Themed ‘Legal Infrastructure – Necessary Boost for Smart City Development’, the summit concentrates on sharing experience and updating knowledge on smart infrastructure, visions and strategies, models of smart urban area, planning and management based on advanced technologies (IoT, Big Data, AI, Virtual Reality). These topics are expected to improve the performance of smart city management, offer more social security services to citizens, and foster the digital transformation processes in businesses and organizations.
Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung informed on the issuance of Resolution No.148 by the Government on November 11, 2022 and the launch of an action program to implement Resolution No.06 by the Politburo on planning, establishing, managing, and sustainably developing Vietnamese urban areas until 2030, with a vision to 2045.
The latter Resolution stressed on the determination of Vietnam to create sustainable smart urban areas, with a strong focus on restructuring IT infrastructure, forming certain common digital platforms for these areas, boosting digital transformation in urban management, establishing an e-government and later a digital government.
Deputy Minister Dung shared that in nature, smart urban area development means digital transformation at a city level, centering upon citizens. This is a continuous, long-term process that needs multiple resources to carry out. It is necessary to identify a consistent mindset for smart city development right at the planning stage, where central state agencies concentrating on introducing policies and standards for connection, database and the local authorities are responsible for adopting them.
The establishment of smart cities in Vietnam is expected to optimize current resources, grow more sustainably, protect the environment, ensure social security and socio-economic development. This is the goal of both the central Government and the local authorities. As a result, the project ‘Development Sustainable Smart Urban Areas in Vietnam in the 2018-2025, with a Guidance to 2030’ was approved by the Prime Minister in August 2018.
Sadly, at present, most localities still mainly focus on developing and providing smart services related to electronic and digital government. The planning and management tasks for smart urban areas to address existing problems have not received much attention; and therefore, the living standards and satisfaction of citizens are not much improved.
Chairman of VINASA Nguyen Van Khoa said that Vietnam has valuable chances yet encounters several difficulties when establishing smart urban areas. In the last few years, both technology businesses and city leaders have strived to carry out these projects. However, the toughest challenge is a lack of a clear legal corridor for a public-private partnership, especially regarding procedures for investment, bidding, and hiring IT services. Adding to that is a weak attention to smart planning among cities for essential infrastructure.
Therefore, Chairman Khoa hoped that Vietnam Smart City Summit 2022 could be a place for experts and managers to devise practical measures to create a strong foundation for the comprehensive growth of smart cities in the country. Only then can smart urban models truly prove their usefulness in serving citizens and businesses as well as the local authorities.
So far, 54 out of 63 provinces and cities nationwide have been implementing this project. 30 provinces and cities have greenlighted their local corresponding projects, while 15 have approved their ICT architecture for smart cities and 38 have introduced their Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) at city or provincial level. 17 out of 63 province and cities have launched their smart tourism application, and 10 have introduced other applications for smart traffic, smart urban safety and order control.
