Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh: Administrative reform in the spirit of "5 pushes"

The meeting was held online between the Government headquarters and 63 provinces and centrally-run cities.

Attending the meeting were Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang; Minister, Head of the Government Office Tran Van Son, Deputy Head of the Steering Committee; Ministers, Heads of ministerial-level agencies, Government agencies; leaders of ministries, branches, central agencies, members of the Steering Committee; Chairmen of People's Committees, Heads of the Steering Committee for administrative reform of provinces and centrally run cities.

Comrade Trieu The Hung, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee, Head of the Steering Committee for Administrative Reform of Hai Duong province chaired the meeting at the provincial bridge. Also attending the meeting at the Hai Duong bridge were members of the Steering Committee; representatives of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Fatherland Front; Provincial Police; leaders of departments, branches, districts, towns, and cities; members of the Working Group assisting the Provincial Steering Committee.

Administrative reform contributes to the overall success of the country.

The meeting focused on evaluating the results of administrative reform in the first 6 months of 2024; discussing directions and tasks of administrative reform in the last months of 2024 and solutions to overcome shortcomings and limitations in implementing tasks in the coming time.

According to the Steering Committee, in the past 6 months, 2,870 documents have been issued by ministries, branches and localities to direct, urge and thoroughly implement administrative reform tasks. Government leaders and ministries, branches and localities have actively participated in many dialogue forums and directly directed the removal of difficulties and obstacles. Inspection and examination of the responsibility of civil servants in performing their duties have been strengthened.

Institutional reform and law-making have received attention and many innovations. In the first 6 months of the year, the Government held 5 thematic meetings on law-making; issued 83 decrees and 8 resolutions; submitted to the National Assembly for permission to apply the Laws on Land, Housing, Real Estate Business and Credit Institutions to take effect earlier than August 1, 2024. Established a Steering Committee to review and handle problems in the system of legal documents, headed by the Prime Minister.

Administrative procedure reform and improvement of the investment and business environment have been promoted. Of which, 168 business regulations, 247 administrative procedures, citizen papers have been cut and simplified, and 108 administrative procedures have been decentralised. The Prime Minister has approved the simplification plan for 40 internal administrative procedures. Pilot implementation of the One-level Public Administration Service Center Model under the Provincial People's Committee has been assigned in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Ninh, and Binh Duong.

The reform of the organizational apparatus has been carried out drastically and has had many positive changes. To date, 33 ministerial-level public service units have been reduced, and it is expected that in 2024, 72 public service units under the Prime Minister's authority will be reduced. Localities have reduced 10 department-level organizations under the Provincial People's Committee and 8 department-level organizations under the District People's Committee. There are 53 provinces and cities that have reorganized 49 district-level units and 1,247 commune-level units. Implementing staff streamlining, in the first 6 months of 2024, ministries, branches and localities reduced 3,853 people; of which, localities are 3,746 people.

The reform of the civil service system has had many positive changes. The reform of salary policy has had positive results, officially increasing the basic salary from 1.8 million to 2.34 million from July 1, 2024, ensuring fairness, equality, harmony and stability. In the first 6 months of the year, the whole country recruited 13,965 civil servants, public employees and 30 excellent graduates, young scientists. Discipline and public service discipline have been tightened; violations have been strictly handled; in the first 6 months of the year, 139 cadres, 432 civil servants and 767 public employees were disciplined.

Public finance reform has been actively implemented: State budget revenue in the first 6 months reached 60% of the estimate, up 15.7%; about 700 trillion VND has been accumulated from increased revenue sources and state budget expenditure savings to be used for increasing basic salary, pensions, and subsidies from July 1, 2024; fiscal policy solutions, tax exemptions, reductions, and extensions to support people and businesses with a scale of about 160.5 trillion VND have been issued.

National digital transformation and digital government development have been implemented vigorously, effectively and substantially: The legal framework for digital government development has been actively improved; national and specialized databases have been promoted; data connection, integration and sharing have developed; online public service provision for people and businesses has been promoted; Project 06 implementation has achieved positive results.

