Amongst solutions adopted by the southern largest city are digital signatures which have been applied within state agencies and agencies issuing from two to three electronic administrative procedures.
The Department of Industry and Trade of Ho Chi Minh City is currently handling a total of 116 administrative procedures. With this number of administrative procedures, on average each year the department receives over 90,000 administrative documents, equivalent to 350-400 documents per day.
Although the department has implemented approaches such as scheduling to get application submission numbers, consulting support and guidance on implementing administrative procedures via phone, and via electronic information portal, more than 300 people come to the department’s headquarters to carry out various administrative procedures.
This situation not only puts pressure on civil servants in the department who receive and return results, but also causes inconvenience for people and businesses. Therefore, the Department of Industry and Trade has promoted the application of digital signatures in management as well as handling administrative procedures for people and businesses. For the efficiency of using digital signatures, the department deployed mass registration for civil servants to use and practice in processing documents, data, and administrative procedures.
At the same time, the department has guided people and businesses to use digital signatures to access public services and administrative procedures more quickly and conveniently. As a result, in 2023, the rate of online documents with digital signatures reached 96.5 percent while all administrative procedures and documents issued using digital signatures were resolved with digital signatures.
According to Deputy Director of the Department of Industry and Trade Le Huynh Minh Tu, the application of digital signatures has brought many benefits to people, businesses in general and the Department of Industry and Trade in particular. Thanks to the application of digital signatures, city dwellers and businesses can carry out administrative procedures anytime and anywhere conveniently. Moreover, the results are returned immediately after the department's officials complete the processing without having to wait for the scheduled date to return the results. Businesses can use electronic results to perform other related tasks.
Vice Chairwoman Mai Thi Hong Hoa of District 1 People's Committee informed that the district has applied digital signatures, agency digital certificates and QR lookup codes to issue electronic licenses and improve the online administrative procedures. The expansion of the application of digital signatures combined with QR codes on licenses and the upgrade of many convenient features has better served people and businesses that make transactions without having to make direct declarations. Thereby, it has helped people use available documents and tools to transact and interact with the system instead of having direct contact with civil servants in the district.
From June 2023, the Department of Information and Communications of Ho Chi Minh City has coordinated with units to provide free personal digital signatures to people in one year to support people in using digital signatures, making it more convenient for doing online profiles. Immediately after that, localities stepped up propaganda and guidance for people and businesses to register to use digital signatures in completing administrative procedures. Departments, agencies and localities also promote the application of digital signatures in resolving administrative procedures.
Chairwoman of Cu Chi District People's Committee Pham Thi Thanh Hien revealed that the outlying district is promoting the implementation of receiving dossiers and submitting or producing to competent agencies or organizations in Ho Chi Minh City for administrative procedures on the information system. Up to now, the district has deployed the application of digital signatures and electronic authentication to all agencies and organizations in their internal operations and in working with other units via exchanging electronic documents in the digital environment.
The Chairwoman added that in 2024, the district will continue to focus on developing digital data, with a focus on the development, connection, and analysis of data for digital transformation, digital government, the digital economy and digital society. However, according to her, the promotion of digitization, effective use of data in state agencies and electronic records of public services need to be managed with record management systems. In particular, the application of specialized digital signatures at state agencies, and digital signatures for sending and receiving electronic documents on smart mobile devices with the aim of not using paper documents should be promoted more.
However, Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade Le Huynh Minh Tu acknowledged that in reality, the implementation still has limitations because businesses are still required to submit paper documents with red stamps when submitting profiles in some units.
Therefore, the Department of Industry and Trade requested agencies and units to recognize the results of electronic administrative procedures resolution using digital signatures. Ho Chi Minh City also needs to promulgate regulations and regulations on the use of digital signatures in online public services and integrate digital signature solutions, especially remote digital signature solutions, into public service portals to facilitate people while doing administrative procedures.
