A seminar on developing Da Nang into a smart city in the years ahead through future cooperation programmes between the locality and US businesses took place on Wednesday.  

An impressive view of Da Nang (Photo: DNO/ Dang No)

In attendance at the one-day event were representatives from the city’s People’s Committee (PC), the US Commercial Service, and US businesses.

In his opening address, municipal PC Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh proudly said that, since 2014, Da Nang has deployed a large number of large-scale practical projects for building a smart city in many major aspects.  They are traffic infrastructure, water supplies and drainage systems, food safety and hygiene management, and the application of electronic data collection sensors to supply information used to manage assets and resources efficiently.

In 2014, an e-government system was officially put into operation in the city with the application of the ‘one-stop-shop’ mechanism, and software on managing government employees and administrative dossiers.

In 2015, the system won the first prize at the ASEAN ICT Awards for IT application in the public services.

To date, the transfer of the city’s e-government model to a total of 19 other localities nationwide has been conducted effectively.

Most notably, Da Nang has ranked first in the 2017 Viet Nam Information and Communications Technology (ICT) applications and development readiness ranking for the 9^th consecutive year. 

In his remarks, the US Commercial Service’s Senior Commercial Officer to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, Mr Stuart Schaag, highly praised Da Nang for its remarkable efforts in building visionary approaches, and in fully tapping the existing technological resources to address local diverse urban challenges.

The US expert showed the fact that Viet Nam is now home to a network of 40 US businesses specialising in building smart city solutions.  He hoped that these US companies would assist Da Nang to use advanced technologies in the most effective manner to successfully realise its goal of becoming a smart city.

Also at the seminar, representatives from 13 US companies expressed their willingness to cooperate with the city in the future years.

In the years ahead, Da Nang will focus on developing specialised IT architecture frameworks for the local education and healthcare sector.