According to assessment made by the National Committee on Digital Transformation in the National Digital Transformation Report for the first six months of 2024 published on July 10, Da Nang is a typical example of full-process online public services nationwide with 97% of administrative procedures provided as full-process online public services; the rate of full-process online submission reached 66%. With the above-mentioned results, the National Digital Transformation Agency under the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications - MIC proposed that Da Nang promote the maximum provision of qualified online public services to the full process for other localities to follow. So what has Da Nang been done to achieve this goal?

The Da Nang Intelligent Operation Centre comes into operation, contributing to promoting online public services throughout the process. Photo: M.QUE

Infrastructure goes first

As of July 2024, the rate of administrative procedures provided as full-process online public services nationwide reached 48%, of which the average rate of ministries and branches reached 61%; the provincial and municipal levels recorded 17%.

Meanwhile, Da Nang reached 66%, an increase of 46% compared to the end of 2023 (nearly 4 times the average rate at the provincial and municipal levels). These positive results have been mainly attributed to the city’s efforts in promptly deploying and continuously updated synchronous solutions based on the strengths of information technology.

According to Mr. Nguyen Quang Thanh, the Director of the Da Nang Department of Information and Communications, full-process online public services mean submitting documents online, processing documents online and returning electronic results online or by post.

Thus, full-process online public services apply to eligible administrative procedures when specialised legal regulations allow for full implementation online, citizens do not need to go to the administrative agency to submit or directly sign documents.

Promoting online public services throughout the entire process also requires the city’s urban network infrastructure, data centré, platforms and smart databases to be continuously upgraded and expanded.

Da Nang currently has a submarine optical cable station landing in Hoa Hai Ward, Ngu Hanh Son District with 2 optical cable lines SMW and APG, with a total current capacity of 55,132 Tb/s, accounting for 14.37% of the total capacity of 8 submarine optical cable lines in Viet Nam, which can be expanded to reach a capacity of 40% for Viet Nam’s international connections.

The city has built an local area network (LAN) with a total length of nearly 400km of underground optical cable, connecting 145 agencies, units and organizations; piloting and installing 8 radio transmission stations using LoRa technology (low energy, wide coverage); cooperated with the Military Industry and Telecommunications Group (Viettel) to put into operation the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure with 208 Nb-IoT stations in the seven local districts in the city.

As of July 2024, the i-Speed Internet access speed measurement system recorded by the Viet Nam Internet Center (VNNIC) showed that Da Nang had the highest mobile broadband network speed among 63 provinces and cities nationwide with 75.84 Mbps. Previously, in April 2024, Da Nang had the highest fixed broadband network download speed in the country with 152.28 Mbps.

In parallel, Da Nang has a city data centre with a storage capacity of 115TB; VNPT data center with a floor area of 800m2, arranging 100 racks - storage devices and managing electronic devices at the data centres; CMC data center has a floor area of 200m2, 11 racks; the Viettel data centre has 100 racks. VNPT and CMC centres have achieved Tier-III standards for design, operation and management assessment of a data centre’s infrastructure. The data center of Software Park No. 2 is expected to have a floor area of 800m², with a maximum of 80 racks.

The above-mentioned infrastructure operates stably because Da Nang has the highest density of transformer stations in the Central Viet Nam and Central Highlands regions, specifically 15 110kV transformer stations with a total installed capacity of 1,331 MW, along with 4,873 auxiliary transformer stations with a total capacity of 2,341 MW.

An important infrastructure that contributes to increasing the rate of online public services throughout the process is the operation of the Da Nang Intelligent Operation Centre (IOC) from August 14, 2023.

Accordingly, the city has deployed smart public service monitoring through IOC, including monitoring services, statistics on the status of dossier processing by agencies, and urging agencies to handle dossiers that are close to the deadline. Thanks to that, the rate of overdue dossiers decreased from 3.6% in 2023 to 0.1% in the first six months of 2024 (mainly criminal records due to the need to be verified in other localities).

Employees work at the Da Nang Intelligent Operation Centre. Photo: M.QUE

Save time and costs

The Phu Hai Hoang Company Limited in Thanh Khe District has many years of experience in the construction sector, so there are many administrative procedures. Previously, businesses often spent a lot of time paying insurance premiums, taxes and legal documents. However, in the past year, implementing administrative procedures online has helped Mr. Tran Huu Hai, the company’s Director, save a lot of time.

Mr. Hai said that online public services have become a strong arm supporting businesses in digitising records and procedures. With nearly 100% of the total number of online public administrative procedures being carried out, it has met the trend of working remotely for businesses. Especially, since the beginning of 2024, the collection of construction permit fees for many groups of projects has been reduced by 50% compared to before, which also helped businesses save costs.

The satisfaction of businesses as cited above has been mainly attributed to the city implementing Resolution No. 89/2023/NQ-HDND dated December 14, 2023 stipulating the fee collection level under the authority of the Da Nang People’s Council when performing administrative procedures through online public services in the area.

Accordingly, from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2025, the city exempts fees for birth, death, marriage registration, issuance of marital status certificates, household registration applied at the People’s Committees of wards and communes when performing online services; reduce 50% of the fee collection level for granting construction permits for individual houses, other works or adjusting and extending construction permits when performing online public services.

According to Mr. Nguyen Quang Thanh, every year the city’s administration assigns targets for online public services associated with the responsibilities of heads of agencies and localities; require officials, civil servants and public employees to use online public services of other State agencies; recommend businesses to prioritise using online public services by industry and sector.

Since 2019, the city has reduced processing time by up to 50% for online records compared to direct record processing by putting the Public Service Portal into operation as a core platform to quickly set up online public services at dichvucong.danang.gov.vn.

The online public service portal is regularly updated to fully meet the utilities and technical criteria according to the instructions of the Vietnamese Government Office and the Ministry of Information and Communications, thereby raising most online public services to the full level.

The city’s public service portal has a number of outstanding functions and features compared to other localities such as a public service platform integrated with an online payment gateway; integrating a digital citizen platform; forming an electronic data warehouse; providing public career services and online one-stop services throughout the process; integrating digital signature services of the National Electronic Authentication Centre; integrating the national database on population and providing digitally signed electronic records; implementing notifications and transactions with people via Zalo.

As of early June 2024, there were 8,527 reviews recorded at the Da Nang Public Service Portal, of which the satisfaction rate reached nearly 100%.

Reporting by MAI QUE, CHIEN THANG - Translating by A.THU