Ho Chi Minh City applies digital platforms to support businesses

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Mr. Tran Anh Tuan, Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City Information Technology Association.

How do you evaluate the digital transformation work in Ho Chi Minh City in recent times?

Ho Chi Minh City has made significant progress in applying digital transformation. The first step is that the contribution proportion of the digital economy in Ho Chi Minh City's overall economy recorded growth. Second, Ho Chi Minh City's position on Vietnam's digital transformation map has been maintained and is always at the top. According to a recent announcement by the Ministry of Information and Communications, Ho Chi Minh City maintains the 2nd position nationwide in digital transformation in 2022 with digital institutions (rank 1), digital infrastructure (rank 1), and digital government activities (rank 2), digital economic activities (rank 4)…

It is also worth noting that Ho Chi Minh City has provided many utilities on digital platforms for people and businesses, thereby creating more connection and engagement between people, businesses and the City government. Promoting the achieved results, in 2023, Ho Chi Minh City will identify the topic of digital transformation and smart urban construction as digital data. On October 17, 2023, at the opening ceremony of a series of events within Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Week 2023, Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee officially activated and put Ho Chi Minh City Digital Platform 2023 with five important systems into operation. Accordingly, five systems include an information system for handling administrative procedures, a system for synthesizing socio-economic information, a system for receiving and processing petitions from business people, a system for Ho Chi Minh City digital map, the Ho Chi Minh City digital transformation assessment system will officially operate with the goal of bringing many conveniences to people and businesses, as well as improving the quality of operations of state management agencies.

In your opinion, what advantages do businesses have in the process of applying digital technology applications?

Businesses in Ho Chi Minh City have applied digital technology to their operations. Since, gradually changing business methods helps businesses create new developments, especially in today's competitive period.

In particular, with Resolution 98-NQ/QH15 on piloting specific mechanisms and policies to develop Ho Chi Minh City, although it has just come to life, I am sure it will help the business community have favorable mechanisms and policies to grow even stronger. Especially businesses operating in the field of digital technology as well as businesses using digital technology.

In 2023, the Information Technology Association and the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association have been closely coordinating in implementing training courses as well as seminars to support the city's small and micro business community. The city takes advantage of opportunities for gradual digital transformation to improve competitiveness.

What are the barriers and difficulties that businesses encounter when applying digital technologies, sir?

The majority of Ho Chi Minh City's business community are small and medium enterprises with limited resources. Accordingly, in order to help the business community promote transformation, businesses developing application systems and businesses using applications need to coordinate more closely so that the two parties can understand each other. Therefore, we provide the most suitable solutions for each type of industry to help the business community better apply digital technologies. Besides, there is also a need for policies from Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the State in general to promote the use of digital technology in production and business activities.

On the other hand, currently Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the whole country in general are encouraging the use of information technology solutions as a service but there are still some problems, for example there is no price frame for using the service software in the public sector, there is no policy to support capital sources for businesses operating in the field of information technology to invest in developing service delivery systems (because this investment requires loans of middle and long term). Hopefully, in the near future, these points will be resolved so that the application of information technology will be stronger and information technology businesses and digital technology businesses will have more opportunities to participate in the market.

In addition, businesses that want to stand firm must have policies to develop human resources suitable for their businesses.

Thank you, Sir!