Ho Chi Minh City reviews smart city development plan

The conference was attended by Politburo member and Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan.

According to Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong, in 2019, VND 500 billion was spent to implement the key tasks of the Project. Currently, there are three pillars of the Project, including "The common database and development of the open data ecosystem "; " Smart Urban Operation Centre "; " Socio-Economic Simulation and Forecast Centre"; the first phase was implemented (except for the Information Security Center, expected to establish a management company in September 2019). However, the city also faced many difficulties and challenges in the implementation process such as limited human resources and infrastructure.

Ho Chi Minh City chooses District 1 and District 12 as piloting locations. Currently, the People's Committee of District 1 has piloted a Smart Urban Operation Centre, with 750 camera eyes in 10 wards. Meanwhile, District 12 has almost finished the database for permanent citizens in this area and is now running applications to manage as well as control the quality and performance of state officers in processing administration work while calculating the citizen satisfaction during these tasks.

Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan asked, basing on the implementation results of units, districts and cities, the city need to build a common "framework" for localities to implement simultaneously .

The Secretary of Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan also suggested that the Project Management Board and the units soon re-appraise the data according to the roadmap; Thereby, building regulations on using data from the city, because this is a very important resource. At the same time, the municipal People's Committee needs to have an appropriate programme to help people using technology, becoming a population in smart urban areas.

In the near future, Ho Chi Minh City will survey and select the location to build and test the fifth-generation (5G) telecommunication technology in District 1, District 3, High-Tech Park, Quang Trung Software Park. Central; and build a separate human resource training program for the project.