Digital Transformation in Online Public Service Delivery at Commune Level: The Current Situation in Hai Thinh Commune, Ninh Binh Province, Vietnam

Online public services are the most visible output of digital transformation in public administration, and in Vietnam they are now delivered mainly at commune level after the introduction of the two-tier local government model on 1 July 2025. This paper analyses the current situation of digital transformation in online public service delivery in Hai Thinh, a coastal commune of Ninh Binh province formed by merging Thinh Long township and the communes of Hai Chau and Hai Ninh. The study applies a descriptive case design that combines document analysis of national, provincial and commune sources with descriptive statistics. It maps the service delivery chain from the citizen's VNeID account through the National Public Service Portal and the provincial procedure-handling system to the commune Public Administrative Service Centre. At provincial level, the results show rapid progress: by the third quarter of 2026, 98.2% of full-process dossiers and 91.5% of partial-process dossiers were handled online, and online payment reached 92.1%. Yet digital integration remains incomplete. Only 47.3% of permanent residents had electronic health books integrated in VNeID and 13.1% had social-security accounts integrated, while payment reconciliation, inconsistent data, duplicate procedure codes and limited equipment continue to interrupt fully digital handling. For a coastal commune whose residents include fishing households, older people and Catholic parish communities, the demand side is as important as the supply side. The paper proposes a three-layer set of solutions covering the supply side, intermediaries and the demand side, aimed at turning high submission rates into services that residents can complete independently.