The conference is held in an online format with attendees at the site of the VSS: Deputy General Director Pham Luong Son; leaders of related subordinate units; representatives of Government Office, Ministry of Information and Communication; a number of businesses in the IT sector. Social insurance sites of provinces and cities have leaders in charge of IT, heads of IT departments and focal staff in charge of external information work.

In particular, the conference was attended by representatives and experts in IT and digital transformation at the sites of organizations and partners of the VSS including: International Social Security Association (ISSA); member organizations of the ASEAN Social Security Association (ASSA); Korean social security agencies; University of Waikato (New Zealand); The World Bank (WB), etc.

General Director of VSS Nguyen The Manh delivered the opening speech of the Conference

VSS already has a foundation and basic results in Digital Transformation

At the opening of the seminar, Manh said that, grasping the trend of digital transformation and receiving the attention and direction of the Government, over the years, Vietnam's social insurance industry has been investing in building and perfecting the industry's IT system in the direction of e-Government towards Digital Government, integrated and centralized at the national level, modern, international standards, customer-oriented, with a highly automated business process, operated by professional and high-quality IT human resources, meeting the requirements of ensuring national social security, serving people and businesses getting better and more comprehensive in the field of social and health insurance.

In particular, through the assessment of the objectives of Decision No. 942/QD-TTg approving the e-Government development strategy towards the digital government in the 2021-2025 period, with a vision to 2030, the VSS has basically achieved the targets set until 2025.

However, according to Manh, the VSS is not complacent and satisfied with the achieved results as with the strong development of technology, we will most likely be left behind unless innovation and digital transformation are continuously applied, especially in the current trend of breakthrough and "leap" digital transformation.

Therefore, the VSS wishes, with the experience of international experts, as well as practical experiences in implementing digital transformation activities of Vietnamese organizations and enterprises, at the Conference, experts, leaders of organizations and businesses will share their valuable experiences and lessons so that we can learn, have a more general view, and have the opportunity to see what has been done in the digital transformation activities of the Industry. Thereby, we also look forward to exchanging and cooperating to build and develop a modern and professional Vietnamese social insurance industry, ensuring the interests and welfare of the people and employees.” - Manh said.

Delegates attending at the Vietnamese site of the VSS

At the seminar, Mr. Nguyen Hoang Phuong, Deputy Director of the IT Center (VSS) briefly presented the results of IT application and digital transformation of Vietnam's social insurance industry over the past time. Currently, the entire industry has nearly 30 application systems; manages a database of nearly 98 million people, corresponding to nearly 28 million households nationwide; with more than 20 thousand accounts of civil servants, officials and employees in the Industry regularly accessing, exploiting and using to perform the industry's operations; connects with more than 12,000 health facilities and more than 500 thousand organizations and enterprises using public services nationwide and ministries and branches. Every year, the E-Transaction Portal receives and processes nearly 100 million applications. In 2021 alone, from the beginning of the year until now, the number of online-resolved applications is nearly 70 million. Thus, on average, each social insurance officer will have to process more than 4,000 cases per year.

According to Mr. Phuong, the workload and pressure of the industry are immense; therefore, assigned tasks will not be able to be met if IT application and digital transformation are not promoted. However, with the attention and drastic direction of the leaders of VSS, over the past time, the digital transformation of the industry has made rapid progress. Currently, the VSS is implementing digital transformation through continuous improvement of technical infrastructure; building and completing the database and identification codes, especially the National Insurance Database according to the Government's Decree No. 43/2021/ND-CP dated March 31, 2021; building basic service layers (identification, interaction, customer care; risk management, safety and security) and software to serve participants of social and health insurance. The most successful application of the VSS today is VssID - Digital social insurance on smartphones with 5 languages ​​(Vietnamese, English, French, Korean, Italian). Less than 1 year after the announcement of the application, to date, more than 23 million personal electronic transaction accounts have been registered and approved.

