Deputy Prime Minister: Promoting decentralization and delegation of power in handling administrative procedures

On the morning of September 8, the Government Office held the first online meeting of the Government's Administrative Reform Working Group. Comrade Tran Luu Quang - Member of the Party Central Committee, Deputy Prime Minister, Head of the Working Group chaired the meeting.

Core and cross-cutting tasks

At the conference, the Government Office announced the Prime Minister's Decision to establish the Working Group on Administrative Procedure Reform. Accordingly, the Head of the Working Group is Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang. The Deputy Heads of the Working Group include: Minister, Head of the Government Office (Permanent Deputy Head); Minister of Home Affairs; Minister of Justice; leaders of the Ministry of Public Security.

The working group is an inter-sectoral coordination organization, performing the function of assisting the Prime Minister in directing and urging ministries, branches and localities to implement goals, tasks and solutions on administrative procedure reform, strengthening discipline and administrative order and improving policy response capacity.

Discussing at the conference, representatives of ministries, branches and localities highly appreciated the Government's establishment of the Prime Minister's Working Group on administrative procedure reform.

Delegates shared results and good practices in administrative procedure reform; at the same time, reflected on difficulties, obstacles and bottlenecks in administrative reform work.

Some opinions say that there should be a binding mechanism between officials and civil servants performing public duties and enterprises; there should be a mechanism for grassroots officials and civil servants to dare to think, dare to do, and accompany enterprises; ministries, branches, and localities need to review and continue to cut and simplify administrative procedures, linked with decentralization and authorization; clear bottlenecks, improve online public services more substantially, promote faster digital transformation; rectify discipline, administrative discipline, improve public ethics; supplement a set of indicators to assess administrative reform, etc.

Speaking at the conference, Vice Chairman of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee Nguyen Van De emphasized that in recent years, Nghe An province has always identified administrative procedure reform as a key and consistent task in administrative reform, in which, especially the control of administrative procedure regulations has been given attention and achieved some outstanding results.

Up to now, 100% of administrative procedures under the authority of settlement have been made public on the National Public Service Portal and the Provincial Administrative Procedures Information System. The reception and settlement of administrative procedures at the Provincial Public Administration Service Center and the One-Stop Department at all levels are strictly controlled, ensuring publicity and transparency. The rate of settlement of records and administrative procedures at 3 levels (province, district, commune) before and on time reached a high rate of 97.61% (provincial level reached 97.07%; district level reached 96.97%; commune level reached 98.8%).

Sectors and levels focus on reviewing, cutting, and simplifying at least 20% of administrative procedures related to investment, production, business activities, and people's lives.

The Vice Chairman of Nghe An People's Committee proposed that central ministries and branches review and advise the Government to amend, supplement or abolish administrative procedures, regulations on unnecessary, illegal and unreasonable administrative procedures and decentralize the handling of administrative procedures to ministries, branches and localities according to the approved plan.

In particular, it is recommended that the Ministry of Justice promptly advise the Government to report to the National Assembly on piloting the decentralization of the issuance of Criminal Records to the Hanoi Department of Justice and Nghe An province according to Directive No. 23/CT-TTg dated September 2, 2021 of the Prime Minister on promoting the implementation of the overall program of State administrative reform for the period 2021 - 2030 so that localities have a basis for implementation.

The Ministries of Justice, Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs stop printing and issuing blank forms and forms such as: Judicial records; copies of Civil status forms; Work permits... which affect the process of implementing administrative procedures in the electronic environment, causing waste; the Ministries of Transport, Planning and Investment, Justice, Finance, and Health coordinate with the province to connect and share data between specialized software and the province's Administrative Procedure Information System to meet the requirements of receiving, processing and serving the monitoring, supervision and evaluation of administrative procedure settlement.

It is recommended that the Government Office promptly advise on the issuance of a Decision replacing Decision No. 1291/QD-TTg dated October 7, 2019 of the Prime Minister, to unify the direction and administration of the implementation of administrative procedures of vertical agencies.

Implement decentralization and delegation of authority

In his concluding remarks at the conference, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang acknowledged and highly appreciated the drastic efforts in administrative reform of ministries, branches and localities, which have initially created trust for people and businesses.

The Deputy Prime Minister highly appreciated the new point of the Working Group, which is to assign very specific tasks with quantified time to ministries, branches, and localities and to assign specific tasks to each member.

Emphasizing the role of leaders in creating changes in administrative reform, comrade Tran Luu Quang requested ministries, branches and localities to be more determined and consider administrative reform as an extremely important task in carrying out the political tasks of their ministries, branches and localities.

Analyzing the causes of delays in handling administrative procedures, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang requested ministries, branches and localities to strongly decentralize administrative procedures; promote digital transformation and apply information technology to serve administrative reform.

“Cutting down administrative procedures does not mean cutting down on machinery but needs to meet two requirements: controlling the situation, implementing State management work and truly creating more convenience for people and businesses,” said Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang.

The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized that administrative reform work will be included in the year-end assessment results of ministries, branches, localities and leaders.