To accelerate sustainable urban development, Vietnam has been working on planning and developing a series of smart cities. The overall goal is to accelerate digital transformation in urban governance by building electronic government including features such as digitised transport, transport, energy and society.
On January 24, 2022, Politburo issued a resolution on the planning, management and sustainable development of Vietnam’s urban areas by 2030 with a vision until 2045. It is well established that smart cities can be effectively and successfully developed when digital transformation is comprehensively deployed across all areas of a city. Sustainable cities are built on a foundation of robust urban management that employs a host of digital and tech solutions. Simultaneously, both government employees and citizens need to be upskilled and trained.
Vietnam’s digital transformation is based on three pillars: digital governance, digital economy and digital society, with an average point of 0.3 on a 1.0 grading scale. From a focus perspective, digital government is ranked higher point than both the digital economy and digital society primarily because of the e-government development process.
A total of 59 out of the 63 localities in the country have launched programmes on digital transformation to be rolled out over the next five years. The Deputy Head of Party Central Committee’s Economic Commission Nguyen Duc Hien said that out of the 63 centrally-run cities/provinces in the country, 41 have been developing a slew of smart city services.
Hien added that Vietnam is in the early stages of just begun applying smart city services. There is still much more to be added in terms of smart urban planning and smart urban construction management. Smart city projects must have a comprehensive approach with the goal of not only solving urgent problems of cities but also striving for socio-economic development.
Nguyen Hoang Minh from the Architecture University concurred that smart cities are founded on smart urban planning, smart economy, smart transport, smart energy, smart urbanites, smart community, smart urban management and digital society. In all of this, the key pillar is planning and intentional planning would be vital to the development of smart cities in Vietnam.
Meanwhile, the establishment of the Alliance of Public-Private Partnerships for Smart City Development has been set up to foster greater collaboration from the private sector to create smart cities in the country. This alliance will link organisations and corporations both domestic and international, to exchange knowledge, resources and initiatives to ensure that the goal of digital transformation is realised across the country.
To ensure digital transformation at all levels, OpenGov Asia reported on plans for all Vietnamese households to have digital addresses by 2025. The strategy intends to make the postal industry an essential element of the country’s digital economy infrastructure by making it a foundation for e-commerce, a press release has stated.
By 2025, the strategy also plans to have all farmer households function on e-commerce platforms developed by postal companies. The postal industry consists of a network of over 21,600 points covering communes and 63 provinces and cities, with nearly 800 enterprises operating in the industry. By 2030, the postal and delivery industry could reach annual revenue of US$ 10 billion, given the current growth rate of around 20%-30% per year. Completing the digital address platform, in line with the national digital map, is important for the development of e-commerce and the digital economy, the release stated.
The Ha Noi People’s Committee has issued a plan to carry out a pilot implementation of the national digital address platform associated with the digital map programme in the capital city. It will be initially piloted in the Hoang Mai, Hoan Kiem, Nam Tu Liem, Dong Anh, and Thach That districts. Services that use digital addresses would also be piloted, including tourism, fire prevention and fighting, and postal services.
