Building creative innovation ecosystem for smart city
On Thursday, a workshop took place in Da Nang to discuss effective ways to build a creative innovation ecosystem for a smart city.
The event was jointly held by the municipal People’s Committee, and the Embassy of Finland in Viet Nam, and the Viet Nam-Finland Innovation Partnership Programme (IPP).
Addressing the event, Director of the municipal Department of Foreign Affairs Lam Quang Minh said, in 2014, the city authorities gave a nod to a smart city building project.
In July 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.
Since then, 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 particular, the municipal government has always paid a special attention to enhancing the capacity of scientific and technological innovations and competitiveness.
In his opinions about building a smart city, Mr Jukka Viitanen, the Managing Director and Founding Partner of Resolute HQ Inc highlighted a need for the city to consider attracting even more investment inflows from large enterprises worldwide.
Also, it is necessary to build a smart city that combine both ecological and innovative models.
In addition, importance should be attached to enhancing innovation capacity, with a focus on human resource training through the provisions of knowledge on innovations and smart city building to university and college students and vocational trainees, thereby promoting the local startup ecosystem.
Da Nang has been selected as one of the key areas to be involved in the 1st and 2nd phases of the IPP which is an Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme financed jointly by the governments of Viet Nam and Finland.
IPP is now in its 2nd phase (IPP2) running through 2014 - 2018 with 11 million EUR budget. This phase aims at supporting Viet Nam’s overall goal of becoming an innovation-driven knowledge economy.
Under the 2nd phase, 3 units in Da Nang have been received a total of 150,000 Euros in aid from the IPP to promote startup activities and innovations, develop business incubators and research into start-up policies.
These beneficiaries are the University of Da Nang, the Institute for Socio-Economic Development, and the Da Nang Entrepreneurship Support (DNES).
Da Nang is now one of the priority localities enjoying the benefits of the ongoing IPP2, which partly helping the city realise its goal of becoming a start-up and innovation destination in the near future.