The event saw the participation of representatives of the Offices of the People’s Committee, the Departments of Information and Communications and the Departments of Justice from various provinces and cities across the country as well as representatives from the Authority of Information Technology Application, experts, and researchers.
According to statistics, the usage rate of e-government services by Vietnamese citizens was 1.78% in 2020 and 9.51% in 2021. The figure stood at 18% in the first seven months of 2022.
A survey in 2022 showed that only 4.85% of the interviewees said that they use the National e-Service Portal for many purposes, mainly looking for information on administrative procedures.
Furthermore, survey data from the Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) indicates that only 3.05% of respondents reported having created user profiles on the National eservices portals (ESP), while slightly over 1% utilised the portal for submitting administrative procedures.
This resulted from several challenges faced in the implementation of end-to-end e-government services, incomplete service-providing functions, and user-unfriendly interfaces.
Speaking at the event, Nguyen Minh Hong, Chairperson of the Vietnam Digital Communications Association, highly lauded the Government’s prioritisation of e-Government services in building a digital government.
“The Government, with the National Digital Transformation Committee as the focal point, focuses on two key areas, including enhancing the provision function for the 25 most essential e-services, and improving user experience through more user-friendly and easier-to-use interfaces.”
He stressed that achieving these goals will help Vietnam increase its score and accomplish the goal of reaching the top 50 countries in the UN e-Government ranking.
Digitalisation of public services is an important priority of the Vietnamese Government of Vietnam in an effort to enhance administrative reform in the 2021-2030 period.
This priority is recorded in important national strategic documents such as Decision No. 749/QD-TTg, approving the National Digital Transformation Programme to 2025, with a vision to 2030 and Government Resolution No. 76 /NQ-CP on promulgating the master programme for state administrative reform for the period of 2021-2030.
The research group from the UNDP in Vietnam and IPS identified five key issues regarding the user-friendliness of provincial e-services portals. These include inadequate features for implementing end-to-end e-services portals, suboptimal processes for conducting administrative procedures on the electronic platform, challenges in connecting data, user accounts, and interfaces between central and local eservices portal systems; difficulty in accessing eservices portals for visually impaired individuals and ethnic minorities; and an insufficient commitment to protecting personal data and ensuring information security.
The analysis of 200 user feedback and recommendations on the National eservices portals revealed a number of limitations technology, human resources, and processes.
Technical issues included faulty eservices portals; difficulties submitting, updating, and providing additional documents, and viewing application status; inability to make online payments, and rejected digital signatures.
Human-related shortcomings included officials returning applications without sufficient reasons, failures to explain or guide citizens when applications were incorrect, delayed response times on hotlines, officials lacking clarity about the processes, and inappropriate attitudes from officials.
Process and procedural limitations include delays in application acceptance, requests for online applicants to provide additional documents in person, and unclear processes for online submission, acceptance, return, and rejection of applications.
The report proposed two groups of recommendations to enhance the user-friendly and easy-to-use interface of National eservices portals.
Notably, the report recommends making e-Government services more accessible for people with disabilities by utilising automatic scanning tools to review, detect, and improve accessibility for those using screen readers.
Additionally, the report suggests involving groups of people with disabilities in evaluating the user experience of national eservices portals.
It is also crucial to enhance data connectivity between the National eservices portals and provincial eservices portals and establish regulations on technical standards for connecting and interoperating eservice delivery systems.
Patrick Haverman, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Vietnam, emphasised the importance of making e-services more accessible and usable by citizens, especially those who are being left behind in the digital transformation processes, as highlighted in the 2022 Digital Transformation Index Report.