At the meeting, leaders of ministries, branches and localities discussed and analyzed in depth the outstanding results in building and developing e-Government and digital Government, especially in building databases, implementing online public services; reforming the civil service regime; strengthening discipline, administrative discipline, and civil service ethics; institutional reform in the banking sector; administrative reform to promote disbursement of public investment capital; quality of service to people and businesses; the impact of administrative reform on socio-economic development and lessons learned...

Ministries, sectors and localities propose to continue to strictly implement the directions of the Government, the Prime Minister and the Steering Committee for Administrative Reform; perfect institutions and prioritize resources for administrative reform. At the same time, promote digitalization; integrate, connect and share national and specialized databases, ministries, sectors and localities; continue to decentralize and delegate power; synchronize infrastructure, provide specific and detailed instructions for entities to implement administrative reform; strengthen information and propaganda so that people can actively participate in the administrative reform process...

Concluding the meeting, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, Head of the Steering Committee, pointed out a number of outstanding results in administrative reform in the first 6 months of 2024; acknowledged, commended and highly appreciated the efforts, attempts and results achieved by ministries, branches and localities; the drastic direction of the Steering Committee members in the past time; and many positive and important contributions to the overall success of the whole country.

Frankly pointing out some limitations in administrative reform such as the lack of flexibility in direction and management, the backlog of documents, the slow reform of administrative procedures, the cumbersome procedures, the inadequacies in the organization and apparatus arrangement; administrative discipline and order are not strict in some places and at some times..., the Prime Minister said that the reason is that administrative reform has not received due attention; the assignment of tasks and responsibilities is not clear; there is a lack of tools to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of instructions; the law-making process is complicated and inflexible.

The Prime Minister pointed out that digital infrastructure in some sectors and fields is still weak and unsynchronized; the quality of civil servants and public employees is uneven; the lack of high-quality human resources has partly reduced the effectiveness of implementing some administrative reform tasks; in some places, coordination between agencies and units is not tight; there is still a situation of pushing and shoving, hesitation, fear of mistakes, fear of responsibility in the implementation process...

Once discussed and agreed upon, it must be implemented.

Presenting lessons learned in administrative reform, the Prime Minister said that it is necessary to seriously implement the Party's guidelines and policies, the State's policies and laws; to have high political determination, great efforts, and drastic actions; to take people and businesses as the main subjects and the center; to strengthen dialogue, listen and promptly detect and handle arising problems; to promote information and communication work...

Regarding the tasks and solutions in the coming time, the Prime Minister thoroughly grasped the viewpoint of implementing administrative reform in the spirit of "5 pushes": Stepping up the review, removing difficulties, obstacles, and bottlenecks in institutions, mechanisms, and policies in resource mobilization; stepping up dialogue, sharing, and handling arising obstacles and shortcomings to unblock, promote development, expand production and business, and create livelihoods for people. Along with that, it is necessary to step up public administration, strengthen public discipline and order, and push back negativity; step up digital transformation, build digital government, digital society, digital citizens, digitize records and databases, improve the effectiveness of coordination in data exploitation and sharing; step up the implementation of cashless financial spending, fight negativity, and reduce compliance costs.

On that basis, the Prime Minister requested the members of the Steering Committee to urgently review and clearly identify bottlenecks that are hindering administrative reform activities, propose specific solutions to remove them; and prioritize immediate resolution of hot, urgent, and pressing issues among the people.

Ministries, branches and localities strictly implement the direction of the Government, the Prime Minister, the 2024 Action Plan of the Steering Committee and the administrative reform tasks set out in the plan of each agency and unit; speed up the promulgation of detailed regulations, especially for the laws passed at the 7th Session. Along with that, step up the review and propose solutions to handle contradictory, overlapping, inappropriate and impractical regulations; review and propose solutions to reduce and simplify licenses related to business activities; strengthen decentralization and delegation of authority along with resource allocation.

