The Hanoi People’s Committee Office has proposed a pilot plan on setting up the Hanoi City Public Administrative Service Center to provide public services throughout the city. The model is hoped to solve existing problems in handling administrative procedures organized under the ‘one stop shop’ scheme.

There are 677 units taking proposals on administrative procedures in the city now, which are located in many agencies, units and localities. This puts difficulties for people and businesses as they have to travel a lot between their homes and agencies to follow administrative procedures.

At present, the units taking proposals and providing answers to people and businesses belong to agencies, so the scheme of supervising the activities of handling procedures is not strong enough, which leads to a lack of publicity and transparency.

The officers at one-stop-shops undertake many different duties at the same time, so their professionalism in guiding people, supporting implementation, digitizing input documents and giving answers to dossier submitters, as well as productivity, remain low.

Once the public service center is established, all administrative procedures will be simplified, thus mitigating embezzlement and increase transparency. People and businesses just have to visit one place to follow all necessary procedures, so they can save time and costs for traveling.

In addition, the application of information technology in administrative procedures will help improve productivity, and the quick and transparent handling of dossiers will consolidate people and businesses’ confidence and satisfaction.

Under the public administrative center plan, the center will be an agency put under the management of the Hanoi People’s Committee. Its head office is located at No 102 Hai Ba Trung street in Cua Nam Ward of Hoan Kiem district. The center is scheduled to debut in October 2024.

The center establishment would lead to a cut of personnel of ‘one-stop-shop’ units (from 673 units to 30 branches), thus optimizing resources. Particularly, the number of civil servants and public employees who take proposals directly from businesses and people and give answers will be cut from 2,768 to 184.

The Hanoi People’s Committee Office has estimated that the operation of the center will save VND231 billion a year which is being spent on infrastructure, facility maintenance and wages for civil servants and public employees at one-stop-shop units.

The money would be allocated to more important works, or spent on technology development to support digitization and automation.

Quang Phong