E-governance: French expertise mobilised in Vietnam
It has been a longstanding priority for Vietnam. Since 2015, the Government has been increasing its efforts to modernise and digitalise the electronic administration for users. Vietnam is one of the countries with the highest population growth rates in the world, with an increase from 85 million inhabitants in 2006 to over 96 million in 2019. In this context, access to public services for all and the increasing number of users have become key governance issues for the country.
One of the main focuses of the project, which is implemented by Expertise France with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) financing, is to assist the Vietnamese authorities with the preparation and launch of the national public service portal. It was launched on 9 December in the presence of the Prime Minister, Nguyễn Xuân Phúcet, and the Minister of the Office of the Government, Mai Tiến Dũng.
E-government: French experience mobilised
The technical assistance implemented by Expertise France aims to present the tools recently developed for French citizens to the Vietnamese partner and assist the Government with the design of the reforms and legislative framework required for the implementation of an efficient electronic administration.
The French expertise has specifically targeted the issues of the user approach, usability and design of the portal, but also more technical aspects such as the interconnection and architecture of the site. Several French tools have served as models for the deployment of the e-government in Vietnam, such as the service-public.fr portal and FranceConnect, a French solution for digital identity management and electronic authentication.
A group of French experts worked closely with the Vietnamese Government for several months to adapt this model to Vietnam: “During our discussions, we sought to take into account as much as possible the specific characteristics of Vietnam in order to advise the best possible adaptations”, points out Hervé Le Bars, an e-governance expert at Expertise France. “The French digital government was built over the long term. We have learned from our experience and this is what we want to share with our Vietnamese counterparts.”
A continuation of the project in 2020
The portal has currently been designed to receive 500,000 visits a day and provide 40,000 simultaneous connections on the system. The objective is to increase the capacity to 2,500,000 daily visits and 200,000 simultaneous connections by 2023. Since its launch, the portal has already met with success with 1.9 million connections during the first three days of operation.
The first phase of the e-gov project in Vietnam reached completion in mid-December 2019. The activities will continue during phase 2 and will start in the first quarter of 2020 for a period of one year. The lines of action for the next 12 months were discussed during the second project Steering Committee meeting on 12 November, which was chaired by Minister Mai Tiến Dũng, in the presence of AFD and Expertise France.