City management to be scientifically done: HCMC Party Chief

A smart city must be able to excellently serve its residents, and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) should publish its databases as soon as possible for citizens to exploit, insisted HCMC Party Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan yesterday.
HCMC Party Chief Nguyen Thien Nhan delivered his speech at the meeting. Photo by Viet Dung
HCMC Party Chief Nguyen Thien Nhan delivered his speech at the meeting. Photo by Viet Dung

In the meeting of the HCMC People’s Committee to announce results of the first stage of implementing the project ‘Transforming HCMC into a smart city in the period from 2017 – 2020, with a vision to 2025', the secretary suggested the city People’s Committee should carefully research suitable management models for each local public service.

He also mentioned about the provision of necessary addresses of all state centers, departments, and industries in the city, along with databases, as soon as possible so that urban citizens are able to access.

Requesting district leaders to propagandize adequate information to residents, the Secretary said “The smart city must be ready for the public as of November 23”, which is 2 years from the project signing date.

Regarding inspection processes, Mr. Nhan asked that the HCMC People’s Committee check and have a clear plan to publicly update results made by the HCMC Inspectorate by November 2019 in order for urban citizens as well as the press to monitor.

In addition, a list of current private projects carried out in HCMC, the duration of administration processes done by the HCMC People’s Committee, databases on educational institutes from kindergarten to university level, on healthcare units, cadaster addresses, and on various services in the city must be published. 

There is also a need to announce the synchronous camera standards with sensitive locations and special cameras that have facial detection capability. It is essential to run an integrated camera system among specialty offices to aim at a safer city.

Party Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan mentioned the task of operating a simulation center for economy prediction as soon as possible. Also, in October 2019, related units have to submit an economic development estimate, including predictions on possible scenarios on traffic congestions and solutions, population growth, urban flooding and solutions.

Mr. Nhan concluded that a smart city is smart thanks to its ability to manage processes scientifically.

Chairman of the HCMC People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong said that turning HCMC into a smart urban area is the priority, mobilizing all possible forces to ensure the project schedule. 

Besides notable positive results, there are still serious obstacles and a huge workload to do since there is no model to learn from. What is more, certain aspects are behind schedule and have not achieved observable results yet. 

Mr. Phong specially expressed his displeasure with some public agencies that are still uncooperative in sharing common databases, which are supposed to be used for city development.

Concluding his speech, Chairman Phong guaranteed to speed up the project and more efficiently mobilize all possible resources from the public. He promised to turn HCMC into a smart city, closely connected to Industry 4.0 and better demonstrating its distinctive features.

In particular, each related unit has to sign a commitment with specific time and human resources assignment for every goal of the project.

The focus at the moment is the common database on citizens, businesses, terrain, and cadaster; a shared digital map; and an expansion of a public portal for the shared database.

Simultaneously, the operation center for this smart city, including a center to receive and respond to emergency notices via one telephone number and a portal to receive and answer citizens’ questions, must be finished.

The city is going to urgently form a center simulating socio-economic strategy forecasts; create a joint stock company to operate the center for information security; continue building an electronic government architecture in HCMC, aiming at establishing a digital government to operate and manage this smart city.

To be successful, the HCMC Department of Information and Communications has to speed up their propaganda campaign so that all residents in the city are well aware of this project and to contribute their part.

HCMC is piloting an open information portal at the address data.hochiminhcity.gov.vn to provide data on healthcare centers and healthcare practice certificates.

The city has already integrated more than 1,000 cameras installed in districts 1, 12, Phu Nhuan, Go Vap to monitor statuses around the city, timely warning state officials about traffic jams or rowdy crowds. Some cameras can even detect faces of suspected subjects and send signals to the monitoring center.

In the near future, the city is going to set up more focused monitoring cameras and upgrade management software or mobile apps for the operation center.

The foundation material to build the center for economy simulation and prediction has been finished, and a scientific basement for research activities is going to be constructed. A design on displaying data and models of certain major socio-economic ratings is being developed. Therefore, the center is expected to formally run (the first phase) in June 2019.

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