Nguyễn Hoàng Phương. — Photo vov.vn

Deputy director of Việt Nam Social Security’s Information Technology Centre, Nguyễn Hoàng Phương, speaks to Voice of Việt Nam (VOV) about the necessity of applying IT to streamline administrative procedures.

Together with speeding up administrative reform, Việt Nam Social Security (VSS) has actively applied information technology (IT) in modernising social security management. Could you share some of the sector’s achievements in this task?

The VSS has paid special attention to IT application in recent years through the construction of a concentrated data system for the whole sector and a system to provide personal identity numbers to better manage participants in social insurance, health insurance and unemployment insurance nationwide. The VSS has so far supplied 28 online public services and the total number of registrations completed online reached nearly 44 million.    

The VSS has applied IT following the e-Government framework issued by the Ministry of Information and Communications. To do that, it prepared for a long time essential technical infrastructure and human resources. The years 2017 and 2018 marked breakthrough developments with many activities being carried out resolutely and effectively to modernise the sector, such as setting up a database to digitalise archived documents and developing an e-transaction system for all transaction activities such as providing health insurance cards or social insurance books and dealing with related compensation or health coverage benefits. Particularly, its Health Insurance Medical Information Review System connects more than 12,000 medical centres nationwide and standardises data input for data sharing and information exchange between medical centres and social insurance agencies.

The sector has also finished a database for households participating in health insurance with information on nearly 93 million people, equivalent to 24.3 million households.

The State encourages investment in technology development and modern technical equipment to effectively manage and implement policies relating to social insurance and health insurance. What are the goals of the VSS in IT application in 2019?

In 2019, the sector will continue implementing the national database on insurance, focusing on continuously updating and sychronising information about insurance participants; and managing data relating to social insurance fee collection and payment. On that basis, the VSS will propose proper legal framework needed and co-operate with relevant ministries, agencies, localities and businesses to share information in order to contribute to create the national e-Government.

At the same time, on the basis of the IT application results, the VSS has actively built the 4.0 digital ecosystem to serve businesses and people with such services as SMS (text messaging) services, development of VSS applications on mobile phones and an automatic reply system (named Chatbot) that uses Artificial Intelligence to answer questions relating to insurance policies.

The VSS plans to complete and operate the database management e-system with the latest technology to better manage and provide better services towards the target of ensuring sustainable social security.

What will the sector do to fulfil these targets?

In order to fulfill the targets, the VSS will implement comprehensively some of following measures:

Firstly, focusing on streamlining administrative procedures together with promoting IT application, and continuing to review and standardise professional processes by IT.

Second, diversifying the implementation and implementing the sector’s e-Government structure in line with the national e-Government framework.

Third, increasing information dissemination to raise awareness of staff of the whole sector about the advantages of IT application, using IT application as a criteria to assess performance of the staff and improving capacity of IT human resources.

Fourth, continuing to review and propose the Government and the Prime Minister to issue related legal documents on IT application activities of the sector. — VNS