Smart city building must place people at the core

The Industry 4.0 Summit 2019 brought together the best minds to accelerate smart city development in Vietnam

The Central Economic Commission of the Ministry of Planning and Investment and other ministries to organise the Industry 4.0 Summit 2019 on October 2 and 3 in Hanoi. Themed “Digital Vietnam: Accelerating digital transformation toward sustainable development”, the summit covered key technical topics presented by leading industry speakers in smart manufacturing, smart city, smart energy, banking innovation, and digital economy.

The summit brought together more than 3,500 attendees, including business leaders, professionals, innovators, and C-level decision-makers from key sectors to engage, network, benchmark, and offer insights on upgrading digital capabilities for a powerful 4.0 transformation.

Notably, at the seminar on building a smart city in the process of the national digital transformation, many recommendations were made.

Smart cities are to become the basic driving force of socio-economic development across the country. Currently, the country has more than 830 urban areas with the rate of urbanisation reaching 38.6 per cent.

Economic growth in urban areas reach an average of 12-15 per cent, 1.5-2 times higher than the national average. The whole country has about 30 localities implementing smart city projects, including Ho Chi Minh City.

However, according to the Ministry of Information and Communications, the current development vision for smart cities is still incomplete. Some localities have just started to deploy basic applications and services for smart cities. Meanwhile, ministries and agencies continue to research and improve the formulation and promulgation of guidelines on mechanisms and policies for smart cities.

At the seminar, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung recommended localities should have clear vision and plans for smart city development so that investment can be targeted and harmonised in the future.

On the other hand, during the implementation process, it is necessary for smart cities to be built on a shared platform so that they can share and synchronise functions and oversight where possible, with centralised data and supervision to ensure investment efficiency. The construction of smart cities should also be linked to the development of an e-government.

"It is necessary to consider the development of e-government as the core of building a smart government and smart cities," Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Thanh Hung said.

In addition, smart city developers should pay attention to ensure network security right from the beginning when building and deploying a smart city.

“We should select businesses with good capacity for the task. Lastly, we should focus on developing human resources suitable for a smart city. It is indispensable to have leaders with a clear vision and to have qualified human resources to manage and operate smart cities,” said Hung.