Public Administration Reform and Digital Government Transformation in Vietnam

Summary This article reviews the co-evolution of public administration reform and digital government transformation in Vietnam from the early reform period to 2025. It demonstrates that digital government in Vietnam has developed not as a stand-alone technological initiative, but as an integral component of long-term administrative reform shaped by political priorities, institutional design, and national development strategies. By tracing successive reform phases and the evolution of e-government and digital government architectures from Version 1.0 to Version 4.0, the study highlights a gradual shift from fragmented, infrastructure-oriented digitization toward a coordinated, architecture-driven model of digital governance. The findings underline the importance of centralized coordination, interoperability, and institutional coherence in sustaining digital government reforms, offering policy-relevant insights for governments pursuing administrative modernization under conditions of institutional continuity.