Ho Chi Minh City plans to become a smart city, and the task requires concerted efforts by the administration and information technology community, a city leader has said.

HCM City plans to become a smart city, and the task requires concerted efforts by the administration and information technology community, a top city leader has said

Speaking at a March 10 meeting with information technology executives, Tran Vinh Tuyen, Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee, said: “Information technology is the most important factor in successfully building a smart city, and the city would like to seek solutions and contributions from information technology companies.”

Nguyen Quoc Cuong, deputy director of the city’s Department of Information and Communications, said the city is drafting a master plan to build a smart city in 2017-20 that seeks to ensure a high quality of living and working and sustainability.

“The project should appraise the current digital capability, identify priority fields and then come up with a detailed roadmap to create the smart city.

“The smart city’s central mission will be the convenience of local residents, create an open playing field for all companies and take advantage of all international and domestic resources, and this will need close co-operation between research institutes, scientists, technology companies, and financial organisations.

“City authorities should pledge to support the task and the achievements should be measured based on international standards and the city’s peculiar conditions.”

The city has already begun to work on the smart city programme, creating a common city-wide database with an open eco-system and conceiving links between the smart city and its long-cherished administrative autonomy plans.

The smart city will comprise three technical aspects - a data collection system with cameras, censors, and devices for the Internet of Things and information technology system, a database system, and an analysis system.

“To operate a smart city will require professional managers and staff,” Cuong said.

Authorities would guide universities and research institutes in training requirements, he said.

“The smart city will not depend on any [particular] suppliers and have a unified architecture and easy connectivity between all levels of authorities, from city to commune.”

At the meeting, the IT business executives displayed many solutions for a smart city.

USTDA wants to help HCM City in smart city building efforts

The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) is willing to assist Ho Chi Minh City in becoming a smart city, USTDA Country Manager David Ross told Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Committee Tran Vinh Tuyen on March 10.

He said the USTDA has assisted the building of many smart cities around the world and gained certain successes. It is ready to send US experts to HCM City to assess, design or improve the smart city building plan.

US businesses want to cooperate with and help the southern economic hub of Vietnam in smart city building, he said, asking HCM City to detail plans on the fields that need assistance from the USTDA so that the two sides can work on them as soon as possible.

At the meeting, Tuyen appreciated the agency’s assistance to his city, asking it to comment on the local master plan on smart city building or participate in the plan implementation.

Municipal authorities will provide favourable conditions for the USTDA to conduct surveys and seek cooperation opportunities, he added.

Valuing the USTDA’s idea of an emergency communication system, Tuyen asked the agency to work with local authorised sides to carry out this project, thus addressing shortcomings of the existing system which uses many telephone numbers.

Ross said the USTDA wants to introduce experienced businesses to provide solutions for building the communication system.

VNA