Minister of Information and Communications, Nguyen Huy Dung, said that the development of a smart city is the implementation of digital transformation for a city with three major elements, including digital government, digital economy and, digital society.
The summit will feature the participation of around 1,000 delegates via online platforms from 27 places of provinces and cities. Smart cities are a development trend for all cities around the world and the Vietnamese government has always emphasised that the development of smart cities is a breakthrough necessary to contribute to improving national competitiveness.
According to a media report, in addition to legal documents, Vietnam has proactively joined smart city networks in the region and around the world. Currently, Vietnam has three cities, having been in the ASEAN smart city network since 2018, and nearly 40 localities implementing smart city models.
Speaking at the summit, Dung noted that from a policy perspective, smart cities are a place to pilot the implementation of services, models, and policies through the use of new digital technologies. In recent years, the Ministry of Information and Communications has proactively coordinated with relevant ministries, localities, and several international agencies from Singapore and the Republic of Korea to enhance smart city development, he added.
The 2020 Smart City Summit is a great opportunity for management agencies, experts, speakers, and enterprises from Vietnam and abroad to share and contribute their valuable experience in the building and development of smart cities.
The country recently also held the Vietnam Open Summit to promote the use of open platforms and architecture. OpenGov Asia reported that the event gathered 200 participants, including senior officials of ministries and agencies, as well as IT experts from large high-tech corporations. A lot of countries have announced they plan to only buy open technologies, especially technologies used to build national infrastructure platforms. Vietnam is also following this trend. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, apps like Bluezone and CoMeet were open-source or developed with open-source software.
The Ministry of Information and Communications has also launched the national open data portal, which has registered over 10,000 data sets. Vietnam’s 5G network will also use the open standard Open RAN. Vietnam has chosen to develop open technology, open-source software, and open data for individuals and businesses to join the creation of new values.
Nearly 3 million organisations and businesses from 70 countries have joined the open-source community. 35 out of 50 top companies in the world sent their teams to participate in the open-source projects in the forum. Vietnam ranks third in Southeast Asia and is among the top 20 in the world in open-source applications, after Singapore (17), and Malaysia (18). The government aims to develop open technology with a focus on three pillars – developing a Make-in-Vietnam open ecosystem, promoting open culture, and developing an open community.
