The Ho Chi Minh city authorities are starting to celebrate initial successes after one year of implementation of the smart city project. The project aims to address problems like flooding, traffic congestion, pollution and unsustainable growth, as well as improving connections between the city administration, businesses and citizens. The project is centered around four key tasks, which include a smart administration center; an information security center; a simulation research and forecasting center for socio-economic policies; and a common-use shared database.
Phase 1 of the latter has already been launched in the Quang Trung Software Park, and the city intends to invite bids for building the second phase in the third quarter of 2019. Databases from various government agencies detailing information on topics including land use, healthcare, residential and civil status and tax registration have already been integrated into the shared data warehouse.
The city has launched a pilot data portal which provides free information for people and businesses to use, which will cover areas from Medical treatment facilities and health to transport, climate and Environment in the long term.
Furthermore, businesses are being encouraged to use the ecosystem data to develop new higher-value products to support the transition to a knowledge-based economy and start-up culture.
Additionally, the city authorities announced a phase 1 development of a Smart Urban Operations Center which will see a VND 30 billion (US 1.29 million) investment. The center will collect important information and data sources of relevance to the city.
Next to this, there are plans to build an intelligent operations center and a socio-economic simulation and forecast center to achieve the four key priorities in the plan.
(Source: Vietnam News; VN Economic Times; Vietnam Plus)