Northern provinces notch up e-governance progress

E-governance, and using related portals, became a bigger focus of the latest index, photo Le Toan

Despite a dip in both general score and ranking in 2023, the 15th Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) regarding public services provision of Haiphong reached 7.99 points, being positioned among localities with high scores throughout the country.

On participation of people at grassroots level, Haiphong posted 4.98 points, a high average score. For transparency in decision-making and accountability of people, the port city secured 5.11 and 4.15 points respectively, joining localities with low average scores.

Low scores included 6.33 points for control of corruption in the public sector and 6.94 points for public administrative procedures.

For Hung Yen, the province gained high scores in participation of people at grassroots level (5.46 points), transparency in decision-making (5.5 points), accountability of people (4.40 points), and control of corruption in the public sector (70.6 points).

In provision of public services, Hung Yen garnered 7.61 points, deemed a high average score.

Compared to Haiphong and Hung Yen, Hai Duong showed no improvement in the PAPI ranking compared to the previous year, still garnering only low average scores.

Particularly, the province posted 4.94 points for participation of people at grassroots level, 5.04 points for accountability of people, seven points on control of corruption in the public sector, and 7.48 points for public services provision.

Last year, new criteria were added on using the e-portal and the e-public services of local government to assess the efficiency of full-package public services provision at provincial public services portal.

The focus on e-governance followed the government’s push to expand digital citizenship. Last year, nationwide access to the internet and access to provincial e-governance portals both rose relative to 2020.

However, findings revealed that Vietnamese citizens are slow to switch to e-governance, with just 8.3 and 7.6 per cent of the respondents using the National E-Service Portal or provincial e-service portals available in all cities and provinces. A reason for the limited use is privacy concerns, as stated by one-third of survey respondents.

Meanwhile, like results of some previous years, PAPI 2023 results indicate that environmental concerns are still a fact of life in the Red River Delta, which accommodates many industrial production facilities.

Of 16 localities with low scores, six are located in the delta, in which Haiphong posted 3.24 points in environmental management, down 12.03 per cent compared to 2021. Hai Duong scored 3.22 points, slightly up by 2.26 per cent from two years previous, and Hung Yen scored 3.43 points, down 6.12 per cent compared to 2021.

In general terms, Hung Yen is placed in the group of cities and provinces with the highest scores in the PAPI at 44.23 points in 2023, up 0.04 points compared to 2022.

Hai Duong has low average scores at 41.75 points, down 0.38 points compared to 2022, while Haiphong posted 42.11 points compared to 43.60 points in 2022, being positioned alongside cities and provinces with high average scores.

A record 19,536 respondents from across the country participated in the 2023 PAPI survey. Based on their responses, control of corruption in the public sector and e-governance were the key dimensions to register progress relative to 2021 and 2022. Transparency in local decision-making, conversely, saw a drop.

The remaining dimensions covering local governance, public administration, and service delivery saw little change relative to the preceding two years.

Where is environmental governance in FDI attraction? While Vietnam and businesses are moving towards sustainability, hubs of environmental concerns remain in attractive investment destinations, requiring a change in order to become competitive.