The ‘Building a Smart City’ project is one of Da Nang’s key projects, creating opportunities for the city to maximise its resources, addressing challenges in the process of urban and socio-economic development in the future.

Under the project, focus will be on implementing the IT application into 16 priority aspects under the 6 main pillars. A section of Vo Van Kiet is viewed from above

The statement was made by municipal People's Committee Vice Chairman Le Trung Chinh at the Wednesday seminar to launch this landmark project. Also present at the announcement event were Deputy Minister of Construction Phan Thi My Linh, municipal Party Committee Standing Deputy Secretary Vo Cong Tri, and People's Council Vice Chairman Le Minh Trung.

The project aims to help the city government and State management agencies to enhance their operational efficiency, facilitate citizens and businesses to access information in all aspects in a quick, open, and transparent manner, thereby partly improve the lives of local people, and creating a sustainable business environment.

The city leaders attending the announcement event for the ‘Building a Smart City’ project on Wednesday morning

According to Mr Tran Ngoc Thach, the Deputy Director of municipal Department of Information and Communications, the ongoing project features 3 stages.

From now until 2020, focus will be on developing smart infrastructure, platform and data. The cost for this stage is expected to reach 939 billion VND, of which 550 billion VND come from public-private partnership (PPP) investment, whilst 46 billion VND is invested by businesses.

As for the 2021 - 2025 stage, 1,191 billion VND will be spent on implementing smart applications, of which 700 billion VND is worth of PPP capital, 150 billion VND from ODA loans, and 36 billion VND from businesses.

The 2026 – 2030 stage will highlight the smartisation of IT technologies on the basis of outstanding results achieved during the 2021 - 2025 stage.

In preparations for this landmark smart city building project, the city launched a series of programmes starting in 2012 designed to upgrade its technical infrastructure. The municipal government and the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 2012, jointly started the application of ‘smart’ technologies in various aspects. Included are bus management, traffic control, surveillance camera, automatic water quality monitoring, environmental monitoring, food safety management, and open database systems.

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.

The Da Nang People’s Committee and the Viet Nam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT) entering into a cooperation agreement on turning Da Nang into an IT-dependent smart city for the 2018 – 2020 period.

On 11 January 2018, the overall architectural framework for building a smart city was unveiled. In detail, focus is on implementing the IT application into 16 priority aspects under the 6 main pillars, namely smart governance, economy, environment, mobility, living, people, with each being important in its own way.

Notably, Da Nang has come out top of the Viet Nam ICT Index, the ranking on the readiness for information and communications technology development and applications, for 10 consecutive years, which is considered to be the ideal condition for smart city building.

At Viet Nam ICT Index 2018 rankings, Da Nang scored 0.94 points on the 1-point scale, followed by Ho Chi Minh City with 0.67, and Ha Noi with 0.65.

The city government will ask relevant national government agencies to release mechanisms related to investment forms such as PPP and the cooperation between investors, solution makers, and the State. The city is taking the initiative to access the IT apps available in the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) through international and regional investment funds.

On the sidelines of the announcement event for the project, the municipal Department of Information and Communications opened an exhibition featuring smart solutions and products created by domestic and foreign enterprises.

On this occasion, the Viet Nam Informatics Association gave the certificate recognising of Da Nang’s leading position at the Viet Nam ICT Index for 10 consecutive years.