HCM City’s residents to benefit from smart city project

A view of HCM City (Photo: VNA)

After one year of implementing the smart city project, authorities have achieved initial results.

The project’s four key tasks were given priority, including a common-use shared database; a stimulation research and forecasting centre for socio-economic policies; a smart administration centre; and an information security centre.

Information from many fields has been collected and integrated so that city leaders can easily grasp and evaluate the data, thereby shortening the time to handle work.

Authorities have also launched a pilot open data portal for the city (http://data.hochiminhcity.gov.vn).

Vo Minh Thanh, head of the Information Technology Department at the city’s Department of Information and Communication, said the city would pilot providing information on medical examinations and treatment facilities as well as medical practice certificates.

In the long term, data from many other areas will be included on the portal to provide information on health, transport, investment, environment and climate.

The portal provides useful information that people and businesses are free to look up, use, share and develop for any purpose.

The city government is encouraging businesses to use the open ecosystem data to create new, high-value products which would contribute to a knowledge-based economy and start-up ecosystem.

Thanh said the development of the open data ecosystem, together with the construction of a common-use shared data warehouse, is one of the four key tasks of the project to build HCM City into a smart city from 2017 to 2020 with a vision to 2025.

A common-use shared data warehouse in Quang Trung Software Park (phase 1) in District 12 has already opened.

The city will invite tenders for building the second phase of the common-use shared database in the third quarter of this year.

Databases from various agencies that contain information about residents’ complaints, land use, healthcare, individuals’ residential and civil status, and enterprises’ business and tax registration, among others, have been integrated into the common-use shared data warehouse.

The People’s Committee has also approved a plan to build a Smart Urban Operation Centre (phase 1) with a total investment of 30 billion VND (1.29 million USD).

The operation centre, which will be based at the HCM City People’s Committee office, will use a database from camera systems in districts 1, 5, 12 and Phu Nhuan in the first phase.

The centre, which will open within the year, will also receive and process emergency and rescue information through a telecom number.

The centre will collect important information and data sources, and help supervise and analyse service quality as well as issue policies for the city.

In addition, the city has also established the Stimulation Division (under the stimulation research and forecasting centre) at the HCM City Institute for Development Studies.

The city authority said it would receive feedback on measures to turn HCM City into a smart city from residents and business community.

The city also plans to build two other centres, an Intelligent Operations Centre and a Socio-Economic Simulation and Forecast Centre.

The smart city project aims to resolve problems such as unsustainable economic growth, flooding, traffic congestion and pollution, and improve interaction between the city’s administration, businesses and citizens.