Public Financial Management in the Context of Digital Transformation in Vietnam

This article examines the management of public finance in Vietnam in the context of accelerated digital transformation. It argues that digital transformation is no longer a peripheral modernization agenda but a core institutional condition for improving fiscal discipline, strategic allocation of public resources, operational efficiency, transparency, accountability, and citizen-oriented public service delivery. Drawing on a qualitative desk review of legal documents, policy strategies, international public financial management standards, and selected evidence from Vietnam's ongoing reforms, the article develops an analytical framework for digital public financial management and applies it to the Vietnamese case. The analysis shows that Vietnam has established an increasingly comprehensive digital policy foundation, including the National Digital Transformation Program to 2025 with orientations toward 2030, the continuing modernization of the budget and treasury system, the nationwide expansion of e-invoices and digital tax administration, the National E-Procurement System, online public service delivery, and recent data-strategy initiatives within the Ministry of Finance. These developments create significant opportunities for real-time fiscal monitoring, risk-based control, better integration of budget preparation and execution, improved procurement transparency, automated compliance, and more accessible budget disclosure. However, the article also identifies persistent constraints, including fragmented information systems, uneven data quality, limited interoperability, procedural inertia, cybersecurity and privacy risks, digital capacity gaps across levels of government, and the danger that technology may automate existing institutional weaknesses rather than transform them. The article proposes a reform agenda centered on data governance, whole-of-government interoperability, performance-oriented budgeting, risk-based digital controls, open fiscal data, human resource development, cybersecurity resilience, and responsible adoption of artificial intelligence. The central conclusion is that Vietnam's digital public finance reform will be effective only when technology is embedded in a coherent institutional architecture that links legal rules, data standards, accountability mechanisms, and public value outcomes across the whole public financial management cycle.