Identifying difficulties and shortcomings, continuing to bring the Law on Civil Status into life

PV:Could you please tell us about the outstanding results after 6 years of implementing the Law on Civil Status in Nghe An province?

Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan:Recognizing the importance of the Civil Status Law, immediately after the National Assembly passed the Law, with the direction of the Ministry of Justice, to ensure the implementation of the Law from January 1, 2016. The Department of Justice has proactively and actively advised the People's Council and People's Committee of Nghe An province to issue many documents directing the implementation.

In particular, special attention should be paid to perfecting and arranging the staff of civil servants to do civil status work at civil status registration agencies and providing training, professional development, and granting certificates of civil status professional development.

Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan - Deputy Director of Nghe An Department of Justice. Photo: Pham Bang

After 6 years of implementation, the Law on Civil Status has achieved important results. Agencies performing civil status registration have become aware of their responsibilities, people have realized the importance of civil status documents, so they voluntarily register civil status events within the time prescribed by law, limiting the previous situation of "births not declared, deaths not reported".

The work of household registration and management has been put into order, and the facilities have been significantly improved. All household registration matters have been received and resolved promptly, on time, and in accordance with the provisions of law. From 2016 to present, the whole province of Nghe An has registered 1,129,529 cases, including: birth registration: 661,012 cases, marriage registration: 152,880 couples, death registration: 128,492 cases; other household registration: 187,145 cases.

The application of information technology in civil status registration in the province has been promoted. Since 2017, the electronic civil status software has been deployed synchronously, stably, and systematically, creating positive changes in the work of civil status registration and management in the province. In addition, since March 1, 2020, the Department of Justice has coordinated with relevant agencies such as the Department of Information and Communications, the Provincial Social Insurance, etc. to connect birth registration data of children under 6 years old on the Civil Status Registration and Management Information System with the Health Insurance Card Issuance System.

Guidance on administrative procedures for people at the one-stop shop of Dien Trung commune (Dien Chau). Photo: Gia Huy

The Department of Justice has also implemented the digitization of birth registration books (phase 2 from 2006 to the end of 2015) in the whole province with the number of: 858,133 cases. In 2022 and 2023, the Department of Justice will continue to digitize the remaining stages of birth registration books and all stages of marriage registration books, death registration books... Online civil status registration is being promoted by localities, bringing online civil status registration closer to the people.

PV:So, in the process of implementing the Law on Civil Status into life, what difficulties and problems have arisen, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan:In fact, there have been difficulties and problems in the implementation of the Law on Civil Status. For example, in the implementation of the Project "Electronic Civil Status Database"; digitizing Civil Status Books, and registering civil status online at the local level.:The shared civil status management registration software is often overloaded and cannot be logged in, affecting the time limit for handling administrative procedures for people. The connection between the civil status software of the Ministry of Justice and the population data software of the Ministry of Public Security is still incomplete, leading to slow issuance of personal identification numbers in some cases, affecting the progress of birth registration.

The Department of Justice coordinated with the District Police to organize a conference to disseminate, train, and implement regulations on coordination in providing civil status database information. Photo: D.C.

Currently, the civil status software has added a function for the Justice Department to review and correct errors in civil status registration information at the commune level. This feature helps the district level manage the current status of civil status software usage at the commune level. However, this also increases the workload of the Justice Department, especially in departments with few staff and managing many commune-level units. In addition, the software does not have a type of marriage record extract or divorce record extract, so when issuing a copy of the extract, it must be manually edited.

Regarding online civil status registration, at the commune and district levels, when citizens came to transact, the reception staff supported citizens to register service accounts on the National Public Service Portal and the Provincial Public Service Portal, but there were still many SIM cards that were not in their name, so the registration was unsuccessful. On the other hand, due to the limited ability of people in rural areas to apply the Internet in performing administrative procedures in the electronic environment, the rate of people registering civil status was still modest.

In addition, due to limited budget at the commune level, there has not been investment in some pages and equipment specifically for household registration and online household registration such as scanners and photocopiers. The professional qualifications and capacity of a number of officers working in household registration are still limited, so the implementation of operations on the household registration software is not smooth, leading to some cases of data entry errors that need to be corrected or the Department of Information Technology - Ministry of Justice requests to cancel the records. Up to now, the whole province has only registered household registration online for 847 cases.

Regarding the inter-sectoral coordination between the Public Security, People's Court, Health, Education, etc., there are still some limitations such as: some schools only accept birth certificates (copies), not accepting birth certificates certified from the original, which causes difficulties for people and is not in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Civil Status and Decree No. 23/2015/ND-CP of the Government on certifying copies from the original. In some localities, the situation of issuing birth certificates arbitrarily still exists... In many cases, the divorce decision of the People's Court has not been sent to the People's Committee of the commune where the marriage was registered or where the man and woman permanently resided so that the judicial - civil status officer can make notes in the book, so it is still difficult to determine the marital status of these subjects.

In addition, the application of the provisions of the Law on Civil Status and the documents detailing its implementation also encounter some difficulties. For example, regarding the procedure for registering a marriage involving a foreign element: Currently, there is only information on the marriage status certificate of some countries in the list attached to the guidance document of the Ministry of Justice, therefore, for cases not included in the list, localities are still confused and have to ask for professional guidance, which prolongs the processing time.

Regarding birth registration, the Law on Civil Status does not stipulate that citizens are reissued the original birth certificate, causing difficulties for citizens, because some agencies and units still require the original for comparison. The issuance of death certificates when registering a death has no specific regulations on the form of death notice, causing confusion for the People's Committee at the commune level in issuing death notices, as well as performing death registration...

PV:To resolve the above difficulties and problems, what solutions, recommendations and proposals does Nghe An have, sir?

Mr. Nguyen Cong Hoan:To continue to effectively implement the Law on Civil Status, we have requested the Ministry of Justice to advise on amending a number of provisions of the Law on Civil Status and its implementing guidelines to address difficulties and problems occurring in many localities; allowing the use of birth certificate copies as in the previous stage to facilitate the issuance of birth certificate copies, reducing the pressure on the issuance of civil status forms by the Justice Department and Justice - Civil Status officials.

In addition, it is necessary to soon connect and include in the common civil status database the types of work that Vietnamese representative agencies abroad have performed to facilitate the issuance of civil status papers to Vietnamese citizens who have registered their civil status at Vietnamese representative agencies abroad and now return to reside in the country; at the same time, avoid duplicate registrations of types of work already registered abroad. Develop a process to review digitized civil status data so that localities can promptly adjust data with incorrect information after reviewing to ensure that civil status data is "correct, complete, and clean".

At the same time, upgrade and complete the civil status registration software soon to make it more convenient for civil status officials to perform their duties, and at the same time, civil status management agencies can grasp and monitor more easily.

Authorities carry out procedures for issuing citizen identification cards. Photo courtesy of Nguyen Nguyen.

On the side of the Nghe An Judicial sector, in addition to focusing on improving professional capacity, expertise, and IT skills for the Judicial - Civil Status civil servants, to overcome shortcomings in inter-sectoral coordination in implementing the Law on Civil Status, the Department of Justice has proactively exchanged documents and organized inter-sectoral seminars to jointly resolve difficulties and problems related to civil status registration.

In particular, the Department of Justice has coordinated with the Provincial People's Committee to issue Directive No. 10/CT-UBND on strengthening the work of registration and management of civil status in the province; assigning relevant departments, branches, and People's Committees at district and commune levels to strictly implement the law on civil status, meeting the requirements of civil status registration for the people.

PV:Thank you!