Using digital signatures and digital certificates in state agencies: Contributing to building a modern government

With the current strong development of information technology, the application of digital signatures and digital certificates in state agencies is a necessary need, serving administrative reform, gradually building digital government. Being well aware of this, in the past years, the Provincial People’s Committee has had many solutions, accelerating the implementation from the province to the grassroots, thereby, achieving positive results.

Civil servants of Na Sam town, Van Lang district digitally sign electronic documents

Mr. Nguyen Trong Hung, Deputy Director of Department of Information and Communications said: Since 2015, when the Provincial People’s Committee issued a plan to implement the use of specialized digital signatures in State administrative agencies, we have actively coordinated with departments, agencies, and People’s Committees of districts and communes to summarize the need to register for the use of digital certificates and specialized digital signatures and send them to the Government Cipher Committee for sending, receiving electronic documents and electronic transactions between state agencies in the province. Along with that, we regularly review IT technical infrastructure, intranet systems, Internet, specialized data transmission networks of Party and State agencies to operate smoothly, continuously and ensure information security.

Over the years, the implementation of using digital certificates and digital signatures has been synchronously implemented in state agencies from the province to the commune level. Currently, 100% of state agencies use digital signatures in dealing with work. Up to now, the Department of Information and Communications has requested the Department of Digital Certification and Information Security under the Government Cipher Committee to issue 22,826 digital certificates and digital signatures for organizations and individuals, in which: 1,703 digital certificates for the organization; 21,123 digital signatures for individuals; 232 digital signature sim, meeting the requirements of ensuring network information security in sending and receiving electronic messages, electronic documents and electronic authentication.

A digital signature is a form of electronic signature created by transforming a data message using an asymmetric cryptographic system. A digital certificate is a form of electronic certificate issued by a digital signature certification service provider in order to provide identification information for the public key of an agency, organization or individual. The relationship between digital signatures and digital certificates is a supporting relationship. While the digital certificate is the basis for the partner to confirm whether the digital signature is correct or not, the digital signature plays the role of confirming the written information, or the commitment of the individual or organization.

 

The use of digital signatures and digital certificates brings many benefits, contributes to building a modern and transparent government, and promotes administrative reform. For example, if in the traditional way, document processing takes a lot of time and effort, it has to go through steps such as printing documents, submitting to the leader to sign, getting the number of documents, scanning. and attaching documents to the system for release, with the application of digital certificates and digital signatures, operations are handled on document management software more quickly and conveniently. In particular, the application of digital signatures also facilitates in dealing with work when leaders are busy in meetings or are not present at the office to sign directly.

Exploring practice at the People’s Committee of Lang Son city, it was found that this is one of the units with organizations and individuals actively using digital certificates and digital signatures. By the end of July 2023, the City People’s Committee has coordinated with the Department of Information and Communications to grant 79 personal digital signatures to leaders of specialized agencies under the City People’s Committee, People’s Committees of wards and communes; 56 digital signatures for agencies and units. Every day, the unit receives and issues hundreds of documents, so when applying digital signatures, digital certificates have brought many practical utilities.

Mr. Tran Lenh Truong, Head of the City’s Culture and Information Division said: Currently, except for confidential documents, most of the documents are handled online. Since the beginning of the year, the unit has issued 6,500 documents, including 6,416 digitally signed documents, reaching 98.7%. This saves time and effort of professional staff and money for printing, ink and paper. At the same time, it also changed working style of the staff from directly to solving work in the network environment; contribute to better serving people and businesses. In addition, the use of digital signatures improves the safety and security of electronic transactions between state administrative agencies in the network environment.

In addition, in order to help officials and civil servants across the province use digital certificates and digital signatures proficiently, the Department of Information and Communications also actively organizes training courses to disseminate, guide the management and use for leaders and civil servants on average from 1 to 2 classes per year, integrate knowledge training for specialized information technology staff of agencies and units to ensure readiness to support users to apply digital signatures at agencies and units.

Using digital signatures and digital certificates is considered a modern, convenient, fast and safe solution, partly promoting positive effects in building digital government in the province. In the coming time, the Provincial People’s Committee will continue to direct the Department of Information and Communications to strengthen supervision and guide agencies and units in digital signature implementation.