Da Nang has won the ‘Viet Nam Smart City 2023’ award, as announced by the Vietnam Software and Information Technology Services Association (VINASA). This is the fourth consecutive time Da Nang has won the prestigious and unique award for a group of cities/municipalities.

The Da Nang Intelligent Operation Centre (IOC) was put into operation in August 2023 and has promoted monitoring, leadership and operations through smart devices. Photo: IOC

The city has also won three specialized award categories - Smart Operations and Management City for Infrastructure and Public Service; Smart, Green Environmental Management City; and Attractive City for Startups and Innovation.

Many tasks completed ahead of schedule

The Smart City Award Vietnam, an annual award organized by VINASA since 2020, aims to recognise and honour urban areas, organisations, and businesses that have contributed to helping cities become better, smarter, more livable, branded and sustainably competitive.

The award also encourages businesses to create innovative products and technology solutions. This is a channel connecting supply and demand, collaborating to build appropriate models to accelerate smart city development in Viet Nam. Thus, since the award was first organized by VINASA until now, Da Nang has been honoured as a smart city for four consecutive years from 2020 - 2023.

So as to achieve the above-mentioned achievements, Da Nang will soon form a shared infrastructure, platform and database for smart city applications. Currently, in addition to the urban network infrastructure (MAN network) with a total length of 450km for use by 191 agencies, the city is implementing a data centre expansion project with a budget of VND 68 billion.

In particular, adding 13 servers with about 130TB of storage, after completion, the Data Centre capacity will increase to 200 servers, storage capacity to nearly 300TB. At the same time, the city is implementing an investment project to expand the online television system with a budget of about VND20 billion, investing in terminal equipment to all 56 wards, communes, Party agencies, and union organisations.

In 2023, the city will deploy and update more shared platform features such as monitoring, parking monitoring, vessel monitoring, Open Data Portal platform, Da Nang Smart City multi-service mobile application and Da Nang Chain platform. Currently, the Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) has 15 smart service groups serving the directions of city leaders.

In addition, the background databases (citizens, businesses...) are standardised and perfected: the city has completed connecting the information system dealing with the Da Nang Administrative Centre with the national population database with about 150,000 transaction.

The open data portal has nearly 1,000 data sets, an increase of 400 sets compared to 2021. To date, Da Nang has completed 11/11 tasks and goals assigned to provinces and cities by 2025 according to Decision No. 950 /QD-TTg of the Prime Minister on approving the project for sustainable smart urban development in Viet Nam for the period 2018-2025 and orientation towards 2030.

Youth Union members apply technology to digitize ‘red addresses’ and integrate them into QR codes. Photo: MAI QUE

Increase support and strongly promote the digital economy

Mr. Thong Le Anh Tuan, Director of Selly Co., Ltd., Hai Chau District said that in recent times, businesses have been supported a lot by the city through training sessions, training, and seminars to improve their skills, technology level and capacity, information security, thanks to which businesses can remove difficulties and obstacles and meet requirements in the digital transformation process.

Currently, the global economy is facing difficulties so businesses are also having difficulty accessing and expanding markets. Businesses have proposed that the city promote domestic and international cooperation, attracting more resources and experience, technology, and solutions from organisations, businesses, and experts to support the implementation of the smart city project in the business sector. In addition, there are additional policies to develop startups and small and medium-sized enterprises.

Mr. Nguyen Trong Tin, the General Director of the Onemore Communications and Technology Joint Stock Company in Thanh Khe District commented that the city has made very rapid steps in building a smart city. However, on the part of businesses in the city still have barriers in implementing digital transformation as well as a low high-tech workforce.

Mr. Tin proposed that the city need to have policies and incentives to attract high-quality human resources, policies to support businesses in the process of training, coaching, improving capacity and skills in using smart programmes and devices and continue to pay attention and strengthen connection to the national population database.

Ms. Tran Hanh Trang, the Vice President of the Da Nang Software Business Association, Director of Enouvo IT Development Company Limited, assessed that many applications have been deployed by the city in recent times such as measuring rainfall and flood levels on the Da Nang Smart City application. My Portal digital citizen platform is highly appreciated by businesses and people.

To further promote these encouraging results, Ms. Trang proposed that the city strengthen connection and cooperation with typical domestic and foreign smart cities such as Japan and South Korea - countries with many investors in the country, thereby learning experiences to apply successful and feasible models in Da Nang. The city also needs to devote more resources to support startups in the information industry, thereby both developing the city's innovative startup ecosystem and taking advantage of resources.

Mr. Tran Ngoc Thach, the Deputy Director of the Department of Information and Communications, said that continuing to be honored as a ‘Smart City’ for the fourth time is thanks to the positive contributions and consensus from State management agencies and people.

People, businesses, especially community digital technology groups, directly guide people to create digital public accounts and use online public services, bringing technology closer to all classes. In the coming time, the department will continue to coordinate with relevant units to promote the effectiveness of operating centers and data centers, speed up the progress of technological infrastructure, use and exploitation of digital data and technology to optimize operations, and improve the quality of service provision for people and businesses.

Awards and titles related to smart cities Da Nang has achieved Da Nang led the Information Technology Application and Development Readiness Index (Viet nam ICT Index) for 13 consecutive years, won the Vietnam Digital Transformation Award for 4 consecutive years (2020 - 2023),  ranked first in the Provincial Digital Transformation Index for 3 consecutive years (2020 - 2022), was a typical locality proactively implementing the fourth industrial revolution and digital transformation at the ‘I4.0 Awards’ for 2 consecutive years (2022-2023) and won the Human Centricity Prize at the Seoul Smart City Prize ceremony which was part of a series of the World Cities Summit Mayors Forum 2023.

Reporting by MAI QUE, CHIEN THANG - Translating by A.THU