Ministry of Finance ranked 1st in digital transformation in 2020
On the afternoon of October 19, 2021, the Ministry of Information and Communications coordinated with Vietnam Digital Communications Association (VDCA) to organize an online seminar on announcing the report on results of digital transformation assessment at ministerial and provincial levels in 2020 (DTI 2020) and promoting the provision of 100% eligible 4th level public services online. According to the published results, the Ministry of Finance ranked first in terms of digital transformation in 2020 (with DTI value 0.4944) among 18 ministries and sectors providing public services. The second place belongs to the State Bank of Vietnam and the third place belongs to the Ministry of Planning and Investment.

Mr. Hoang Xuan Nam, Deputy Director, Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics (Ministry of Finance) delivered speech at the workshop. Photo: Phuong An.
Speaking at Hanoi seminar point, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung once again emphasized the role and importance of the digital transformation process for countries and cities. At the same time, Deputy Minister Dung also pointed out that, at the national level, digital transformation includes 3 pillars of Digital Government, Digital Economy and Digital Society. Developing digital government to better serve the people and lead the country's digital transformation. Developing the digital economy helps people richer. And developing a digital society makes people happier.
According to Mr. Nguyen Phu Tien, Deputy Director, IT Department (Ministry of Information and Communications), the DTI 2020 report is summarized from 4 data sources, provides assessment on ministerial and provincial digital transformation in 3 groups: ministries providing public services, ministries without providing public services and provinces/cities. According to the DTI 2020 report, the Ministry of Finance and Da Nang City rank first in group of ministries providing public services and group of provinces/cities respectively.

The Ministry of Finance ranks first in the group of 18 ministries, the sector providing public services
The Ministry of Finance has had various outstanding digital transformation activities in 2020 such as: The rate of 4th level online public services reached 50%, 100% of the ministry’s IT applications were connected and shared via integrated data sharing platform at ministerial level. The effectiveness of these activities is also proven by serving people and businesses participating in electronic tax payment; 96.28% of businesses enjoying e- tax refund; number of dossiers processed online is more than 98 million out of the total number of administrative procedures handled in 2020, reaching the rate of 89.3%; total visits to the Ministry of Finance’s portal reaching nearly 3.4 million in 2020.
Reporting on results achieved in IT application to implement the E-Government Development Strategy towards Digital Government, Mr. Hoang Xuan Nam, Deputy Director, Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics (Ministry of Finance), revealed: the Ministry of Finance has so far effectively implemented various new and core technologies such as mobile technology, big data analysis technology, cloud computing technology in implementing administrative procedure reforms, improve public administration capacity, in order to facilitate people and businesses in easy and equal access to development opportunities.
Since 2017, the Ministry of Finance has applied artificial intelligence technology to deploy and provide automatic FAQs on financial policies system on the Ministry of Finance's portal, so that people and businesses can on their own search for questions and answers on the finance sector’s policies in an automatic and intelligent manner. Thereby it helps to shorten the time to answer and explain to people and businesses’ questions on mechanisms and policies under the Finance Ministry’s management.
In addition, the national financial database and specialized databases are researched and built on the basis of applying big data analysis technology, step by step to meet the information requirements for serving the management, administration and policy making of the Finance sector, ensure the sharing of Finance sector’s data with other ministries, branches and localities who need exploitation and use of financial data, ensure the linkage, integration and information sharing among Financial sector’s internal and external units.
The entire Finance sector has researched and applied server virtualization technology in the IT system to optimize the efficiency of hardware investment as well as quickly solve the requirements of hardware infrastructure growth in a short time.
In particular, the taxation and customs sectors have made great determination and efforts to well implement the Government's resolutions, such as exceeding the targets set on deployment of IT applications to support tax declaration, and e-customs. As of September 2021, more than 99% businesses have used the electronic tax declaration service and 99.11% of businesses have registered to use the electronic tax payment service...
The synchronous and effective implementation of IT application solutions in recent years has not only support to the sector’s financial management, but also brought significant effects to the whole society. The results of IT application of the Ministry of Finance have brought about a significant improvement in financial and budgetary management in the direction of modernity, gradually increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of financial supervision, making an important contribution to promote institutional reform, administrative reform, restructuring of professional procedures, increasing the accuracy, timeliness and transparency in the financial statements, accounting and statistics of state budget.
The efforts in the Finance sector’s application of information technology and digital transformation have been highly appreciated by people, organizations and businesses. In 2018, the Ministry of Finance was granted the ASOCIO 2018 award by the Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (ASOCIO) in category of "Excellent IT Application Organization" for Government agencies.
Sharing experiences in building a ministerial-level digital government, Mr. Hoang Xuan Nam, Deputy Director of the Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics (Ministry of Finance) has pointed out the followings:
Firstly, it shall concentrate resources for the entire Finance sector, focus on propaganda and mastery in construction and implementation of e-Government towards digital government in all fields; raising awareness and responsibilities of heads of units in entire Finance sector in construction and implementation of e-Government towards digital government.
Secondly, the implementation of e-Government towards digital government needs to be done persistently and regularly with clear goals and solutions.
Thirdly, it shall focus on developing strategies and improving mechanisms, policies on digital transformation. This is a prerequisite for implementation of digital transformation in the entire Finance sector. Financial policies shall create synchronous and unified legal corridor for digital finance implementation.
Fourthly, the implementation of e-Government towards digital government needs to be carried out synchronously and comprehensively, focusing on the application of new and advanced technologies in all sector’s operation fields, promoting research and development, applying big data technology, artificial intelligence...
DTI is a set of digital transformation indicators at ministerial, provincial and national levels to help monitor and evaluate in a substantive, objective and fair way the results of the annual digital transformation implementation of ministries, sectors, provinces, centrally run cities and the whole country during the implementation of the National Digital Transformation