HCM CITY — Official documents on paper will be replaced by digital documents in HCM City from next year as part of a public administration review.

At a meeting with city leaders yesterday, Trần Vĩnh Tuyến, vice chairman of the city’s People’s Committee requested that from January 1 next year, administrative agencies will no longer send official documents in paper form.

For now, he requested that apart from the paper version sent via post, administrative agencies send a digital version of every official document.

The move aims to reduce time spent responding to citizens’ complaints instead of keeping them waiting for up to eight days.

According to Tuyến, by abandoning hard copies, the committee’s office is estimated to save more than VNĐ1 billion (US$44,710) a year.

Taking advantage of digital technology not only saves printing costs and preserves human resources but also reduces traffic jams as fewer post office staff must deliver documents, he said.

He appointed the city’s Department of Information and Communications to plan a proposal to legalise and apply digital signatures in the public administrative process.

The proposal should be presented next month so that digital signatures can be used in documents that are sent from district level to the city level at the beginning of next year, he said.

The city is building an integrated, open source data centre amongst authorities, government agencies, enterprises and citizens.

It is expected that by 2020, all public administrative services of the city will be provided via an interconnected online system. — VNS