Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai: Digital transformation needs a change of thinking

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Deputy Minister of Finance Vu Thi Mai chaired the conference.

Indispensable for the finance industry

Chairing the meeting, Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai said that the finance sector has made rapid and solid development steps and performed the sector's political tasks, as well as mobilized and effectively used financial resources for the country's socio-economic development. These achievements were due to the significant contribution of the informatics system and financial statistics.

So far, information technology (IT) has been applied extensively to most financial operations and become an indispensable part of key professional activities such as state budget management and operation; control of State budget revenues and expenditures, electronic payment and management of government bonds, customs and tax management, implementation of electronic tax, electronic customs, National Single Window, ASEAN Single Window, public debt management, pricing management, public asset management, financial market supervision, state reserve management and intra-sector management tasks.

IT development has been identified by the Party and the State as an effective tool to carry out three breakthroughs to develop the country, which is the key for our country to enter a new stage. The Politburo and the Government all issued Resolutions to set goals and solutions for this task.

Therefore, Deputy Minister wants to emphasize the role of heads of units, officials of the professional units and leaders. “If the operations do not set requirements, IT cannot meet them. To set requirements, we must understand digital transformation, the fourth industrial revolution and what benefits IT brings to the operations. Digital transformation opens up opportunities for Vietnam, but this is a comprehensive change to each business, organization, agency, citizen and field with a huge volume of work and it is a historic shift. If Vietnam wants to change its world rankings, it must go fast and go first to gain competitive advantages. Digital transformation does not need many facilities but needs a change of thinking,” the Deputy Minister said.

At the conference, Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai praised the officials in charge of informatics, information technology and statistics of the finance sector, who tried to overcome difficulties to complete digitalisation of the financial sector.

She believed that, with the right policies of the Party and the State, the attention of leaders from central to local levels and the high determination of officials, public servants and employees throughout the sector, the modernization of the sector and development of an electronic Ministry of Finance will be successful.

The conference.

Specific goals

Speaking at the conference, Director of the Department of Financial Informatics Nguyen Dai Tri said that Government’s Resolution No. 17/NQ-CP on a number of key tasks and solutions to develop e-Government for the 2019-2020 period has set very specific goals.

It is perfecting the E-Government platform to improve the operational efficiency of the state administrative apparatus and the service quality for people and businesses; developing e-government based on open data towards digital Government, digital economy and digital society; ensuring information and network security; upgrading the e-Government by the United Nations from 10 to 15 places by 2020, putting Vietnam into the group of four leading ASEAN countries in the United Nations e-Government rankings by 2025.

Based on the goals set by the Government, the Minister of Finance signed Decision No. 844/QD-BTC promulgating the Action Plan to deploy a number of key tasks and solutions to develop e-Government for the 2019-2020 period with orientation to 2025, including many specific criteria on public services.

Accordingly, completing the legal framework for investment in IT application to increase to outsourcing information technology services at the Ministry of Finance; issuing documents on management, connection and data sharing in the Finance sector, regulations on the management and operation of the finance sector’s IT systems.

The ratio of applications processed online accounts for more than 20 percent of total administrative applications of the Ministry of Finance; 30 percent of online public services at levels 3 and 4 of the Ministry of Finance are connected with the National Portal and 100 percent of administrative applications are carried out through the Ministry of Finance's Public Service and Single Window Portal.

By 2020, the finance sector will strive to have at least 30 percent of online public services performed at level 4; 100 percent of public services supported to answer questions for people and businesses; publicise people's satisfaction when using online public services; 20 percent of online public services using digital signatures on mobile platforms to carry out administrative procedures; 50 percent of online public services processed electronically; 20 percent of people's information automatically entered into online forms; and 50 percent of online public services using data from the National Enterprise Registration Database

The Ministry of Finance's Public Service and Single Window Portal provides interfaces for mobile devices. The finance sector’s Portal publicises full information according to the Government's regulations.

Also during this period, the document management and administration software of the Ministry of Finance will be connected and linked via the National Document Connecting Shaft for sending and receiving electronic documents; 90 percent of documents exchanged between state agencies in electronic form; at least 80 percent of dossiers at the Ministry of Finance are processed online.

A number of other criteria are also outlined, including: at least 30 percent of periodical reports (excluding confidential contents) are sent and received via the National Reporting System; cutting from 30 percent to 50 percent of meeting time, minimizing the use of paper documents through the e-Cabinet; connecting the Ministry of Finance's network with specialized data-transmission network of Party and State agencies.

From 2021 to 2025, the Ministry of Finance will integrate 50 percent of its online public services at levels 3 and 4 with the National Public Service Portal; the ratio of applications processed via online public services at levels 3 and 4 reaches 50 percent or higher; 80 percent of administrative procedures meet requirements of deploying online public services at levels 3 and 4; 90 percent of dossiers at the Ministry of Finance are processed online.

Also at the conference, the delegates heard about e-Government architecture in Finance and National Database architecture on finance.