IT vital to boosting urban life: minister

Information and communication technology will play an increasingly important role in providing myriad solutions to major challenges emerging in urban cities in the context of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation.

Minister of Information and Communications Le Doan Hop said last Friday at the 145th anniversary of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which Viet Nam has been a member of since 1979.

The ITU theme for the anniversary which falls today is “Better cities, better life with ICT”, referencing the fact that nearly half of the population globally are living in urban areas.

In the message sent to Viet Nam, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure emphasised: “ICTs present innovative ways of managing our cities including smart buildings, intelligent traffic management, new efficiencies in energy consumption and waste management, and not least exchanging information and knowledge and communicating on the move in an increasingly converged information society.”

According to Hop, Viet Nam’s ICT achievements are very encouraging. As of April, nearly half of the population had access to the internet and telephone lines were available in 100 per cent of communes. Total internet bandwidth had seen a 30-fold increase compared to 2005, reaching more than 100,000Gb.

Hop said the ministry had set the target of establishing a highly developed ICT sector including the creation of a skilled IT workforce that meets international standards, an improved national IT infrastructure and an IT industry that would make a higher contribution to GDP growth.

Nguyen Thanh Phuc, director general of the ministry’s Directorate for the Promotion of IT Applications, said the recent widespread implementation of ICT had helped cut some time-costing procedures.

Through official websites and Government portals, ministries and provincial authorities had kept the public informed and increased dialogue between people and the Government, Phuc said.

Director of the ministry’s Department of Telecommunications Pham Hong Hai said in order to implement a proper expansion of ICT infrastructure on a larger scale, the design phase was crucial.

One negative lesson that could be learned from was the rapid and unplanned development of ICT infrastructure in Ha Noi, where telecommunication and electricity cabling was largely above ground and lacked overall strategic planning.

The head of Ha Noi’s Department of Information and Communications, Pham Quoc Ban, said there had been a total of 40 projects to help the city “go underground”. Half of them were expected to be completed by the end of June.

The remaining projects were hoped to finish by the end of 2015, transforming Ha Noi into a “wireless city”, he said. — VNS

Tags: Vietnam IT