On the pilot issuance of criminal records at the district level in Nghe An
(Baonghean.vn) - Nghe An is one of three provinces and cities nationwide proposed by the Ministry of Justice to pilot the issuance of criminal records to some judicial departments under the People's Committees at the district level. This is a policy for the benefit of workers, however, there are still concerns arising from practice...
Responding to the urgent needs of workers
At the Provincial Public Administration Service Center, the working atmosphere of the departments is always urgent and hurried. In that hurried stream of people, Ms. Nguyen Thi Tien (Yen Thanh district) is also taking a ticket waiting to complete the procedure to apply for a criminal record certificate.
She said that she is applying for a job at a company in Hanoi, where submitting a criminal record is mandatory. Even at some other companies in Hanoi, after workers have been employed for 6 months, they still require them to submit a new criminal record. Even though the workers have been working normally for 6 months and have not violated the law. As for her younger brother, who is preparing to go to South Korea to work, this procedure is even more indispensable.
It can be seen that for workers, especially those who work far away, the issuance of a criminal record certificate is a very necessary procedure. According to statistics, Nghe An is one of the three localities with the largest number of requests for criminal records in the country, just behind Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
In 2023 alone, in Nghe An, people submitted 80,215 applications for criminal records. Most of them were to supplement recruitment files for officials, civil servants, public employees, job applications, and most of them were applications for labor export. At times, the large number of applications led to a situation of waiting early, overloading, affecting the interests of workers.
For Nghe An, the receipt of applications and return of results for issuance of criminal records are carried out at the Provincial Public Administration Service Center from October 2020. People, agencies and organizations in Nghe An who submit applications for issuance of criminal records can choose to submit their applications directly, submit them via public post or submit them via the province's Level 4 Online Public Service Portal.
However, most people still choose to submit their applications in person, so there are times when it is overloaded. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice believes that the pilot decentralization to district-level administrative units is extremely necessary at the present stage, in order to contribute to reducing direct pressure on the Department of Justice. At the same time, it will create more convenience for people when they can go to the district-level justice department to carry out procedures for issuing criminal records, increasing the initiative of district-level administrative units in handling administrative procedures.
The Ministry of Justice proposed a 2-year pilot period for this policy, which is enough time for localities to prepare resources for implementation, and at the same time, enough time for preliminary and final review before proposing amendments to the law's provisions for application nationwide.
There are still difficulties and concerns.
A representative of the Nghe An Department of Justice said that the province will pilot the decentralization of the issuance of criminal records in three districts: Dien Chau, Nam Dan, and Que Phong. The pilot decentralization of the issuance of criminal records to a number of judicial offices under the district-level People's Committees has both advantages and difficulties.
If the issuance of criminal records is implemented at the district level, it can reduce time and travel costs for organizations and individuals when needed. On the other hand, when decentralizing the authority to the district justice department to issue criminal records, the number of files divided among the units will avoid congestion and reduce pressure on civil servants when receiving files at the Provincial Public Administration Service Center.
At the same time, the staff of the district's justice department all have the information technology level to meet the job requirements; proficiently use specialized software such as civil status management software, statistical software, etc. All administrative procedures are handled on the province's administrative procedure handling information system and on specialized systems and software of the industry.
However, after the Department of Justice conducted a survey in the locality, it showed some shortcomings: Firstly, regarding personnel, through a survey of 21 judicial offices in the province, the total number of civil servants is 71 civil servants. In which, there are units with only 3 civil servants or 2 judicial civil servants. In the current conditions of streamlining the payroll, adding more human resources is almost impossible. Meanwhile, if you add more work without adding more people, it will be very difficult to carry out the work as required.
Second, regarding physical facilities, currently 5 units lack computers, 6 units lack printers, 13 units do not have scanners. Along with equipment, there must be industry system software that meets the needs of the job.
Faced with these difficulties, the solution now is to build a scientific and rigorous process for issuing criminal records at the district-level People's Committee. More importantly, it is necessary to soon complete the integration of the province's administrative procedure settlement system with the shared criminal records management system, and soon put it into effective use in practice. At the same time, upgrade the Criminal Records Management System to overcome slow connections and disconnections; Decentralize and grant accounts of the shared criminal records management system and the criminal records management system to the justice department and the district-level People's Committee.
The representative of the Department of Administrative Justice - Nghe An Department of Justice also said that the encouragement of people to carry out this procedure online needs to be promoted more strongly to reduce direct administrative activities, causing loss of time and effort for both people and judicial officers. Along with that, the core factor is how to upgrade the Judicial Records Management software system to meet the increasing needs of society. Only then, the issuance of judicial records for people in general, and workers and laborers in particular, will be truly effective.
