Bien Hoa, Dalat, Halong, Ha Tinh, Hue, Lao Cai, My Tho, Nha Trang, Thanh Hoa and Vinh have shown remarkable progress in most information and communications technology (ICT)-related aspects of city governance in the past three years according to the recent survey on smart city readiness conducted by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Microsoft and the Vietnam Association for Information Processing.

The survey evaluated the ten secondary cities’ smart city development readiness in five areas namely smart governance, smart economy, smart human capital development, smart infrastructure and mobility and environment and sustainable development. 504 respondents, about 50 from each city, consisted of government officials, businessmen and professionals or retired professionals who have significant experience with the city and certain knowledge of smart city development.

The survey results, released today at the conference titled Leveraging ICT Potential to Boost Vietnam’s Economic Growth and Development held in Hanoi, showed that in in all cities, respondents were positive about the impacts of ICT, government open-up policy and parents’ efforts to invest in their children but quite negative about unemployment, inequality and crimes/social ills.

In terms of priorities, respondents in almost all cities considered enhancing government competence more urgent than attracting foreign direct investment, empowering people more urgent than improving environmental quality and greenery coverage, enhancing government transparency more urgent than providing more online government services and curbing corruption more urgent than tackling social problems.

The conference Leveraging ICT Potential to Boost Vietnam’s Economic Growth and Development, organised by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Microsoft and the Vietnam Association for Information Processing, attracted 400 participations from government agencies, organisations as well as experts, businesses and colleges all over Vietnam.
According to experts, in the past few years Vietnam has made big steps in developing its infrastructure and pushing the application of ICT. In order to realise the potential of ICT to push economic growth, Vietnam needs to prioritise applying ICT where it can create breakthroughs, namely in e-government, smart cities, smart education and healthcare, e-commerce, Internet of Things and industry 4.0.