Participants included leaders and officers of relevant agencies of the VSS and leaders of social insurance agencies of localities.

 VSS Deputy Director General Le Hung Son speaks at the meeting.

Addressing the opening ceremony, VSS Deputy Director General Le Hung Son said in response to the country’s socio-economic development requirements, the State had issued policies and directed the implementation of administrative reform for the whole State apparatus and operation mode in order to find solutions to build an efficient and effective State administrative apparatus; towards a modern, democratic, transparent and strong administration; using appropriate management tools.

Those solutions include the implementation of an administrative management model applying the quality management system based on the ISO quality standard of Vietnam with each version in each period. At present, it is based on the quality management system standard ISO 9001 - 2015.

The social security sector of Vietnam applied the ISO quality management system standard 9001:2008 during the 2010-2020 period, and on March 23, 2022, VSS issued Decision No   555/QĐ-BHXH to publicise a quality management system framework following ISO 9001:2015 of the social security sector of Vietnam. It is applied to agencies of VSS and social insurance agencies of localities.

This helps meet the requirements of improving the operation process in dealing with administrative procedures and the process to handle internal work of VSS units and social insurance agencies of provinces and cities in a scientific and effective manner; and update changes in the structure of standards, terms, concepts and criteria to help VSS units to determine the goals to be implemented based on the content of work and forecasts to fulfill work requirements.

At the meeting, Chief of Office of the VSS Chu Manh Sinh introduced the main contents of the framework following the national quality standard ISO 9001:2015 of the social security sector with three main parts:

Part 1: Guiding VSS agencies to determine the scope of applying the quality management system following regulations of the Prime Minister and Circulars and Decisions of relevant ministries, ensuring that heads of the agencies and relevant individuals participate in the process of building and applying the quality management system. Part 1 also regulates responsibilities in building and applying the quality management system, under which the VSS is responsible for building and publicising ISO 9001:2015. VSS agencies and social insurance agencies of provinces and cities will refer to VSS’ regulations to build and apply the quality management system following the framework model to ensure efficiency.

Participants at the meeting.

Part 2: Guiding the development and application of provisions of the national quality standard ISO 9001:2015. This part includes: (1) an overview of basic changes of ISO 9001:2015 in comparison with ISO 9001:2008; (2) the content of the model of quality management system following the national quality standard ISO 9001:2015; (3) the quality management system manual; (4) general process in dealing with internal tasks of VSS agencies and social insurance agencies of provinces and cities. In this part, the quality management manual is considered one of the important documents on the quality management system of the Vietnam social insurance sector. The manual was issued by leaders of VSS, affirming that VSS built and maintained the quality management system following ISO 9001:2015 in order to effectively and transparently carry out all of its tasks and activities.

Part 3: Including the whole process of dealing with administrative procedures in the form of detailed explanations (public services) for social insurance agencies of provinces and cities to apply in building their own process.

“With the three parts mentioned above, part 1 helps agencies to understand ways to define the scope of applying the quality management system of the VSS, thus gradually reforming and updating changes in administrative procedures and legal documents to complete their quality management system; part 2 helps agencies to be proactive in studying and building documents as required by the standard ISO 9001:2015; and part 3 will help agencies to apply and build processes to deal with administrative procedures,” Sinh said.

Participants at the meeting.

VSS Deputy Director General Le Hung Son said the building and application of the quality management system following Vietnam’s standard ISO 9001:2015 required heads of VSS agencies and directors of social insurance agencies of localities to resolutely direct their units to carry out related tasks following the framework model.  

The application in the current period will encounter many obstacles and difficulties in the understanding of the concepts, terms and regulations of the ISO 9001 - 2015 standard. Therefore, leaders of VSS agencies and social insurance agencies of localities need to pay attention to studying changes of ISO 9001:2015 compared to ISO 9001:2008, and promptly reflecting any problems during the implementation process to receive timely guidance and solutions.