operated a data-based growth governance and management system. According to Pham Dai Duong, Member of the Party Central Committee and Secretary of the Phu Tho Provincial Party Committee, to thoroughly address bottlenecks caused by fragmented data, the province is focusing on building its shared data warehouse.
The locality is carrying out a 90-day campaign to build and complete the provincial data warehouse; comprehensively review, clean, and standardise all specialised databases from the provincial to grassroots levels; and ensure that data promptly serves leadership, direction, management, and socio-economic development.
From practical experience in localities and issues identified after one year and six months of implementing Resolution No. 57, the key point is to shift from partial digitisation to reorganising entire processes on a data platform. A unified digital working environment for the commune level needs to be formed, while duplicate systems should be limited, moving towards single access point, single sign-on, automatic form filling using existing information.
Alongside this, artificial intelligence (AI) platforms should be developed to support public service, helping officials analyse data, look up documents, and process dossiers. In Ha Noi, the application of AI in document processing has helped officials reduce the time spent handling administrative paperwork by 60-70%.
Ministries and sectors must accelerate the development, completion, operation, and interconnection of national and specialised databases. Priority should be given to cleaning and standardising data on land, healthcare, education, social security, and civil status, so that data connection and sharing become substantive. Another important requirement is to reform methods of inspection, supervision, and performance evaluation, clearly distinguishing between mere procedural completion and completion that produces operational products and creates real value.
