Information technology (IT) experts believe that it is very necessary to build up e-governments in localities. However, they have also warned that this will be a difficult job because of infrastructural problems.

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The experts participating at the IT workshop held recently in Da Nang City all agreed that it would be easier and more effective if cities and provinces in the country consider setting up an open data center with cloud computing technology.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, Deputy Director of the HCM City Information and Communication Department said that in the last many years, especially since 2005, the city has been building up an information system concentrated in different fields, such as economics (with data gathered from the city’s taxation agency and statistics office), culture and society (data from the city’s construction department) and science and technology. The system has been completed and expanded towards districts and branches in HCM City.

The step by step implementation of e-government in HCM City has led to the establishment of a “data center”. Currently, the HCM City e-government has been integrated into the 3G phone network, becoming the “mobile e-government”. In the near time to come, HCM City plans to cooperate with other provinces and cities, especially neighboring cities and provinces.

Sharing the same view, Pham Kim Son, Director of the Da Nang City’s Information and Communication, said that in a plan to develop a data center, Da Nang City has been referring to many models and considering many solutions in order to find the most suitable solution. The solution must be advantageous in terms of technology and must allow city authorities to control expenses and have high operational efficiency.

Da Nang City is drawing up a plan on building a data center in accordance with open standards to serve the formation and operation of the e-government, serve organizations and citizens through smart communication modes.

“The advantages of open standards allow exploitation and development of the database – the resources and information which have been integrated at the center. We call this ‘sharing resources’,” Son said.

As such, all the branches, departments, the people’s committees of districts and the central organs can use the data to serve the project planning. “The Da Nang open data center will provide services and share technologies between cities and provinces in the central region of the country,” he continued.

Pham Do Tuan, General Director of Intel Vietnam, said that with a rising number of internet users that now accounting for 30 percent of the total population it is necessary to build up e-governments in Vietnam. However, the building up of e-governments faces obstacles in the network infrastructure, telecommunication equipments, and a lack of qualified IT staff in localities.

According to Tuan, the data centers, which follow the open standards like the one of Da Nang, can use cloud computing technology in order to save money and cut down expenses on operation costs and software royalty. This can help increase the capability of sharing databases with other organs in the same systems.

To date, many foreign cloud computing service providers have been eyeing Vietnam’s market.

When visiting Vietnam last May, Steve Ballmer, the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, decided to cooperate with Vietnamese Corporation for Financing and Promoting Technologies (FPT) to develop cloud computing services in Vietnam.

After Microsoft, IBM and Intel have also announced recently that they will develop cloud computing in Vietnam.

Source: Dau tu
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