The proposal to socialize some activities to support the resolution of administrative procedures in Ho Chi Minh City stems from the requirement to improve the quality of service for people and businesses.
What people want is not promises of reform, but dossiers that are fully guided, processed quickly, do not have to go back and forth many times and do not incur extra-regulation costs.
From that reality, Ho Chi Minh City's proposal to socialize a number of professional and nghiệp vụ activities to support the resolution of administrative procedures is a direction worth piloting.
What needs to be emphasized in the draft is not to transfer state power to businesses.
Participating units only support technical and service stages such as declaration guidance, dossier digitization, data updates, processing progress monitoring or result return support.
This is an approach that is consistent with the trend of modern governance that many countries have adopted.
The State focuses on management functions, policy making, inspection and supervision. Supporting tasks can mobilize social resources to improve service quality.
Reality shows that many people, especially the elderly or those who have little access to digital technology, face difficulties when providing online public services.
Many businesses also spend time completing electronic dossiers, updating data or performing procedures on digital platforms.
If there are professional support units, well-trained and operating publicly and transparently, it can help people save a lot of time and effort.
The benefits may be even greater for the investment environment because time is cost.
A slow dossier being resolved for a few days can delay an entire production and business plan or may cause businesses to miss investment opportunities.
Therefore, any solution that helps shorten the processing time of administrative procedures will contribute to improving the city's competitiveness.
Ho Chi Minh City is aiming to build a modern, serving administration. To do so, the resources of the public sector need to be supplemented.
However, for the correct policy to be effective, the most important thing is the control mechanism.
People are willing to pay for a good, fast and convenient service, but absolutely cannot allow the appearance of a public fee on the contract and possibly adding unofficial "brimbing costs".
If that happens, the reform goals will be distorted.
Administrative reform, after all, is not about reducing how many forms or issuing how many new procedures, the most important measure is whether people and businesses are served better or not.
