Student Nguyen Thi Phuong, a resident of District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, has been a regular commuter on Metro Line 1 to Thu Duc City in recent months. Leveraging the city's student fare reduction policy on the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, Phuong registers via the app by providing personal information and a student ID photo, subsequently using a QR code for electronic ticket gate access.
While traveling to Ben Thanh metro station, Phuong encountered haphazardly discarded waste beneath Calmette Bridge. Promptly using the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, she documented the situation with a photograph and submitted her feedback. Notably, the local government acknowledged and began processing her report within a short timeframe.
Director Vo Thi Trung Trinh of the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Center which has built and operated the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application said that before the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, to solve the needs of life, people had to contact and use many different applications and systems.
According to her, while these independent systems experienced comparable adoption, their operational separation and lack of a centralized point created inefficiencies for citizens. Recognizing this, an initiative was undertaken to develop a unified application enabling two-way interaction between the government and the public. This effort culminated in the November 2024 launch of the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, providing a cohesive digital platform for engagement between the city government and its residents.
According to Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Vo Van Hoan, the awarding of the Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award aims to honor and encourage innovative and creative activities in production and business, in the daily work of each individual, agency, unit, and enterprise. Ho Chi Minh City is focusing on implementing the Politburo's Resolution No. 57 on breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and national digital transformation. The 4th Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award is also one of the activities to implement Resolution 57.
The Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen app was built to serve as a unified mobile platform for all aspects of social life, enabling two-way communication between the city government and its people through easy "one-touch" interaction, according to Ms. Vo Thi Trung Trinh. This application aims to provide many practical benefits to the people.
Director Vo Thi Trung Trinh said that the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application is the pioneering platform to consolidate all public services, thereby enabling swift citizen-government interaction, reducing administrative procedure costs, and facilitating policy dissemination in the digital era.
She revealed that the application has so far connected the Shared Data Warehouse with the VNeID electronic identification accounts of nearly 6 million people in Ho Chi Minh City. In the future, the city will continue to improve and integrate other utilities to build an application that is both a platform to solve public administrative problems and can serve all public services, becoming a tool for people to communicate with the government.
Major Dang Van Thang, Head of the Youth Department of the Ho Chi Minh City Police and a key implementer of the project, shared numerous concerns. In recent years, Ho Chi Minh City has seen a rise in black credit crimes and increasingly sophisticated fraudulent activities. These issues have been compounded by a proliferation of illegal advertising—ranging from black credit leaflets to unauthorized promotions for services like 'septic tank pumping' and “concrete drilling and cutting”—which negatively impact residents’ lives and degrade the urban landscape.
In response, the Ho Chi Minh City Police launched a creative initiative titled 'Strengthening the Application of Technology in Preventing Black Credit-Related Crimes and Managing Illegal Advertising to Preserve the Urban Landscape'. This project marks a new approach, integrating direct public outreach with the strategic use of technology.
In 2024, the Ho Chi Minh City Police conducted seven campaigns targeting the removal of illegal advertising, mobilizing over 45,000 participants. Simultaneously, they collaborated with the City Advertising Association to broadcast more than 620,000 promotional videos on electronic billboards and outdoor LED screens.
According to Major Thang, in the ongoing effort to combat black credit crimes, the Ho Chi Minh City Police have leveraged technology to address over 3,000 phone numbers linked to illicit financial lending. Coupled with professional investigative measures, authorities have issued administrative sanctions against numerous individuals involved in illegal lending and unauthorized advertising activities.
