Quang Ninh (VNA) – The northern coastal province of Quang Ninh willfurther its efforts to hasten administrative reform in 2018 towards improvingthe province’s competitive capacity, said Secretary of the provincial PartyCommittee Nguyen Van Doc.

He made the statement at a conference on May 21 on evaluating the local PublicAdministrative Reform (PAR Index), Satisfaction Index of Public AdministrationServices (SIPAS), and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) in 2017.

Doc said Quang Ninh must continue to work to maintain its position among thetop performers of those indexes. 

Therefore,he instructed relevant sectors and branches must press ahead withadministrative procedure reforms, enhance the efficiency of publicadministrative centres, cut unnecessary administrative procedures, completee-government apparatus, and pay due attention to providing training for publicservants.

The provincial party secretary also required that localities and agencies inthe province should organize conferences to seek solutions to bettering theirperformance in those three indexes.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Long saidthat administrative reform aims to provide citizens and enterprises with betterservices and their satisfaction will be used to assess the efficiency of localauthorities.

An action plan with concrete solutions was issued by the provincial People’sCommittee right after the conference, in which all localities are required to reviewand further cut administrative procedures and enhance their accountability tolocal residents.

The chairman assigned the Department of Information and Communication toprovide training on e-government to the locals while the Department of HomeAffairs should give recommendations to the provincial People’s Committee on howto address issues arising when carrying out the solutions.

Last year, Quang Ninh for the first time rose to the first place in the PARIndex with 89.54 points, which was 6.72 points higher than its score in 2016.Meanwhile, it was ranked 5th in the SIPAS index among 63 cities andprovince nationwide and in top two of PAPI, moving up 30 steps compared to theprevious year.

However, Pham Minh Hung, head of the Administrative Reform Department under theMinistry of Home Affairs, pointed out some drawbacks in the localadministrative reform, including the lax observance of regulations on regularreports in some localities, the large number of deputy heads in somedepartments and agencies, the irrational ratio between management and staff insome sections of provincial departments, and limitation in decentralisation ofstate management between the province and districts.

Hung suggested that administrative reform must go hand in hand with theapplication of information technology. In addition, special attention should bepaid to popularisation work to raise public awareness of administrative reform.

In 2017, the province saw improvement in five out of six components in PARINDEX, which are residents’ participation in local governance, transparency,corruption control in public sector, public administrative procedures andpublic service supply. However, despite the improvement, Quang Ninh was stillin the lower-ranking group. Its performance in accountability dropped.

Assoc. Prof. Dr Le Van Chien from the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politicssaid that Quang Ninh province should enhance inspection of the making andenforcement of plans on improving public governance and administrativeefficiency at communal and district levels, while those holding the toppositions should be held responsibility for the outcomes of the work.

Healso recommended that the PAPI should be applied in all organisations atdistrict level from 2018.-VNA