Online Public Service of State Treasury: Scientific Procedures and Accuracy

Online services are being increasingly improved, creating maximum convenience for organizations and individuals having relations with the State Treasury. Picture: Thuy Linh.

Reduction of the "delay" of the document

The online public services are officially operated and provided by the state treasury system for budget-using units which open trading accounts at the State Treasuries of the provinces or cities directly under the Central Government, State Treasuries of urban districts, provincial towns or cities and the State Treasury from 1/2/2018. In the process of implementation, the State Treasury has developed solutions to improve the quality of service provision, ensuring the progress of supply and serving the units using the budget. Up to now, the State Treasury's online public services have been implemented on a large scale and received the support and active participation of many organizations, units and individuals which have relations with the State Treasury that has brought many practical benefits.

According to the assessment of the units using the budget, service providers are the inevitable trend of the process of administrative reform, creating favorable conditions and reducing travel time for units, reducing operating costs, limiting the forging of signatures and the seals of units, which are signed by the chief accountants and the heads of the units with digital signatures; Payment information is confidential.

Mrs. Nguyen Thi Hai, Head of Administration Department of Tax Administration, Department of Taxation Quang Ninh, said that from July 1, 2015, Quang Ninh Department of Taxation started to use public services at Quang Ninh State Treasury. Since its inception, 96 sets of documents (each containing a variety of documents) have been implemented through the online public services.

"Since using this service, the processing and payment of tax invoices and vouchers of the Tax Department is much faster, reducing the "delay" of the voucher. Most of the documents submitted to the system are processed once. In addition, the accountant does not spend much time going to the Treasury and can sit at the office to handle the work. This is a scientific and accurate process," Ms. Hai shared.

Another advantage of the online public services is that it provides information on time, process of receiving dossiers and controlling payment through such status as "State Treasury Denied or Receipt of Dossiers"; "State Treasury is processing dossiers"; "State Treasury has paid or denied payment"; "State Treasury denied or received dossiers" for budget spending units. This has contributed to increased transparency in the control of payment records of the State Treasury and through which units actively know the status and results of processing payment records of their units.

Mrs. Pham Thi Hanh, Chief Accountant of the Quang Ninh Department of Education, said that since the use of the State Treasury Department’s online public services, the control of records has become easier. "As soon as the documents are posted on the system, the accountant can know what stage the file is in, and if there are errors and when there are errors, they are immediately reported to the system. Since then, each unit handling the work has been stricter in reviewing and mastering the time involved," she said.

It can be said that the online public service has helped the State Treasury system to ensure the transparency of records, documents, control content, and implementation of electronic payment control process. Through the information technology service center, leaders of the State Treasury at all levels can check the status of processing control records through statistical reports, thereby increasing the responsibility of expenditure control staff in the process of performing the tasks..

Shortening steps of implementation

Because the online public services is still relatively new, besides the advantages of time and accuracy, there are still some problems that budgetary units still face. According to Nguyen Thi Hai, now the tax authorities and the State Treasury are using systems for separate document management, so the work has to be operated twice, once is to enter the unit’s system, then to transfer to the State Treasury’s system. Therefore, the import of documents to the system still takes time.

Chief Accountant of the Quang Ninh Department of Education also shared, now, when the files are stored into the system, if this activity is not done continuously, the updated data will be lost at once.

"The process of doing something sometimes happens due to time interruption. At the same time, when entered incorrectly, it must not be corrected at that place, and this activity must be re-entered from the beginning. Hopefully in the coming time, the State Treasury could overcome this situation to further improve the online public services," commented Pham Thi Hanh.

Another obstacle, according to the State Treasury, is the process of registering digital certificates for titles: Account Holder and Authorized Person, Chief Accountant and Authorized Persons of Budget Use Units (for units need specialized digital signature registration) issued by the Government Cipher Committee. This regulation causes many difficulties and is time-consuming, and to some extent affects the participation of organizations and individuals. Pursuant to Circular No. 08/2016 / TT-BQP dated 1/20/2016 of the Ministry of Defense providing regulations on the provision, management and use of specialized digital signature certification services for Party, State, in order to register for the unit’s number directly using the budget (usually a Level 4 SA), the registrar must register with the higher level agency (Level 3 SA) , mixed level 3 SA shall be synthesized and submitted to the Level 2 SA, the Level 1 SA (the managing ministry) Compiles and submits registration with the Government Cipher Committee. Each step done needs more time to process. As a result, the State Treasury has proposed the Government Cipher Committee to reform administrative procedures, amend the procedures and time to issue digital certificates to budget-using units.

In addition, the practice shows that the legal profile of many investment projects, each type of record is very thick, and if scanned, it will occupy a very large capacity and can not be transmitted over the network, so for the legal records of Investment projects, it must still be sent directly by paper to the State Treasury. This has limited the utility of public services. Therefore, the State Treasury proposes to the Ministry of Finance to petition the Government to direct the Ministry of Planning and Investment to digitize the data and sign the public investment expenditure data (medium-term plan, annual public investment plan), and implement the electronic contract on the national bidding system and send it electronically to the Ministry of Finance as a basis for control instead of requesting investors to bring paper copies or scans that are too large to the control unit. Investors only send e-data to the State Treasury unit of the electronic data files created by the investor (such as payment requests, withdrawal documents ...).