Ho Chi Minh City aims to create a digital administration and become a smart city this year. The city’s leaders have pointed out the major areas of focus: governing the city in the new normal (post-pandemic), building databases and linking all databases related to governance, and finding new driving forces for future growth.
According to the Department of Information and Communications, the city will implement comprehensive technology solutions and exploit shared data to hasten economic recovery. The databases contain information about the public, enterprises, and land. The Department’s Director, Lam Dinh Thang, explained that the city would speed up digital transformation at governmental organisations and promote e-government to improve the efficiency and quality of public services.
The city is also deploying applications to enhance interaction between government agencies and residents, help enterprises speed up digital transformation, build a digital economy and society, and quickly achieve the digitisation of priority areas like healthcare and education. Over 900 state agencies, corporations, and non-business establishments are already using some features of an integrated data-sharing platform, according to a report.
Agencies for transportation, healthcare, education and training, the environment, urban planning, and security are using several tech-based applications to better serve the public and businesses. HCM City will establish at least two technology innovation centres from now through 2025 to help businesses completely digitise operations, according to the municipal people’s committee. They will strengthen supply chains, transfer technologies and innovations, research digital products, increase the awareness of digital transformation, promote an innovation ecosystem for start-ups, and help businesses develop digital products. They will also tie-up with prominent global partners for digitisation and funding, evaluate the effectiveness of digital products and support the creation of digital solutions.
Assessing the city’s digitisation efforts, an official from the World Bank in Vietnam noted that the city would need to carry out specific adjustments to boost the value of its digital economy since it has great competitiveness and better resilience after the pandemic. It ranks 5th out of 63 provinces and cities in the index for information technology application and development.
Last month, OpenGov Asia reported on a project to develop the population database and applications for e-identification and e-authentication for 2022-2025. Under the scheme, apart from the database and applications, citizen ID cards with electronic chips will serve administrative procedures and online public services. This year, the old and new versions of citizen IDs will be integrated, enabling the e-identification of all citizens.
The connection and sharing of data between the national population and tax databases are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2022, while personal paper documents, including health insurance cards, driving licences, job licences, and vaccination certificates, will be integrated into the citizen IDs and the e-identification app VNEID. E-authentication will be used for all information provided on the citizen IDs and VNEID this year. From 2023 to 2025, e-identification and e-authentication are expected to be applied to all people conducting administrative procedures at a one-stop-shop office at all levels.