Regarding technology, the VSS focuses on new technologies to solve old problems in order to improve management and work efficiency in the short term; also focuses on new technologies to solve new (non-traditional) problems in the long term. The Industry's biggest goal is to become a modern social security organization leading in IT. The jobs of the Industry are still tremendous with a large number of difficulties and barriers, requiring determination, effort, research and learning, etc.

Recommendations from expert team

Speaking at the site, experts highly appreciated the results that the VSS has achieved in the past time in the field of IT and digital transformation; also, gave suggestions and recommendations on a number of contents in this field.

Experts delivered speeches at international sites

Mr. Raul Ruggia-Frick, Director of the Social Security Development Branch at ISSA shared: The VSS has been investing heavily in IT infrastructure and databases. This is the basis for deploying and applying new technologies in a feasible way. According to Mr. Raul Ruggia-Frick, digital transformation is based on the foundation of Big Data, from which analysis helps to detect and understand the actual situation, forecast development trends with pinpoint accuracy; including the effective support of artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve autonomy and decision-making.

In the field of social insurance, the use of AI technology in big data analysis helps to effectively detect and prevent cases of violations, frauds, evasion of payment, especially complicated cases of violations. In addition, AI application also helps to improve end-to-end interaction with people through chatbots, voice interactions, and automated email systems to reduce labor and handle work 24/7. This is something that the VSS needs to pay attention to as it already has a large data source, and the service group is increasingly diverse, large and complex.

The adoption of new technology brings great opportunistic benefits such as enhanced data management and provisioning; develops e-government, inter-agency connection; raises awareness of leaders and managers; improves the culture of innovation and creativity in the fields of social and health insurance. However, there are also many challenges such as: Complexity and associated costs; requirement of high-quality data sources; compliance with data protection regulations; management of operational and reputational risks. Therefore, digital transformation requires senior leadership involvement and vision with medium and long-term plans to address strategic and practical challenges related to new technology adoption, step by step putting the technology into operation.

ISSA experts recommend that, the VSS needs to be customer-centric in digital transformation, focusing on expanding service channels such as online one-stop service, electronic identification and biometrics, and applications and mobile access, mobile payments. In addition, it is necessary to automate the process through robotics and smart tools; develop a data-based social insurance strategy; increase data security; improve communication capacity; develop partnerships to support innovation and international cooperation. Special attention should be paid to the human factor, human resources with improving data analysis capacity for professional staff, continuously training and improving skills for IT staff and professional staff.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Eimar Coleman, a strategic consultant of the World Bank (WB), added: Vietnam is currently 11th in the world in terms of internet users, 12th in the world in terms of smartphone users and 15th in the world in terms of broadband transmission, which is a favorable condition for implementing digital transformation. The VSS with its achievements in IT application in recent years, has a solid foundation. In the digital transformation, the VSS needs to focus on developing an operational strategy with goals and priorities, including transforming service delivery models and improving access to services, expand the range of services, improve service quality and accuracy, improve data quality, towards 100% automatic processing. The second is the transformation in the operating model towards multi-channel, multi-platform, virtual office, and service sharing. Third, the digitalization strategy needs to use a unique identifier for participants, comprehensively integrate with the National Public Service Portal, enhance connectivity/interoperability between units in the Industry; expanding the electronic business process management system; setting the goal to self-enclose 100% of services, communicate and train employees on digital transformation, etc.

Ms. Wilailuk Wisasa, Acting Bureau Director of International Affairs, National Health Security Office (NHSO), said that NHSO and the VSS share similarities in IT application and digital transformation such as deploying identification codes for participants, building databases and systems, centralized management software, developing applications on smartphones, e-wallets, artificial intelligence (AI) applications, etc. Therefore, according to Ms. Wilailuk Wisasa, the VSS can refer to 6 strategies and 6 steps to improve the quality of policy management and implementation based on the IT application platform that NHSO is applying including: ability to reach vulnerable groups through a personalized and human-centered digital platform; Developing service quality standards and supporting information for medical facilities; Maximizing efficiency and quality through evidence generated from big data; Strengthening information connection between government agencies, building information systems for all sectors; Supporting organizational and individual capacity development through adaptive learning mechanisms; Building the foundation for digital technology, maintaining data security and privacy.

