On the afternoon of November 21, giving an explanation to clarify the issue of National Assembly deputies' interest in the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Statistics Law, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang said that the proposed amendment focuses on 4 major groups of issues.
The first is the group of regulations related to the arrangement of the state apparatus and the organization of state statistics, and the organization of local government at 2 levels.
Second, the group of regulations related to specialized statistical inspection and specialized statistical inspection.
Third, a group of regulations related to professional statistics arising in practice.
Fourth, a group of regulations related to the application of statistical methods, information technology and digital transformation in state statistical activities.
To arrange in accordance with the 2-level local government model, there are provincial and grassroots statistical agencies in the locality. In fact, the grassroots level is the commune level.
To ensure effective use of human resources in the locality, a statistical facility at the commune level not only serves one commune but must manage at least 3 communes, an average of 5 to 6 communes.
The draft law has replaced the district-level statistical information system with a commune-level information system, assigning the statistical agency responsible for managing the system update. Currently, a statistic shows that the facility provides monthly and quarterly economic and social information to an average of about 5 to 7 communes.
Regarding the commune-level reporting regime and handling of population data incorrectness, the draft law supplements regulations on the commune-level statistical reporting regime and assigns the Minister of Finance the authority to issue this regulation.
The Minister of Finance will issue a statistical reporting regime at the provincial and commune levels, including a system of reporting forms and explanations for recording and applying them uniformly nationwide. This must ensure that there are no overlaps and no increase in the workload of the commune level, implemented by the statistical agency at the grassroots level.
Regarding the issue of population data fraud between statistical agencies and other agencies, Minister Nguyen Van Thang said that the fraud will decrease significantly or no longer exist in the coming time. The current imbalance occurs because we have not fully digitized population data.
Incorrect data is often associated with remote areas, ethnic minority areas. For example, there are many cases of giving birth but not registering in time, leading to errors in actual statistics, that is the reason why we have to have a population survey issue. When better management and enough population data are digitized, we will have the answer right away.
Currently, the Ministry of Finance is directing the Statistics Office to deploy a consistent software system to serve statistical work, along with a strategy to digitize all national data, expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
This process will help the work of collecting information, analyzing and evaluating statistics to be much more modern and accurate, while reducing the workforce in statistics. Currently, the workforce in statistics is still very hard-working, many indicators still have to use humans.
