In August, the Ministry of Information and Communications granted FPT IS the license to certify e-signatures. This is the fifth enterprise to receive permission to offer this service, after VNPT, Bkis, Viettel and Nacencomm. Apart from the National Center for E-signature Certification, these service providers will help stoke growth in this immensely promising sector.

Limited transaction volumes despite robust demand

Taxation offices, which have embraced e-signatures since December 2009, are among the first to tap into this information security assurance system, which has proliferated in countries with an established e-commerce sector. Under this system, enterprises use e-signatures in place of their own seals and submit their documents online without compromising on the legal validity of the registration or declaration.

Many businesses have reveled in such cost reduction. Vu Thuc Quyen, Bao Viet Bank’s chief accountant and head of finance-accounting, says her firm spends merely half a day completing the month-end tax declaration procedure at present as compared with 2-3 days previously.

Foreign-invested enterprises familiar with e-commerce are just as delighted. Dinh Thuy Anh from B.Braun Vietnam Co. says that her enterprise has yearned for such a service for a long time as it is time-efficient and enables the company to slash costs substantially.

Customs agencies will also adopt e-signatures on a pilot basis from October. The scheme will take place in Hanoi first before expanding to include other localities nationwide.

However, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, despite soaring demand for e-signatures, merely 2,500 enterprises or so, mainly in the import-export sector, have embraced e-signatures and e-signature certification when using online public services provided by this State agency. This pales in comparison with the number of businesses nationwide. The reason for such a dismal figure is that many enterprises have yet to realize the benefits of e-signatures, which may improve productive and operational efficiency.

Nguyen Tran Hieu, vice head of the Information Technology Department under the General Department of Customs, says that businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, are still reluctant to opt for e-signatures due to concerns about security, legal validity and network infrastructure. Public relations may play a part in tackling this problem, he adds.

Dao Dinh Kha, director of the National Center for E-signature Certification, says that since Vietnam tries to develop its public key infrastructure (PKI), the very foundation of e-signatures, challenges are inevitable. PKI is rather complex and gives rise to several legal, technological and administrative issues which can only be resolved by concerted efforts on the part of State agencies and enterprises.

Potential

Most experts who attended the conference on the use of e-signatures for e-commerce held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Information and Communications last month agree that, despite a host of hurdles, the market still boasts immense potential. Consider, for instance, the arrival of Bkis, Viettel, Nacencomm and FPT IS immediately after VNPT received its license. This is doubtless proof of the appeal of the market for e-signature certification.

La The Hung, head of data protection and security at VDC, which VNPT has tasked with offering the e-signature certification service, says that a favorable legal corridor and the proliferation of e-commerce gateways, finance-banking applications and online public administrative services will help e-signatures gain popularity. Kha adds that the use of e-signatures for e-commerce will be inevitable in the near future. Since the early 2000s, laws on e-signatures and e-certification have been implemented in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, not to mention many countries outside Asia.

Existing barriers

Nguyen Thanh Hung, head of e-commerce and information technology under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, says that there remain daunting barriers to e-signatures in Vietnam. For instance, while this ministry has integrated e-signatures into its e-mailing system, current laws do not allow important documents to be copied and stored as digital data. Meanwhile, insignificant documents do not require e-signatures, which are a form of data protection.

Hoang Quoc Khanh, director of Nacencomm, says that while the legal framework governing e-signatures is rather comprehensive, policy incentives remain sketchy. Moreover, e-commerce is still in its nascent stage in Vietnam, so aversion to this form of transaction is rather widespread among customers. The volume of e-transactions is therefore quite limited.

To aggravate matters, home-grown e-signature certification service providers have yet to gain recognition beyond Vietnam and still have a long way to go before asserting their credibility in the international market. Cooperation among these providers is vital, especially when they negotiate with international accreditation organizations. Pursuant to Decree 26, Vietnam also needs to ink agreements with other countries, starting with those in Asia, to pave the way for international recognition of local e-signature certification service providers, which remains an uphill task at present.