Digital transformation (DT) is an inevitable tendency, an objective demand and an important political duty for all levels, industries and the whole political system to develop the country and well meet the people’s needs. Promoting their exemplary leading roles, the Ministry of National Defence (MND)  and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) have been attentively improving their coordination in implementing Project 06 by the Government, contributing to the success of the National digital transformation Project (NDT).

In the situation when the 4^th Industrial Revolution has been drastically developing, DT has played a vital part, at the same time, created opportunities for the development of each country. With the target of becoming the country with the fast DT to keep pace with the developed ones in the world and being able to take full advantage of the 4^th Industrial Revolution, creating a lever to develop the country, our Party and State have issued many guidelines and policies to impulse the DT in all fields and considered it as the new and breakthrough means in order to shorten the process of industrialisation and modernisation of the country.            

On thoroughly grasping the Party’s viewpoints and guidelines on DT, the Government and Prime Minister have issued documents, built programmes and plans on this important factor as the bases for both central and local departments, ministries and industries to implement. With the drastic participation of the Government, Prime Minister and the effort of the central and local departments, ministries and industries, the NDT project has gained many active achievements. One of these breakthrough achievements is that the Government has directed the MPS to radically implement and complete the construction of the national population database (7/2021). It was the construction of national database that has opened opportunities to promote the NDT in many fields of the social life because this was the “initial” database owning an important part in building the e-Government, digital Government, society and citizens. As a result, the MPS has advised the Prime Minister to promulgate Decision No. 06/QĐ-TTg, dated 06/01/2022 on approving the Project on “Developing the application of data on population, identification and electronic authentication for  NDT in the 2022-2025 period, with a vision toward 2030” (hereafter Project 06). Project 06 defined 07 larger viewpoints, general and detailed targets with 05 groups of utilities and implementation schedules in the 2022-2025 period, with orientation toward 2030. After one year of implementation, with the resolute direction from the Government, the Prime Minister and leaders of departments, ministries, industries, the Central and local authorities, project 06 has achieved many encouraging results. Some of them are as follows: (1). The foundation databases for DT have been complemented and completed. The national population database including 17 information fields of over 100 million of citizens has been digitalised, added and regularly updated making it “correct, complete, clean and updated”. It has been so far connected to 15 ministries, industries and 01 state-owned enterprise (The Vietnam Electricity Group), 03 Telecommunication Groups (Viettel, Vinaphone, Mobifone) and 63 localities, making contribution to the “enrichment” of database; over 83 million identification cards with electronic chip have been issued to 100% eligible citizens. Especially, for the first time, Vietnam has created the national identification, and approved for over 55.4 million of e-identification (VNeID). (2). The online public services have been attentively promoted with the breakthrough of 25/25 essential services being related to citizens, two of which are interconnected. Specifically, the MPS has widely supplied 224/224 public services according to its functions and duties. These online public services have brought many benefits for the people and enterprises, gradually eliminated the “petty corruption”, and saved about VND 2,500 billion every year. (3). The solutions for applying the population database, identification and electronic authentication to manage the society and develop the economy have been drastically impulsed, such as: identifying, sorting and ensuring correctly the subjects of social security to make the cashless payments; using the biometric authentication on the citizens’ ID in all healthcare facilities; using  identification cards, or the VNeID app to create accounts and supervise the collection of taxes; identifying the credit information of  borrowers, ensuring the name, preventing the frauds and risks; identifying the information of mobile phone subscribers, gradually eliminating the cases of “unregistered sim cards” doing activities of frauds, slandering, threatening, etc.

Lt. Gen. Nguyen Duy Ngoc speaks at the meeting on coordination between the MND and MPS in implementing Project 06

In general evaluation, the implementation of Project 06 has been bringing the practical effectiveness in all three aspects: making the society more civilised; directly contributing to the economic development; improving the effectiveness of social management and preventing crimes. This is one of the important and breaking contents to implement the NDT in the current period.

Defence and security are specific fields in each country, the facilitation of DT in these fields is not beyond this necessary tendency. The application of science, technology and DT in defence and security activities in our country has been specially concerned by the Party and State with specific policies and solutions. This has been grasped and closely coordinated by the MND and MPS in their implementation. Accordingly, together with contributing to the NDT through implementing Project 06, besides doing 10 groups of general duties by ministries, industries and localities according to Decision No. 06/QĐ-TTg by the Prime Minister, the MND has been assigned 03 tasks due to its functions, including: providing the specifically digitalised signatures for offices, cadres, workers and employees who have joined the national public service portal and the electronic information system at all levels; providing the solution of applying passwords for identification and security in the information systems which are used to solve the administrative procedures; attending the supervision, ensuring the security and safety for the information systems of the national public service portal and the information systems which are used to solve the administrative procedures in ministry and province levels.

