Luu Dinh Phuc, head of the Authority of Press under the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), said Vietnam has 800 news agencies and nearly 1 million articles are published daily, which shows the diversity of information and the richness of data.

The media sector brings annual turnover of $4 billion. However, up to 50 percent of ad value is flowing into cross-border platforms and social networks, while data are being collected by the platforms. That is why Vietnamese press agencies are losing sources of revenue.

Phuc said that it is necessary to build Vietnamese-owned platforms so that data can be controlled and used for Vietnamese. This is a solution to exploit the benefits from data and build a knowledge base.

He said that digital transformation in the press and the development of platforms are being accelerated. On VTVgo's high-speed digital broadcasting platform, people can find both national and local TV channels. The Voice of Vietnam is developing a platform for nationwide broadcasting. Meanwhile, Nhan Dan Newspaper is in the process of building its platform. 

The domestic digital platforms, when operational, will help attract ad sources from cross-border platforms.

To carry out digital transformation in the news industry, the government of Vietnam has built tools to assess the development of the press, from which press agencies can conduct suitable solutions.

Vietnam has also released a set of criteria aiming to measure the growth and maturity of the digital transformation in the press. 

It contains indicators grouped in five pillars: strategy; digital infrastructure, digital platform and information security; organizational and professional uniformity; readers and audiences; level of digital technology application. The achievements of the transformation process will be measured on a 100-point scale. The results of the transformation will be reported by MIC annually.

Phuc suggested that ASEAN should build a set of common indexes about digital transformation of newspapers. These are criteria that media agencies should strive for and be ranked accordingly. Each ASEAN member country should have its own tool to measure its level of digital transformation.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Lam said that Vietnam needs to have its own ecosystem and solutions to calculate and measure data, associated with the business models controlled by Vietnam so as to ease the reliance on the platform of the third party. 

Cong Sang - Ho Giap