The Ministry of Information and Communications on March 20 collected suggestions of international IT companies for the development of e-government in Vietnam to 2010 and directions to 2020.
The Ministry’s consultative meeting on e-government development held in Hanoi on March 20 drew representatives of many multinational groups like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, Sun, Nec, KT, Samsung and some international organisations such as the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and the World Bank.
International delegates made 16 presentations which suggested measures and related their experiences in developing e-government.
Most attendees agreed with the idea of Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Head of the IT Application Agency under the MIC, on building e-government culture. According to Phuc, the most important factor in the development of e-government in Vietnam is the enthusiastic participation of citizens and the construction of e-government culture. Building the culture of e-government is a long process and requires the complete change of habits and awareness of people.
Phuc said that Vietnam’s goals in e-government development in 2008 are: all state agencies have mail systems (100% of state employees have e-mail addresses); developing 3-office for all localities; upgrading websites of all localities so that citizens can access information about public administrative services on these websites.
Russell Craigg, from Cisco, said e-government development should start in the public sector, with a strict and clear reward and penalty mechanism. He recommended Vietnam not institute big projects initially but small ones.
Devajoy Choudhury from Trygin Technologies, India, agreed, saying that it is better to first design simple e-government projects.
Phan Thanh Son from Cisco said according to the government’s plan, from now to 2020, 460,000ha of land will become urban area and total capital for this plan is US$200 billion. The fund for building IT infrastructure to serve future e-citizens in these areas is very small compared to the above $200 billion investment. The MIC should combine with the Ministry of Construction and Ministry of Planning and Investment to put electronic public administrative projects into construction projects.
Nguyen Kien Cuong from Microsoft said there are three phases to building e-government. The first phase is introducing a website. The second phase is providing simple services, and the third phase is building a digital economy.
Vietnam is now in the second phase, as most ministries and state agencies have websites and IT applications are widely applied, Cuong said.
Delegates said that Vietnam should design an e-government structure based on the mutual and integrative development of ministries and state agencies to serve administrative reforms and people’s requirements.
Representatives of IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco also said that it is necessary to make public the results of e-government projects.
Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Hong Minh said that the MIC is developing the national standards for IT application to serve e-government development.
Delegates said they believed that Vietnam will fulfill its e-government development plan earlier than scheduled because Vietnam has a high growth rate of IT and telecom and its WTO membership will promote IT application and e-government.
Actually, after over one year of WTO membership, customs agencies, banks and financial institutes have had to change their technology and apply IT.
Minister of Information and Communications Le Doan Hop praised suggestions of international delegates and said that the process to build e-government in Vietnam will be carried out flexibly to benefit the government, enterprises, citizens and the economy.
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