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Australian Ambassador, Robyn Mudie and UNDP Resident Representative, Caitlin Wiesen, meet to sign the funding agreement in Hue City.

For the past three years, Australia has been the main donor for the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, widely known as ‘PAPI’. PAPI is an innovative partnership with UNDP Vietnam and the Fatherland Front, that measures citizen’s views on public service delivery in all 63 provinces of Vietnam. The findings are invaluable for policy makers in improving the performance of local government.

Since its debut in 2009, PAPI has collected the voices of 131,501 citizens (with 52% being women and 16% being ethnic minorities) who were randomly selected from across the country for face-to-face interviews. Every year since 2011, around 14,000 citizens from different demographic backgrounds have provided their feedback about their local governance performance.

Australia has been the main donor for PAPI since 2018. Thanks to this support, PAPI has continued to make substantial impact at various levels. All 63 provinces across Vietnam have organized PAPI diagnostic workshops to track how their local government agencies have been doing on governance and public administration. Nearly all provinces have issued resolutions, action plans or directives to directly respond to PAPI findings.

More importantly, PAPI helps Vietnam gauge how the country moves towards realizing its commitment to the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, especially in the areas of democratic governance and inclusive institutions.

At the signing ceremony in Hue, Australian Ambassador to Vietnam Robyn Mudie reiterated Australia’s strong support to Vietnam to promote better governance and public administration at the provincial level, especially in response to COVID-19.

“We are very impressed that PAPI has evolved as Viet Nam has changed over the years. PAPI now includes e-government and environment indicators, showing that it is responding to the situation in the country,” Ambassador Mudie said. “It is really important for us to continue our work with PAPI because we can see in a very concrete way the impact it has, and that it actually improves the service delivery at the provincial level.”

The funding comes at a critical time for Vietnam as the country experiences the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the country’s society, economy and environment.

UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam Caitlin Wiesen highlighted that “the significant financial contribution from Australia will help the PAPI programme increase support for better governance and public administration in Vietnam.”

She added that “the funding comes at a critical time for Viet Nam as the country gears up for recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. UNDP will work with our national partners to support provinces in improving governance and promote more accountable and responsive institutions in Vietnam”./.

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