In addition to recommendations and orientations on digital transformation strategies, at the seminar, experts also paid special attention to security and network security in carrying out this work. Assoc.Stuart Dillon, Head of the School of Management & Marketing, University of Waikato (New Zealand) shared: Information security and network security are vital issues as cybercrime has a huge impact on systems. 88% of organizations worldwide reported experiencing a cyber attack. From 2014 to now, globally, about 1 trillion US dollars had to be used to solve this problem. There are several forms of cyberattacks that are increasing and becoming more sophisticated. In that context, Vietnam's social insurance industry with a huge database, many applications and softwares under operation will also be exposed to a great number of risks.

Assoc.Stuart Dillon said, in order to prevent and reduce risks, the problem lies in information security management and strategy, and risk analysis of each unit. Risks increase as technology develops, so it is necessary to have strategies that can be replicated and deployed effectively. According to statistics, 90% of risks come from users, thus the training and professional improvement of staff is of great importance. The workforce in the digital transformation era needs to be fully trained in cybersecurity and aware of the risks to respond.

At the seminar, a number of international units and Vietnamese enterprises also introduced to the VSS a number of new technologies in management and administration such as: Blockchain technology helps analyze and trace highly distributed data, which can be applied as a foundation for the implementation of bilateral and multilateral agreements on social and health insurance. Technology to evaluate and rank individuals participating in the national pension system (Korea) - an innovative financial service with homogenous cryptographic technology that combines and analyzes credit information of participants and national pension payment information that prevents leakage of personal information. Some new technologies in AI, chatbots are also provided by the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group; Hekate Technology Joint Stock Company introduced.

Deputy General Director of VSS Pham Luong Son delivered the closing speech of the Conference

At the conclusion of the conference, Deputy General Director of VSS Pham Luong Son thanked and highly appreciated the ideas of participation, sharing of responsibility and enthusiasm of domestic and foreign delegates and experts for digital transformation activities in general and the Vietnamese social insurance industry in particular. Those sharing and comments are important basis for the VSS to research and implement digital transformation activities in the coming time, in order to achieve the industry's most important goal of serving organizations, units, businesses and people better, providing higher quality services and utilities.

Son shared that in the 2016-2020 period, the digital transformation mindset of the VSS industry has been strongly grasped from industry leaders to affiliated units and social security agencies at all levels: To form centralized and integrated systems, strongly reforming and digitizing business processes, providing online public services to people and businesses. In the next stage, from 2021 to 2025, the VSS is determined to implement a strong and comprehensive digital transformation, focusing on participants and beneficiaries of social and health insurance policies and regimes; to form a digital Vietnam social insurance industry, with high-quality digital human resources; To experiment and apply new technologies such as Blockchain, Big Data, AI to bring efficiency in management, improve the experience of organizations and individuals.

To contribute to that goal, Son requested that, right after the conference, the IT Center shall continue to strengthen coordination with professional units to assess and identify requirements, specific digital transformation goals of each unit to develop an overall implementation strategy. Department of International Cooperation shall urgently develop a general report on the Conference, focusing on recommendations and suggestions of experts and units to report and advise leaders of the research sector, directing the development short-term and long-term plans in digital transformation. The Information and Communication Center shall strengthen its key tasks on digital transformation of the Industry, contributing to raising and changing the awareness of staff in the whole Industry about digital transformation, thereby transforming it into practical actions suitable to each locality and unit; spread to other ministries and agencies about the efforts and results of the VSS industry in digital transformation.

Deputy General Director Pham Luong Son also expressed his belief, with the Government's drastic orientation and direction, the cooperation and sharing of ministries, branches, domestic IT enterprises, as well as the support of international organizations, together with the strong determination of each cadre, civil servant, public employee and worker, the digital transformation of Vietnam's social insurance industry will make great strides, successfully building a modern and professional image of VSS industry, for the satisfaction of organizations and individuals, bringing benefits to the whole society.