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The application of IT has brought many benefits to both the financial sector management agencies and citizens and businesses. Photo: TBinh

Extensive and wide IT applications in all fields

Evaluating the Ministry of Finance's leading position in the ranking of readiness for development and application of information technology (IT) and communication (Vietnam ICT Index) in 2019, Mr. Nguyen Dai Tri, Director of the Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics at the Ministry of Finance, said that this result reflects the Ministry of Finance's relentless efforts in deploying IT in recent years.

The finance sector has made rapid and solid development steps, performed its political tasks, mobilized and effectively used financial resources for the country's socio-economic development.

IT has been widely and deeply applied to most financial operations, becoming a lifeline in key professional activities such as managing the state budget; management of state budget revenues and expenditures; electronic payment and government bond management; management in the field of tax and customs; deploying electronic tax, electronic customs and national single window and ASEAN single window; public debt management; price management, public property management; managing and supervising financial markets; state reserve management along with internal management tasks.

"The fact that the Ministry of Finance has continuously led the Vietnam ICT Index for nearly a decade has shown the close support and direction of the Ministry’s leaders and the strong determination and commitment of the leaders of the units under the Ministry of Finance in deploying IT. Along with that, there is no small effort of IT staff and finance statistics,” Mr. Tri said.

In fact, if you look back on the efforts of the Ministry of Finance over the past year, one can clearly see the reasons for maintaining its position in the ranking.

In recent years, units from the Ministry to vertical branches such as Tax, Customs and Treasury, have developed and operated many large and core information systems in the field. State management on finance and budget is assigned by the Party and State, especially in the fields of finance, tax, customs, budget, treasury, securities and reserves. These information systems have played an important role in the effort of reforming administrative procedures, improving the efficiency of the finance and budget management of the Ministry of Finance.

The national database on finance, including 12 specialized databases, some specialized databases (tax, customs, budget collection, price, public goods, etc.) have initially brought a significant improvement in public finance management towards modernization.

The number of enterprises using electronic tax declaration services has reached 99.98% of the total number of enterprises operating in the country. 99% of enterprises registered to use electronic tax payment service, 94.73% of documents were implemented by electronic tax refund.

Implementing e-customs procedures at all customs units, there were 13 of 14 ministries involved in connecting the national single window mechanism, with 173 administrative procedures implemented through this mechanism.

Internal IT application of the Ministry of Finance also achieved a certain number of results. 100% of executive guidance information was posted on the web portal; linking electronic documents in the whole financial sector through the implementation of eDocTC program; deploying and perfecting a number of intra-branch centralized management information systems such as intra-industry asset management software, intra-industry accounting, emulation and commendation software.

Initially deploying some new technologies of the fourth industrial revolution such as server virtualization technology to optimize hardware investment efficiency; huge data analysis technology; initially applying social networking technology, mobile technology in providing online public services, electronic tax system, electronic customs, automatic customs management system at seaports, system ASEAN national customs gate.

Constantly reforming

The Ministry of Finance has been very active in promoting IT to reform administrative procedures, thanks to which the Ministry of Finance's online public services have been highly appreciated by businesses and citizens.

According to Nguyen Dai Tri, as of August 2019, the Ministry of Finance has deployed and provided 973 public services online, including 112 level 1 public services; 354 level 2 public services; 197 online public services at level 3 and 310 online public services at level 4. The Ministry of Finance always leads ministries and branches in the number of online public services at levels 3 and 4. Document processing results online by the end of August 2019 of the entire Finance sector also reached 97% of the total number of applications, exceeding the ministries' targets in Resolution 17 / NQ-CP in the period of 2019-2020 by 20%.

These achievements show that the Ministry of Finance's online public services is always in the leading group of ministries and sectors in the annual Vietnam ICT Index ranking report.

Along with the deployment of online public service provision, the Ministry of Finance has also implemented comprehensive measures to reform administrative procedures and improve the business environment.

Specifically, in the first six months of 2019, the Ministry of Finance issued six Decisions announcing the abolition of 22 administrative procedures, amending and supplementing 15 administrative procedures and issuing 15 new administrative procedures in the fields of tax, customs, securities, banking and insurance. At the same time, review, reduce and simplify 117 out of 190 business conditions in 13 industries (cutting 47 conditions and simplifying 70 conditions) under the Ministry's management.

In order to enhance the effective use of online public services in the whole finance sector in the future, the Ministry of Finance will also continue to promote the propaganda and support people and businesses to increase the use of communication channels via online public service applications instead of performing administrative procedures through direct communication channels; enhancing the digitalization of records so as to enable professional cadres and citizens and businesses to easily search and reuse electronic records in the process of implementing administrative procedures; continuing to review, deploy and upgrade online public services in order to create favorable conditions for people and businesses to carry out administrative procedures of the finance sector.