Promoting the popularization of digital signatures

In the context of promoting national digital transformation, promoting the construction of digital government, developing digital economy and digital society, the use of digital signatures in electronic transactions has been identified as an important solution. In particular, the leading advantage that digital signatures bring is the speed in performing administrative procedures and electronic transactions, without the need for direct hand-signed signatures.

Free digital signature for people

Recently (July 29), Thua Thien Hue began providing free digital signatures to local people. In this campaign, with the commitment of service providers, people will be provided with digital signatures with support policies, such as free for 1 year including digital signature initialization fee and online public service digital signature. Other services are paid according to the price range of digital signature service providers. Depending on the policy of each service provider, users can choose to change to another provider or suspend until they have a need again without any constraints when the support program ends after 1 year.

The implementation of digital signatures has brought many benefits to agencies, organizations and individuals such as enhancing security, reducing operating costs, improving productivity and enhancing user experience.

Having just registered to create a personal digital signature, Ms. Nguyen Thanh Nga (Hue City) - a business owner providing services shared: Instead of having to print out and sign contracts and administrative procedures by hand, then send them to partners, submit them to authorities, store an additional copy... now, I can do it quickly and conveniently online at home. "Through research, users who have registered to use the digital signature service all clearly see the superiority in both time and convenience compared to the traditional way of signing by hand," Ms. Nga said.

According to the Standing Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Binh, digital signatures are being widely deployed but are still mainly concentrated in state agencies, organizations and enterprises. The rate of people with personal digital certificates and using digital signatures in the country in general and Thua Thien Hue in particular is still very modest, leading to transactions related to individuals still being carried out in the traditional way on paper, causing waste and not ensuring authenticity.

“Issuing free public digital signatures to people is an important activity, helping people and businesses access public services and administrative procedures more quickly and conveniently, while ensuring the legality of transactions, thereby soon completing the conditions for forming digital citizens in the province,” said Mr. Binh.

Barriers from users

According to Director of the Department of Information and Communications Nguyen Xuan Son, after activating the campaign to issue digital signatures to people through 3 forms: Enterprises supporting direct issuance at households, online registration via the application of enterprises providing digital signatures and registering needs via Hue-S, in just one week of implementation, the program has issued and received registrations for nearly 2,000 digital signatures for people. "These are very encouraging results demonstrating the companionship of enterprises and the interest of people in the process of promoting digital transformation in Thua Thien Hue province," said Mr. Son.

However, the campaign implementation has also encountered some shortcomings, such as the lack of resources of businesses, especially those without branches in Thua Thien Hue. People's awareness is not "mature" enough to speed up and strengthen the campaign. In addition, there are not many platforms supporting the use of digital signatures, so it has not attracted many people to participate.

To achieve the campaign's goals, in the coming time, according to the head of the Department of Information and Communications, the unit will deploy synchronous solutions from the provincial to the communal level in applying digital signatures to online public services on Hue-S, soon bringing the value of digital signatures into life; promote communication work to raise awareness and mobilize communication resources of businesses to create information diversity to help people access. Coordinate with businesses to integrate digital signature services and utilities on Hue-S. In addition, "We also require businesses to mobilize more resources as committed to promptly activate online registration needs as well as increase access to households to issue digital signatures for people", said Mr. Son.

Thua Thien Hue province is implementing a program to popularize digital signatures for all people within 12 months, with 2 phases. Phase 1: In the first 3 months, businesses providing digital signatures commit to implementing and will visit each household to support the issuance of digital signatures for all people. Phase 2: 9 months from the end of phase 1, people who have not been issued will proactively register for issuance through announced channels and the support will come to the household depending on the program of the businesses.

Source