The social security sector timely issued an administrative reform plan for 2024, which was officially dated December 28, 2023. The plan serves as a guiding framework for all 63 local social security offices, empowering them to devise their own localised plans. These plans are closely aligned with the orders from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and are tailored to address the specific practical conditions surrounding administrative reform.

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The VSS has issued a range of documents focused on specific areas. These include a comprehensive management plan for administrative reform, three documents related to organisational structure, five documents outlining job positions and professional procedures.

The VSS has prioritised strengthening communication on administrative reform in the first six months of 2024 through various channels, including the VSS portal, social network channels, and collaboration with news agencies.

About 500 articles and documents linked to administrative reform have been published on the VSS portal.

Ten press releases and newsletters have been issued to promptly provide information on administrative reform to press agencies.

There have been over 550 articles and media reports covering the sector's efforts in implementing the Government's Project 06 and the benefits that people and businesses enjoy from the project.

The VSS has responded to inquiries of individuals and organisations about administrative procedures on the portal, through the VSS fan page or email address lienhe@vss.gov.vn.

The sector has helped people and organisations complete administrative tasks accurately and swiftly.

Up to 22,350 letters and queries were addressed by the email box, while nearly 1.2 million calls were received and handled by the call centre service.

Positive outcomes

1.Administrative procedure reform

VSS has made available 25 of the 25 administrative procedures under its jurisdiction on the National Public Service Portal and VSS portal.

Over 9.2 million of the 9.5 million dossiers received in the first half of 2024 were handled, representing 97.4 per cent of the total.

Out of the 1,104 comments and suggestions that were sent to the system, 615 were accepted for processing, 489 were rejected, and 583 were resolved.

2.Organisational reform and civil service reform

The VSS continues to innovate and streamline its apparatus associated with restructuring workforce of cadres, civil servants and public employees according to job positions.

Since January 1, 2024, the sector has streamlined 58 department-level focal points under the provincial social security offices.

The VSS has issued a list of 154 job positions and approved 87 job positions for affiliated units and 63 provinces and cities.

Regarding civil service reform, the VSS ordered relevant units and their employees to learn thoroughly and strictly follow regulations on discipline and conduct. It has focused on training, updating new knowledge, improving leadership and management skills for staff at all levels.

3. Public finance reform

The VSS has fully, timely paid pensions and social insurance benefits to beneficiaries while encouraging them to receive social insurance and unemployment benefits through non-cash payment methods in urban areas.

In addition, the VSS has released an action plan for 2024 that focuses on strengthening discipline, efficiently managing and utilising public resources, reforming administrative procedures, fostering investment, removing barriers to business and production, boosting national competition, and fixing issues identified through monitoring, inspection, examination, and auditing.

4. Building and developing e-Government and digital Government

In an effort to enhance the database sources, the VSS has been actively collaborating with ministries, sectors, and localities to link and exchange data between the national insurance database and other national specialised databases.

It has worked with the Ministry of Public Security to authenticate and share information related to social insurance, health insurance, and unemployment insurance with the national population database.

To date, the VSS system has verified more than 97.6 million demographic information in the database managed by VSS, of which about 87.4 million people are participating in and receiving social insurance, health insurance, unemployment insurance, accounting for 98 per cent of the total number of people who do not participate (excluding armed forces and military relatives) with the national population database.

There have been more than 19.4 million successful queries for social insurance book information to integrate into the VNeID application.

VSS has also coordinated and supported the Ministry of Health in inter-connecting the data of driver's health examination, birth certificate and death certificate.

It aims to provide two inter-connecting administrative procedures: "Birth registration - permanent residence registration - issuance of health insurance cards for children under 6 years old"; and "Death registration - deletion of permanent residence registration - funeral allowance".

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It has also provided online service for driver’s renewal and issuance.

To date, 1,249 medical examination and treatment facilities nationwide have submitted data on driver's health certificates while 1,681 facilities submitted birth certificate data and 644 others submitted death certificate data.

Over 6.8 million online applications have been received and processed by the sector in the first half of 2024.

Local social security offices received and processed 959,726 dossiers of these two inter-connecting administrative procedures.

Up to now, the whole industry has approved more than 35.6 million individual online accounts which are used to log in the VSS portal and VssID application.

Since October 19, 2023, there have been more than 12.2 million access to VNeID.

Future directions and tasks

Based on the outcomes, the VSS has outlined major administrative reform tasks and directions in order to successfully carry out the objectives and tasks under the direction of the Government and the Prime Minister.

Accordingly, the sector will focus on simplifying administrative procedures to facilitate businesses and people.

It will promote non-cash payments following the direction of the Government and diversify forms of online public services, as well as invest in facilities, improve service quality, ensure the best benefits and raise beneficiaries' satisfaction levels for health, unemployment, and social insurance.

The VSS will give priority to promoting digital transformation, perfecting infrastructure and specialised database systems on social insurance, unemployment insurance, and health insurance, especially the national insurance database.

Along with adding new features and services to the VssID, it will connect, integrate and share data with ministries and other sectors.

In order to support the digital transformation, the sector intends to research new technological platforms and solutions. In particular, it will construct a big data processing and analysis system and integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its operations.