HCM CITY – HCM City is determined to pursue administrative reform this year, a meeting held by authorities on Tuesday to review the outcome of reforms in 2018 heard.

“This year the HCM City’s Party Committee will supervise four major works related to administrative reforms and the Chairman of the city People’s Committee will be responsible for tackling 99 delayed administrative reform tasks,” the city’s Party Secretary Nguyễn Thiện Nhân said.

On the occasion, Nhân hailed eight important tasks that were accomplished last year.

They included handling 99.6 per cent of documents submitted by the public without delay, increasing the number of public services available online, major revamp of public administration, and adoption of certain smart city applications.

However, while district agencies and departments achieved 99.6 per cent, the office of the city People’s Committee did not release the statistics about its performance, he said.

“Many districts, departments and enterprises have complained that they had to spend a lot of time waiting for documents from the office of the People’s Committee.

“The office must be part of the administrative reform and announce the time taken to handle documents.”

Huỳnh Công Hùng, deputy director of the Interior Department, said this year 30 - 40 per cent of public services would be available online and achieve 80 per cent public satisfaction level.

“Next year the Department of Construction will reform the construction licensing process and increase the use of IT,” Trần Trọng Tuấn, its director, said.

In 2018 the department piloted a single-door system for basic design evaluation, technical design evaluation and issue of construction licences.

This reduced the time for issue of licences from 121 to 42 days, and this year the department expects to reduce it further to 30 -35 days, he said.

Võ Sĩ, deputy head of the People’s Committee office, said: “In the last two years the … office has used email and SMS to deliver information. It helped save VNĐ7 billion (US$310,000) in 2017, VNĐ8 billion ($350,000) in 2018 and expected VNĐ9 billion ($390,000) in 2019.” – VNS