Right after the Prime Minister signed the decision, the leadership and direction of implementing Project 06 has been carried out promptly and actively. The MND has issued 02 plans and 01 decision on establishing the Working group to implement Project 06; monthly supervised the progress of task accomplishment by offices and units through the Steering Committee of administrative reform and e-Government; timely solved the raising problems in implementing plans; organised ministerial-level conferences to solve any “blocking points” when implementing Project 06. It has been clearly seen from the Government’s Working group of Project 06 that the MND has directed offices and units to actively accomplish the assigned tasks, especially supplying specific e-cetificates, solutions of security codes and monitoring the information safety, through which, to contribute to the results of implementing Project 06. In the process of implementing Project 06 by the Government, the MND’s functional offices have closely coordinated with the ones of the MPS and the Government Office to closely follow the progress. Especially, on 29/6/2023, the MPS and the MND co-organised the Conference on coordinately implementing Project 06 and DT. In the Conference, leaders of the two ministries agreed to strengthen their coordination in effectively exploiting the national database of population and the specialised database to support the management, staff work, making policies etc. and accomplish the military, defence and security tasks. This is an important foundation to further improve the coordination between the two ministries in the NDT. In order to timely overcome the difficulties, effectively exploit the national population database to well prove the roles and responsibilities of the Army and Police in implementing Project 06, in the following time, the two ministries should continue to closely coordinate and concretise the implementation solutions, giving focus on several main ones as follows:

Firstly, closely coordinating in exploiting the national population database, citizens’ ID, identification and e-authentication for activities of defence and security, making contribution to successfully implement the NDT. As it is widely known that the information in the national population database has been standardised for each individual, added and updated on a daily, even, hourly basis in real time, so it is accurate, added and “enriched” in the process of connecting or sharing data with other agencies; changes of population in localities, regions and areas have been analysed, evaluated and forecast, which is then to provide accurate information for building defence and security strategies, programmes and plans in all over the country, and also in specific industries and localities. It is clear to see the effectiveness that from the national population database, we could exactly analyse the population database till the age of doing the military service, which could assist the functional offices of the MND in being active in their military recruitment, assigning the annual military targets to each locality and grassroots level, from which, to firmly grasp the number of citizens who are at the age of doing military service in order to send requests and make supervision to prevent them from avoiding the responsibility for military service.

Secondly, coordinating to enhance the search and authentication of citizens’ information on the public service portal of the MND connected to the national population database. The two ministries should check and restructure the process of administrative procedures and public services integrated on the national public service portal and the information systems focusing on the administrative procedures to simplify the processes, procedures and documents under their authority; receive and process documents online to avoid the late or overdue ones; check, standardise and digitalise the forms and declarations in the way of reducing 20% of declared information by reusing the digitalised one due to the Government’s direction; coordinately exchange experience in their leadership, focus resources on digitalising documents and administrative results; strictly implement the digitalised signature, sending and receiving working  documents in e-environments in all-level governments; synchronously, practically and effectively enhance the construction, updating, connection and integration of digital foundations, national database and specialised databases.

Thirdly, coordinating to advise the construction and completion of the mechanism related to DT in general and DT in defence and security, in particular. At first, it is necessary to attentively check and specify the related legal documents right after the promulgation of the amended Electronic Transaction Law in order to make advice, proposals, complements, and ensure the change of traditional working style to the electronic environments. Together, it is also to improve the quality of coordination in supervising the security, information safety on the cyberspace; struggle against all the devastating plots and tricks by the hostile and reactionary forces and objects who have been attacking, devastating and stealing information, especially from the information systems and the important databases of the country.

Fourthly, coordinating to apply the utilities of Project 06 into all activities by the Army and Police to well meet the task requirements of each force. One of the utilities is the application of the QR code reading devices in all Military and Police hospitals for the medical treatments under healthcare insurance, making favourable conditions and reducing difficulties for sick people; also solutions for developing DT in the armed forces through the app VneID with the purpose of integrating documents such as driver’s licenses, digitalised signatures, bank accounts, vehicles’ registrations for transactions. Besides, the two ministries also need to closely coordinate to exploit utilities from Project 06 to effectively implement the contents of Decree No. 03/2019/NĐ-CP, dated 05/9/2019 by the Government on the coordination between the MND and MPS in implementing their tasks of protecting the national security, ensuring social order and security, struggling against crimes and doing their defence missions. Among them, they need to strengthen their coordination to manage the entrance and exit, prevent the illegal ones, especially in border areas which are complicated in security and order; exploit the national population database to manage the population in border and coastal areas, making contribution to helping functional forces closely supervise the local people’s movements in the locality under their management, quickly calculate numbers of subjects in wanted or having criminal records who have come from other places; share the specialised databases on judicial records, copies of criminal records, subjects being banned from entrance and exit or having activities against the Party and State to help the work of preventing against crimes and law violations.

Enhancing the coordination in implementing Project 06 of the Government between the MND and the MPS has significantly affected the success of DT, at the same time, affirmed the exemplary and leading roles of the Army and Police in implementing the tasks of Project 06, and the NDT.

Lieutenant General NGUYEN DUY NGOC, Member of the Central Party Committee, Deputy Minister of Public Security, Standing Deputy of the Project 06 Working Group