HCM City’s residents to benefit from smart city project

Ho Chi Minh City plans this year to speed up a project to become a smart city by 2025 in order to better serve its residents.
HCM City’s residents to benefit from smart city project ảnh 1A view of HCM City (Photo: VNA)
HCM City (VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City plansthis year to speed up a project to become a smart city by 2025 in order tobetter serve its residents.

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

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

Information from many fields has been collectedand 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 dataportal for the city (http://data.hochiminhcity.gov.vn).

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

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

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

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

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

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

The city will invite tenders for building thesecond phase of the common-use shared database in the third quarter of thisyear.

Databases from various agencies that containinformation 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 tobuild a Smart Urban Operation Centre (phase 1) with a total investment of 30billion VND (1.29 million USD).

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

The centre, which will open within the year, willalso receive and process emergency and rescue information through a telecomnumber.

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

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

The city authority said it would receive feedbackon measures to turn HCM City into a smart city from residents and businesscommunity.

The city also plans to build two other centres, anIntelligent Operations Centre and a Socio-Economic Simulation and ForecastCentre.

The smart city project aims to resolve problemssuch as unsustainable economic growth, flooding, traffic congestion andpollution, and improve interaction between the city’s administration,businesses and citizens.-VNA 
VNA

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