In 2023, Da Nang recorded many achievements in digital transformation, especially the flourishing digital economy. This highly encouraging fact was mainly attributed to the city’s effort in building the foundation, exploited it effectively, and proposed solutions to develop the digital economy.

Director of the Department of Science and Technology Le Duc Vien (middle) represents Da Nang to receive the award for Attractive City for Innovative Startups. Photo: CHIEN THANG

Digital economy comes to fruition

According to Official Dispatch No. 6590/UBND-STTTT dated November 28, 2023 by the Da Nang Department of Information and Communications on preliminary review of the implementation of the National Digital Transformation Strategy to develop the digital economy and digital society according to Decision No. 411 /QD-TTg dated February 31, 2022 of the Prime Minister, as of December 2023, the open data portal has had more than 1,100 agencies, businesses, organisations and individuals registering user accounts and more 4.6 million visits to search, exploit, and look up information; 860 datasets and 1.2 million service calls from applications.

Also in 2023, the city achieved many outstanding results in the field of digital economy such as the 2023 digital transformation award and 3 thematic awards organised by the Viet Nam Union of Science and Technology Associations.

On September 25, 2023, Da Nang was awarded the Seoul Smart City Prize in the category of the Human Centricity bronze at the World Cities Summit Mayors Forum in Seoul.

This year's award recognized the endless efforts made by the city in boosting outstanding initiatives of building a smart city that focused on happiness, smart infrastructure, online public service, economic growth, education, and development research with human concentration.

It is known that it is the second regional smart city award that the city has won, after it took the Asia-Oceanian Computing Industry Organization (Asocio) Smart City Award in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2019.
On November 30, the city received the award for Excellent City in deploying and building smart urban areas in Viet Nam.

In addition, many units and businesses received typical and outstanding achievements such as the 2023 Sao Khue Award for the product category and digital startup solutions developed by the e-commerce platform Selly (Company Selly Limited); Management Performance Award (under the Viet Nam Innovation Challenge Programme) for the supply chain platform and production workshop for the global fashion brand Wetex (Wetex Technology Joint Stock Company).

By the end of 2023, 100% of the local households have had fiber optic broadband internet connection; 100% 3G-4G network coverage throughout the city; more than 50 stations broadcasting 5G network infrastructure; more than 400km of underground fiber optic cables, expanding connections to 145 agencies and units.

Along with that, the city built many programmes, seminars, and courses related to digital transformation and digital development platforms for a combined total of more than 8,800 people in the target group of officials, civil servants, and State employees, businesses and local residents.

With guaranteed infrastructure resources, the city has built an e-commerce platform and mobile applications to help local businesses introduce and promote products and do business in the online environment.

Recent statistical results show that, till date, the danangtrade.com.vn platform has attracted more than 1,770 businesses and 2,582 products participating on the city's e-commerce floor. It can be said that the success comes from the policies and actions taken by the Da Nang government  that have helped promote the digital economy and digital society in recent times.

Create a favorable corridor for digital economic development

On August 16, 2023, the Da Nang People's Committee issued Plan No. 163/KH-UBND on developing the information technology industry in the city by 2030, determining the goal that, by 2030 the digital economy will account for at least 30% of the city's gross regional domestic product (GRDP); reaching at least 8,950 digital technology enterprises and 115,000 digital technology human resources, with at least 7 information technology parks and software parks to meet operational needs and high-quality human resource training.

The city has been taking specific actions to innovate the growth model and restructure the economic sector, with a focus on strongly developing high-tech industry and information technology, associated with urban construction, creative startups, smart city building, creating a foundation to promote the development of new industries and fields, especially digital economy, digital society and digital government.

The city is realising plans to make the digital economy a spearhead for the local economic development, having proactively cooperated internationally on the development of the digital economy and digital society.

In particular, recently, the Da Nang People's Committee and Synopsys Company in the United States signed a memorandum of cooperation related to the development of the semiconductor field in the city.

The memorandum of understanding represents a common commitment, creating an official basis for cooperation in coordinating the implementation of training programmes, developing human resources and expanding cooperation networks in the fields of digital economy.

With the desire to turn the digital economy into a spearhead, the city is prioritising budget resources to carry out the tasks of developing the foundation of the digital economy and digital society.

The annual funding source maintains a minimum of 2% of the budget for digital transformation, e-government development, and smart city building as stated in Decision No. 2870/QD-UBND dated August 28, 2021 by the Da Nang People's Committee on promulgating the Digital Transformation project in Da Nang until 2025, with a vision toward 2030.

With guaranteed funding, the city is accelerating the progress of building a centralized data synthesis and analysis platform. To date, the shared data warehouse has been applied to structured data and is being researched and expanded to handle un/semi-structured data (camera data, IoT and sensors ) from the capital source for basic construction of the Smart City Construction project.

According to Mr. Tran Ngoc Thach, the Deputy Director of the Da Nang Department of Information and Communications, the city's investment in intelligence, equipment, and infrastructure contributes to helping digital transformation promote its advantages, helping city-dwellers and their families. Enterprises change awareness, enhance skills, improve productivity, production and business efficiency.

The investment and planning process will be carried out in a synthetic and analytical manner towards providing resources and open data to serve the goals of promoting the digital economy and digital society.

With attention to synchronous infrastructure investment and support policies and mechanisms, it will be a favourable foundation to promote businesses to apply information technology, speed up digital transformation, create new value for businesses, thus contributing part in helping the city develop quickly and sustainably.

At the same time, the Department is also making efforts to implement a plan to disseminate and raise awareness of the digital economy from the municipal authorities to the grassroots, develop a system and programme to ask and answer virtual assistants on the digital economy., supporting people to improve their digital skills, use digital platforms, digital services and digital technology.

Reporting by CHIEN THANG – Translating by A.THU