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| Processing administrative service requests at the Public Service Centre of Thu Duc ward, Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: VNA) |
Hanoi (VNA) – Vietnam is facing a need to study the development of a national digital governance platform to unify public administration, strengthen data governance and improve the delivery of public services, as the country accelerates administrative reform and digital transformation.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs' Department of Administrative Reform, Vietnam eliminated 697 administrative procedures and simplified another 673 in the first six months of 2026. It also abolished 1,754 business registration requirements, cutting processing time by 53% - equivalent to 51,247 out of 96,675 working days - and reducing compliance costs by 54.6% compared with 2024.
Online public service usage also continued to expand, with digital applications accounting for 37.9% of administrative dossiers processed by ministries and central agencies, and 93.57% at the local level.
The Ministry of Public Security reported that the VNeID electronic identification ecosystem is gradually evolving into a unified national digital identity platform, enabling citizens to access services more conveniently while providing businesses with a trusted authentication environment for developing digital services.
In taxation and finance, more than 505,000 businesses have adopted electronic invoices, generating over 7.3 billion e-invoices. State budget revenue from e-commerce reached 114.2 trillion VND (4.35 billion USD), up 9% year-on-year.
In banking, biometric authentication for 161.2 million customer transactions has reduced fraud cases by around 60%, generating estimated annual savings of 652 billion VND. Meanwhile, the verification of 115.8 million mobile phone subscriptions has helped prevent fraud-related losses estimated at 3 trillion VND each year.
Biometric verification has also been introduced at 19 airports, reducing passenger processing times to just three to five seconds and generating annual savings estimated at 126 billion VND.
The Ministry of Home Affairs also announced that it had completed the 2025 Satisfaction Index of Public Administration Services (SIPAS) and the 2025 Public Administration Reform Index (PAR Index).
The nationwide average SIPAS score reached 83.09%, while citizen satisfaction across the country's 34 provinces and cities ranged from 77.92% to 91.12%.
The average PAR Index reached 87.2% for ministries and ministerial-level agencies and 89.96% for provincial administrations - the highest level recorded to date.
Despite the progress, authorities acknowledged that significant challenges remain. Some software systems are still not interoperable or sufficiently stable, while information systems used to process administrative procedures at several ministries have experienced connectivity issues with local platforms, occasionally disrupting service delivery.
Some databases have yet to meet the required standards of being accurate, complete, clean and continuously updated. Delays in restructuring internal procedures and digitising administrative workflows have also slowed efforts to deliver public services regardless of administrative boundaries.
At the grassroots level, officials are often required to work across multiple digital systems and software platforms, reducing operational efficiency and increasing workloads.
Fragmented data management has also heightened cybersecurity risks. When population, digital identity, financial, land, health care, business and judicial data are stored across separate systems using different access controls, the risk of data breaches, identity fraud and abuse of public, banking, insurance and telecommunications services increases.
Authorities therefore argue that data must be managed through a unified, secure and transparent governance framework that enables comprehensive oversight of how information is accessed and used.
Against this backdrop, relevant agencies have been urged to study the development of a national digital governance platform.
Rather than replacing existing systems, the proposed platform will serve as a unified digital operating layer connecting all current government systems. Its greatest value would lie not only in streamlining administrative processes but also in creating a new governance model driven by data, monitored through performance indicators, evaluated on measurable outcomes and supported by real-time risk alerts.
The platform is expected to enable the Government to establish a unified digital management space linking central and local authorities, with every assigned task clearly identifying the responsible agency, implementation deadline, expected outputs, progress updates, delay warnings and accountability.
It will also allow leaders at all levels to monitor policy implementation, administrative services, socio-economic indicators, social welfare, healthcare, education and public security through a single integrated system instead of relying primarily on periodic reports.
For citizens and businesses, data already stored in national and sectoral databases could be authenticated and reused across services, reducing paperwork, saving time and costs, limiting the need for in-person transactions and improving service quality./.
