On Thursday, representatives from the Da Nang People’s Committee and FPT, a Vietnamese software giant, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on building Da Nang into a ‘smart’ city over the 2018-2020 period.

At the signing ceremony

Under the agreement, the focus will be offering traffic and agriculture online services for the city dwellers, as well as to enhancing the connection between the city’s government and its citizens in timely and transparent manners.

In addition, importance will be attached to promoting IT application in English language teaching and learning at schools, and piloting some smart applications to facilitate English training courses for pupils, students, and government employees.

As for the healthcare service, heed will be paid to develop a modern system to ensure the effective management activities at hospitals, and to offer IT solutions for medical examination and treatment services there.

In tourism sector, the emphasis will be on creating a smart application to check information on tourist guide cards, tourism transport vehicles, and businesses operating in the city.

As planned, FPT will pour 15 billion VND (664,000 US$) into the city to deploy some pilot projects with smart applications over the 2018 - 2019 period.

In his remarks at the signing ceremony, municipal People's Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh, said that Da Nang is making every effort to realise its goal of becoming a smart city and one of the dynamic localities in the central region.

Vice Chairman Minh said that the city’s e-Government system, which was launched in 2014, has been used by 225 agencies and 4,000 users. About 50% of public procedures have also been posted online. Since early this year, the city authorities have developed its master plans and detailed designs for a smart city model.

In addition, Mr Minh highlighted the important role of residents and businesses, especially IT companies, in Da Nang, in developing the locality towards a smart city in the future.