The event saw the attendance of Secretary of the Party Committee and Governor of Laos’ Vientiane capital Sinlavong Khoutphaythoune and Chairman of the Ha Noi People’s Committee Nguyen Duc Chung, among others.

Addressing the event, Ha Noi Chairman Nguyen Duc Chung stressed that the discussion will create golden opportunity for the two sides to exchange, share experiences in state management in general, public administration reform and IT applications in particular; as well as to cement and strengthen the traditional friendship and special solidarity between the two capital cities.

Chairman Chung said that, in city development program for 2016-2020 period, Ha Noi considers administrative reforms as one of the three breakthroughs. Information technology is the main tool to carry out administrative reforms with a view to improving the management, steering and effectiveness of the apparatus.

In 2016, Ha Noi had basically finished reorganizing departments and public service companies and eliminating old IT programs. It has also designed a single IT system used by the municipal level and 584 communes, wards and towns.

The city ranked first in IT application and second in IT application in administrative reforms and climbed up 10 notches from 24th to 14th place in the provincial competitiveness index (PCI) rankings 2016 among 63 provinces and cities nationwide.

Additionally, due to administrative reforms, the capital city has attracted over US$3 billion in foreign investment.  Meanwhile, domestic businesses also invested nearly VND440,000 billion in Ha Noi.

“Ha Noi is willing to share experiences to Vientiane in administrative reforms and IT training for public officials and civil servants,” he added.

Speaking at the event, Director of Department of Information and Communications Phan Lan Tu said that, in the coming time, Ha Noi will continue stepping up the deployment and effective exploitation of IT applications to build e-government; improve quality, performance of departments, sectors, districts, towns, communes, wards to better serve the people and enterprises.

The city strives to provide at least 40 percent of the administrative services of the department, sectors, districts, towns, communes, wards at level 3, 4 by the end of 2017.

For his part, Vientiane Governor Sinlavong expressed his appreciation for the precious experience of Ha Noi and desired Ha Noi would cooperate closely with Vientiane in administrative reform.

Vientiane wants to learn from Ha Noi’s experience to build a synchronous and modern administration and co-operate with Ha Noi to build a commercial center of Ha Noi in Vientiane as well as a similar center in Ha Noi.

Chairman Chung stressed that Ha Noi is willing to send experts to support Vientiane on development of PAR projects; accelerate the construction of trade and tourist centers in the two capitals and IT training for public officials and civil servants of Vientiane.