Public Administration Reform to Promote Business Development

The province has achieved significant results in public administration reform in the past 10 years. Lang Son is a pioneer in applying information technology to administration and supporting operations of enterprises to uphold public administration reform achievements. The Department of Planning and Investment defines public administration reform as a breakthrough stage in supporting enterprises to develop, from one-stop shop for investment certificate to utilities for enterprises to do profitable business.

 

As seen, administration reform is a focused task of the Department of Planning and Investment. The department issued Plan 25/KH-SKHDT on administration reform in 2013, with the specific objectives and tasks as follows: Improving regulatory quality and carrying out public administration reform tasks to create fundamental changes, thus helping promote social and economic development of the province. The central tasks are upholding the spirit, attitude, moral responsibility and a sense of service of State administration organs; improving the quality of one-stop shop and single-window mechanism and ensuring concerted coordination of State organs to provide best service for citizens and businesses; publicising professional activities. The department will focus on six following administration reform contents in 2013:

 

Institutional reform: Drafting legal documents; reviewing legal documents; reforming the process of building and promulgating legal documents; promoting democracy, mobilising intellectual cadres and civil servants to improve the quality of drafted legal documents; and amending and supplementing legal documents the department is responsible for.

 

Administration procedure reform: Continuing to review and implement administration procedure simplification plans as guided by the Government, ministries and central agencies; updating administration procedures to ensure the transparency and accuracy of administration procedures; strictly implementing announced administration procedures; implementing administration procedures; receiving and handling feedback and recommendations of individuals and organisations on administration procedures as stipulated in Government Decree 20/2008/ND-CP dated February 14, 2008 on reception and handling of feedback and recommendations of individuals and organisations in administration regulations; effectively implementing Government Decree 63/2010/ND-CP dated June 8, 2010 on administration procedure control and central guidelines for administration procedure control.

 

Apparatus reform: Clearly defining the department’s functions, tasks, powers and organisational structure; reviewing and gradually rearranging the department’s organisational structure, enhancing the quality of one-stop source and single-window mechanism; changing methods to collect public opinions.

 

Personnel build-up and quality improvement: Defining unit leadership titles like managers and deputies of professional units and investment promotion centres; gradually integrating responsibilities and positions of personnel; continuing to train and foster leadership skills and standards for personnel; renovating and enhancing the quality of personnel training; equipping professional knowledge and skills and office culture knowledge for personnel; and raising the sense of responsibility, morality and discipline of public servants and officials.

 

Public financial reform: Continuing to implement the self-staffing mechanism for administration organs units and self-financing mechanism for the Investment Promotion Centre.

 

State administration modernisation:Applying information technology to the department’s operations, use e-office software for paperwork inside the department; applying information technology to the reception division, installing national business registration software; upgrading information technology infrastructure and equipment to ensure effective implementation of applied software.

 

The department effectively implements ISO 9001:2008 quality management system in administration procedures and working manner; and raises the quality and efficiency of the department’s operations. The department regularly updates new information about administration procedures and updates data on its website. To effectively implement this plan, the department has assigned specific tasks to each division. The Office of Department will be responsible for monitoring, urging and reporting on the progress of the plan.

 

Currently, the Department of Planning and Investment is coordinating with other departments and agencies to help enterprises to restructure and access capital sources for production and business activities. They also reschedule debts and taxes for enterprises, and support them to clear inventories and stabilise production. They improve performances of business associations, and provide management knowledge training for enterprises and legal knowledge for business managers. The department will continue with administration procedure reform to streamline investment attraction formalities and boost market accessibility for enterprises.

 

The department will continue reviewing the province’s legal documents, mechanisms and policies concerning business and entrepreneur support; timely adjusting and supplementing new contents to meet requirements; effectively applying investment incentive policies; creating favourable conditions for enterprises to carry out production and business programmes and projects.

 

The department ensures publicity and transparency of socioeconomic development planning, sector planning, locality planning, support mechanisms and policies of Vietnam and Lang Son province at working offices of State organs and on mass media to direct enterprises and entrepreneurs to do business in accordance with overall planning to promote local potentials and advantages and reduce business risks.

 

The department also honours outperforming enterprises. It also flexibly and creatively solves difficulties and obstacles for businesses. Periodically, it hosts dialogues with businesses (every six months). The taxation sector and district/city governments meet businesses every three months to listen to their feedback and opinions to identify their problems in production and business activities and help resolve them. Then, investor confidence in the Lang Son investment environment in particular and the Vietnamese investment environment in general is thus boosted.