The Ministry of Finance has just been voted the leading unit in the digital transformation index of ministries, ministerial-level agencies, Governmental agencies and provinces and centrally-run cities in 2020 (DTI 2020). This is the result of the effective implementation of solutions on information technology (IT) applications of the ministry.

Breakthroughs in IT infrastructure and human resources

After leading the readiness index for information and communication technology (ICT) development and application in Vietnam in 2020 announced by the Ministry of Information and Communications in April, the Ministry of Finance retained its leading position in digital transformation at ministerial and provincial levels with a DTI of 0.4944.

The DTI is a set of ministerial and provincial digital transformation indicators to assess substantively, objectively and fairly the results of the annual digital transformation implementation of ministries and ministerial-level agencies, Governmental agencies and provinces and centrally-run cities.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Finance undertook many outstanding digital transformation activities in 2020 such as: the online public services at level 4 accounted for 50%, 100% of IT applications were connected and shared via a ministerial-level data integrated platform. As a result, 96.28% of enterprises received tax refunds by electronic means; 99.89% of enterprises participated in electronic tax declarations; more than 98 million records were processed online out of a total of nearly 110 million in 2020; the total number of visits on the website of the Ministry of Finance in 2020 was nearly 3.4 million.

Deputy Director of the Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics, Ministry of Finance Hoang Xuan Nam, said that, following the direction of the Party and Government, the Ministry of Finance has implemented many solutions to deploy IT applications to support the management and reform of administrative procedures. Accordingly, the ministry issued mechanisms and policies to encourage reform, research and enhance investment in the field of information technology.

In addition, the ministry focused on developing and creating a breakthrough in IT infrastructure and human resources; developing digital infrastructure and ensuring network safety and security. So far, the Ministry of Finance has effectively implemented many new and "core" technologies such as mobile technology, big data analysis in administrative procedure reform, improved public management capacity and created conditions for people and businesses to easily and equally access development opportunities.

From 2017, the Ministry of Finance has applied artificial intelligence to provide an automatic financial policy question and answer system on its website to help people and businesses. Thereby, the ministry has reduced the time to answer questions of people and businesses on issues under its management, Hoang Xuan Nam said.

Four lessons learned

Mr. Nam said the IT application achievements have significantly improved budgetary financial management toward modernization, increased the effectiveness and efficiency of supervision and made an important contribution to promoting institutional reform, administrative reform and restructuring operations to improve accuracy, timeliness and transparency in financial, accounting and state budget statistics.

Furthermore, Mr. Nam also shared lessons learned from the digital transformation. Firstly, the Ministry of Finance has made efforts to build e-Government towards digital government in all fields, especially raising awareness and responsibilities of the heads.

Besides, the ministry has focused on developing strategies and policies for digital transformation. This is a decisive factor to carry out digital transformation in the Finance sector. Along with that, the ministry has enhanced the application of new and advanced technologies in operations of the sector, researched and applied big data technology, artificial intelligence, blockchain and internet of things.

The Ministry of Finance has recently launched the Administrative Reform Plan for the 2021-2025 period. The ministry has defined the goal of strengthening the application of information technology, completed the construction of the e-Government of the Finance sector towards the Digital Ministry of Finance, the Service Ministry of Finance, putting people and businesses as the center and improved the operational efficiency of the whole sector through Digital Government and digital tools; and built e-Finance, Data and open data-based digital finance.

The Ministry of Finance will make efforts to achieve major goals by 2025 such as: building a national database on finance, piloting Big Data technology; building a user relationship management system to receive comments and feedback from users to improve administrative reform; piloting the application of artificial intelligence and virtual assistants in a number of key business activities and other activities.

Along with that, the ministry will complete the Ministry of Finance's electronic single-window information system with 100% of necessary administrative procedures that are built into online public services at level 3.4 and provided on the Public Service Portal.

100% of people and businesses using online public services in the financial sector are granted with electronic identification codes and carry out operations on all information systems of the Ministry of Finance.