Proposing a flexible sandbox mechanism to ensure fairness among businesses

Some criteria are difficult to quantify.

The National Assembly's Committee on Science, Technology and Environment is seeking comments on the Draft Law on Digital Technology Industry (Draft).

One of the notable contents of the draft is the controlled testing mechanism (sandbox). This mechanism can be considered a form of incentive for the digital technology industry to facilitate testing of new business models in a flexible legal environment.

Based on business opinions, the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has some opinions.

Firstly, regarding the testing receiving agency, Article 36.4 of the Draft is dividing the authority of agencies according to the scope of management area. In which, the Provincial People's Committee grants licenses within the scope of management area, the specialized management ministry grants licenses within the scope of management field or beyond the area of ​​a province.

VCCI proposes to establish a more flexible open testing mechanism.

VCCI believes that this division may not be consistent with the nature of the sandbox. The sandbox mechanism mentioned in the Draft is a regulatory sandbox, which means testing whether the imposition of management methods is suitable for that business model or not, from which state agencies can issue a legal mechanism that applies to all businesses.

Normally, after the trial period, state agencies will re-evaluate the trial mechanism, draft and issue legal documents for general application.

"Thus, the ministries and branches - the units directly responsible for policy making - are the ones who should directly manage the sandbox. They can determine the management method in the sandbox model and assess the suitability of that method. Accordingly, giving authority to the Provincial People's Committee seems not really suitable and can create a gap in reality. After the trial ends, which state agency will take on the responsibility of issuing regulations to allow the model to officially operate?", VCCI stated.

According to VCCI, with the current two-level division, businesses may have difficulty in identifying the competent authority to receive their documents. In many cases, these dividing lines may be unclear or have different interpretations between the management agency and the business.

Therefore, VCCI proposed to amend the regulations in the direction of establishing a more flexible open mechanism. Specifically, the Ministry of Science and Technology acts as a one-stop agency. After receiving documents from enterprises, the Ministry will act as a focal point to work with ministries, branches and localities to grant licenses to enterprises. Provincial People's Committees, ministries and branches still have the authority to grant licenses (enterprises are allowed to apply for licenses according to their authority).

Second, criteria for participating in the pilot mechanism. Article 36.3 of the Draft stipulates criteria for enterprises to participate in the pilot mechanism such as the model being innovative, low-risk, scalable, etc. However, some criteria are still vague and difficult to quantify, causing difficulties in reviewing applications.

With the low-risk criteria: in essence, the management agency does not have an understanding of the business model, has not specifically identified the risks and dangers, so it needs to experiment to be able to visualize the problems - in a small space to control to avoid the risk from spreading. Requiring products and services to have low risk to enter the sandbox would go against the experimental nature of the sandbox...

The criteria of innovation and new value can also cause problems in practice. In fact, businesses may have implemented the model in practice, but must apply general legal regulations. This is only a temporary solution until there is a standard legal mechanism, and businesses are still eager to participate in the testing mechanism. If this criterion is required, many promising business models that have developed well in the market may not benefit from this mechanism.

Be careful to ensure fairness.

Third, the sandbox mechanism needs to ensure fairness and equality among businesses. The sandbox mechanism, in a way, can be considered a right of businesses that are selected to participate. Therefore, there will always be more than one business that wants to participate in this mechanism. Due to limited resources, the management agency cannot accept all businesses for a business model.

Currently, the Draft only designs a licensing mechanism for each individual project without a general coordination mechanism. At that time, this regulation may either have too many sandboxes for the same business model, which are even similar and do not complement each other; or the licensing process is stalled because the agencies receiving the application are waiting for each other. On the business side, businesses may also be worried when competitors are granted a trial license before them, creating an advantage to dominate the market.

To ensure transparency and fairness, VCCI proposes to apply two parallel review mechanisms: a general review mechanism and a review mechanism for each project.

Moonlight

Source: https://doanhnghiepvn.vn/cong-nghe/de-xuat-co-che-sandbox-linh-hoat-bao-dam-tinh-cong-bang-giua-cac-doanh-nghiep/20250328085043942