The Prime Minister requested the People's Committees of Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong and Quang Ninh provinces to pilot the model of a one-level public administrative service center under the provincial People's Committees according to the one-stop, one-stop mechanism, from September 2024 to the end of 2025 for preliminary review and re-evaluation.

“Ministries, sectors and localities must complete the allocation of public investment capital by July 2024, so that the disbursement rate for the whole year reaches over 95%, because this is one of the driving forces for growth,” the Prime Minister noted.

The Prime Minister also directed ministries, branches and localities to focus on implementing the arrangement of administrative units at district and commune levels for the 2023-2025 period, striving to basically complete it by September 2024, ensuring organizational stability for localities to hold Party congresses at all levels in 2025; strengthen inspection and examination to improve discipline and administrative order in performing public duties; focus on reviewing, amending and perfecting mechanisms, policies, improving processes and procedures to resolve legal and resource "bottlenecks" to facilitate the disbursement of public investment capital in the last months of 2024; propose timely rewards for organizations and individuals with outstanding achievements in administrative reform.

The Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Home Affairs to review and fully institutionalize, ensuring consistency with Regulation No. 148-QD/TW dated May 23, 2024 of the Politburo on the authority of the head in temporarily suspending the work of subordinate officials when necessary or when there are signs of serious violations of Party regulations and State laws; organize, guide and urge ministries, branches and localities to complete the arrangement of public service units and district and commune-level administrative units.

The Ministry of Home Affairs urgently develops and completes the dossier proposing the development of a Law amending and supplementing the Law on Cadres and Civil Servants; the Law on Public Employees; the Law on Government Organization; the Law on Organization of Local Government; the Decree on policies to attract and promote talented people in state agencies; implement the contents of salary policy reform according to Conclusion No. 83-KL/TW dated June 21, 2024 of the Politburo and Resolution No. 142/2024/QH15 of the 7th Session of the 15th National Assembly; promptly urge and guide the removal of obstacles and shortcomings in the implementation process.

The Ministry of Justice performed well the tasks of the standing agency of the Steering Committee for reviewing and handling difficulties in the system of legal documents; advised and assisted the Prime Minister's Working Group in reviewing legal documents; submitted to the Prime Minister for promulgation a Decision on the list and assigned the agency in charge of drafting documents detailing the implementation of the Laws and Resolutions passed at the 7th Session; studied and proposed to the Government to amend the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents to submit to the National Assembly at the 8th Session.

The Ministry of Finance continues to study and propose measures to resolve difficulties in implementing support packages for people and businesses in production and business. The Government Office urges and guides ministries, branches and localities to carry out administrative procedure reform under the direction of the Government and the Prime Minister.

The Head of Government requested the Ministry of Public Security to: Organize the effective implementation of the transition to using VNeID as the only account in performing online public services; research and expand the utilities on the VNeID application to serve citizens when handling work.

The State Bank of Vietnam effectively deploys the connection and exploitation of population information in the National Population Database, chip-embedded citizen identification cards, electronic identification accounts to serve online public services, credit operations and prevent and combat illegal activities, fraud, money laundering... The Ministry of Finance promotes digital transformation and digitization in tax collection, tax collection right from cash registers, especially food and beverage services; continues to perfect institutions and digitize public finance and public asset management.

According to the Prime Minister, administrative reform is a difficult task, affecting many organizations, people, sectors and fields, but it cannot be avoided in order to contribute to unlocking resources, reducing compliance costs for people and businesses, reducing production costs, reducing prices, and improving the competitiveness of products participating in the global supply chain. Members of the Steering Committee, ministries, sectors and localities "have made efforts, need to make more efforts"; with the spirit of "not saying no, not saying difficult, not saying yes but not doing" but "having discussed, having agreed, must be implemented", "only discussing and doing, not backtracking", "clearly assigning people, clear work, clear responsibilities, clear progress, clear efficiency", immediately implementing tasks and solutions to promote administrative reform, contributing to promoting the successful implementation of socio-economic development goals and tasks in 2024 and the following years.