2023 is the second year that the National Electronic Authentication Center - NEAC (Ministry of Information and Communications) coordinates with consulting units to conduct surveys and evaluate service quality of organizations providing public digital signature authentication (CA) services. However, because the assessment will be piloted in 2022, this is the first time the survey and assessment results will be announced and honored publicly.

The ceremony to announce the results of the survey and evaluate the service quality of public CAs in 2023 has just been organized by the National Electronic Certification Center in coordination with the Vietnam Digital Signature and Electronic Transactions Club on January 19 in Hanoi, within the framework of the fourth quarter 2023 conference between NEAC and public CAs.

Besides the title 'Top 5 CAs with the best service quality in 2023' belonging to VNPT-CA, Viettel-CA, CA2, FPT-CA and MISA-CA, the National Electronic Certification Center and Vietnam Digital Signature and Electronic Transactions Club also announced and awarded 5 other titles to public CAs.

Specifically, EASYCA was recognized as the 'Best Legally Compliant CA in 2023'; Viettel-CA is 'the best CA rated by application parties in 2023'; and CA2 is the ‘Best Customer Experience CA of 2023’. The two titles 'CA with the most diverse technology applications and services in 2023' and 'CA with the best market share and price in 2023' both belong to VNPT-CA.

The above titles recognizing the efforts of outstanding public CAs in 2023 were selected for honor based on survey results and evaluated according to the CA-Index 2023 criteria set.

Sharing at the event, Mr. Phung Huy Tam, Head of Vietnam Digital Signature and Electronic Transactions Club, said that thanks to a series of NEAC activities, by the end of 2023, the assessment results showed that public CAs were gradually approaching each other in quality, with total scores ranging from good or higher, with component indexes very close to each other, not much difference. “It can be seen that public police have the opportunity to increase their scores to strengthen service quality”, Mr. Phung Huy Tam commented.

Also according to the representative of the Vietnam Digital Signature and Electronic Transactions Club, in addition to checking compliance with standards, regulations and conditions of state management, the annual CA-Index also contributes to further promoting service quality and market trust in the field of reliable services, by publishing and widely communicating this index.

"Most importantly, the set of indicators to evaluate the quality of public CA services provides an independent view so that each CA can learn from experience and adjust the content that needs improvement. The set of indicators serves as a mirror to support CAs for further verification. We also recommend that in the future NEAC consider adding a survey on related important challenge and policy indicators, such as discount risk, digital signatures for banking and public service transactions", Mr. Phung Huy Tam emphasized.

As a set of criteria developed by NEAC in cooperation with Viet Analytics, CA-Index 2023 includes 6 component indices: Legal compliance of public CAs; Technology and diversity of public digital signature authentication services; Market share of public CAs and prices of service packages; Customer experience; Convenience of application parties when cooperating with CAs; Business activities through agents.

The representative of the unit conducting the survey said that the purpose of the CA-Index is to synthesize from surveying the level of customer satisfaction; application side evaluation; Reviewing and evaluating experts, the research team will produce a detailed assessment report on the service quality of public police organizations. The report will be a basis to support the proposal of appropriate plans and policies for managing digital signature authentication activities in the future, as well as a reliable source of reference documents so that new customers can search and choose quality service providers.

To have enough necessary data to calculate the CA-Index 2023, the research team has built a data collection process for each group of indicators with 4 main research and survey methods including online surveys; confidential customer surveys; desk research, expert assessment; and direct survey.

The survey scale of CA-Index 2023 is 3,140 customers, including both business and individual customers. Of these, 2,730 customers were randomly selected from the list provided by CAs. These customers were sent evaluation requests directly to the CA; 410 votes were randomly taken from the database of newly established businesses of the Department of Planning and Investment of the provinces in 2023.