Northern Lao Cai provincial Department of Information and Communications (DIC) and Microsoft Vietnam LLC officially announced on Dec. 12 the launching of an e-government portal.

This project was designed and implemented based on a Services Agreement (MSA) between the two parties signed on April 9 when Kevin Turner, Microsoft Corporation’s chief operating officer, first visited Vietnam .

The first stage of the project has been completed under the approval of the People’s Committee of Lao Cai province. Under the signed agreement, Microsoft provided Lao Cai with advanced e-government solutions and deployment supports based on Connected Government Framework (CGF) which was successfully deployed in Egypt , the UK and some countries in Asia and Eastern Europe . Based on this architecture and design, Lao Cai’s Department of Information and Communications together with Tan Dan Informatics JSC, built Lao Cai’s e-government portal, transferred the information on the province’s current website into the new portal and provided two online public services: ‘Business License Registration and Issue’ and ‘Question/Answer’.

Lao Cai e-Government Portal was designed on a secured and flexible platform which offers easy management, development and integration with other services from different providers. Apart from the portal, Lao Cai province also owns a high level master design of the whole e-government system which includes all e-government components like infrastructure, portal, gateways along with MS’s recommendationon hardware, software and the implementation roadmap. This will help Lao Cai avoid overlapping investment and un-integrated applications that could lead to miscommunication and overspending./.