Da Nang was honoured with the Viet Nam Smart City Award 2020, and picked up three other prizes in the categories of smart public services, smart digital infrastructure, and the best cities for startups and innovation at the national awards ceremony held on Tuesday.

On behalf of the Da Nang authorities and people, municipal People's Committee Vice Chairman Ho Ky Minh (middle) receiving the ‘Viet Nam Smart City Award 2020 at the Tuesday awards ceremony in Ha Noi

The prestigious Award, organised for the first time by the Viet Nam Association for Software and IT Services (VINASA), aims to promote the building of smart cities across the country and create a driving force to promote technological applications in parallel with innovations in mechanisms and policies.
Winners of the this year’s event were honoured in four different groups, namely Smart City, Smart Real Estate, Smart Industrial Park and Smart Solution. 

In more details, Group 1 encouraged the building of a legal corridor, planning, architecture, technical infrastructure, human resources and public services. Group 2 promoted the building of the living environment, multi-utility and a civilised community for the public. Group 3 encouraged the creation of a complete business investment attractive environment for Vietnamese and FDI enterprises. Group 4 promoted highly effective technology innovations in all city, urban, real estate and industrial real estate projects.

To be fully eligible for the Viet Nam Smart City Award 2020, Da Nang met the strict requirements regarding legal corridors, the actual implementation of smart city building schemes, the application of smart tech in urban planning and management, the perfection levels of the e-government, smart apps and utilities for use by citizens and businesses, information safety and security, and public ability to access digital opportunities.

Da Nang has gone through an impressive decade of e-government and smart city building steps. Noticeably, it was the first city in Viet Nam to launch an e-Government system in 2014, and transferred the system to 16 cities and provinces nationwide two years later.

Introducing a 'made in Da Nang' app at the 2019 Smart City Summit in Da Nang.

IT infrastructure, data and smart apps have played a vital role in Da Nang’s e-government and smart city building schemes.

In terms of infrastructure, the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) with a total length of 350km of underground fiber cable, helps connect 145 agencies with a network bandwidth of 1Gbps - 20Gbps, and dedicated local urban Internet network with bandwidth of up to 4.5Gbps.

With regard in data collections, as an important component of the city’s landmark ‘Building a smart city’ project, this data services portal is now available at www.congdulieu.vn or https://opendata.danang.gov.vn. 

It is a highly practical platform for publicising specialised and open data so as to serve the demands of organisations and individuals citywide via web forms, Application Programming Interface (API), SMS, and Zalo.

Currently, there are a combined total of more than 200 open data services available on the portal, including a list of facilities meeting food hygiene and safety standards, urban /rural land prices, education, bus routes, immunisation facilities, healthcare facilities, ATMs, hotels, and festival events.

Most remarkable amongst smart solutions is the birth of shared tech apps such as email systems, electronic one-stop- shop mechanisms, and e-payment gateways.

Da Nang is now remaining resilient on its strong feet to realise is ambition of becoming the first in Viet Nam to join the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) by 2030.

By KHANG NINH- Translated by A.T