Administrative reform will not be very effective if information
technology is not applied, a Ho Chi Minh City leader has warned.
Speaking
at a meeting with the city People’s Council on July 10, Deputy Chairman
of the People’s Committee Le Manh Ha said information technology and
administration should be closely linked, and pointed to the Republic of
Korea, which he said has achieved such good social and economic
development thanks to their investment in information technology.
“It will be a great challenge to serve the city of 10 million people without information technology.”
For
many years administrative reform has only partly made use of
information technology and so the results have been moderate, he said.
Le
Hoai Trung, Deputy Director of the Department of Home Affairs, who was
questioned by deputies of the municipal People’s Council about the
effectiveness of reform, said the time it takes for registering the
civil status of a child under six has been shortened to five days from
nearly a month.
“People needed to visit several times for
completing the procedures. Now they need to come just once. We work with
the post office to send documents home.”
This model would also be applied in other sectors, he said.
He
spoke about putting administrative works online so that citizens do not
have to visit government offices and queue up for a long time.
Nguyen
Thi Quyet Tam, Chairwoman of People’s Council, said the Department of
Tax has received some praise from the public for administration reform,
but there are still a lot of complaints.
Le Xuan Duong, deputy
head of the department, said his agency gets more than 100 million
applications a year, but admitted that “administration reform is very
necessary, especially during the global integration period.”
In
the past companies and individuals had to declare their tax liability 12
times a year, but now they have to do it only four times, he said.
Completing
procedures for a tax refund has come down to six days from 15, and tax
registration, to three days from five, he said.
“To simplify
procedures and reduce the waiting time, the use of information
technology is vital. The department has a pilot programme to declare tax
online.
“Around 132,000 enterprises in the city have registered to declare tax online.”
According
an official from the City’s Department of Information and
Communication, the one-door digital system installed in all districts
allows officials to work online.
But its efficacy has been found wanting because it has not been linked down to the ward level, he said.
Ha
said HCM City has the best information technology system in the country
but its officials’ IT knowledge is among the worst, and blamed it on
the attitude of senior officials.
While all departments and
districts in the city are provided with digital mail boxes, their rate
of use is only 40 percent, he pointed out.
“We are given a very good car, but we do not know how to drive it.”
Tam concurred with him, saying application of information technology is an important factor in administrative reform.
“The
office of the People’s Council sends emails to departments and
districts, but we do not get replies. So we have to make phone calls.”
Ha
said some documents remain in limbo for up to two years, and called for
reducing paperwork. The city is trying to bring all administrative
procedures online, including registration of civil status and
businesses, obtaining land use rights, and issue of work permits for
foreigners.-VNA