VietNamNet Bridge - ODA-funded ICT management project sto promote e-government and information technology development in Vietnam are facing delays.

The project will streamline the government-public interface.

A Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) report said that though the projects have a total funding of $107 million to develop e-government at the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) and the General Statistics Office in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Danang, only $4 million has been disbursed, three years after the projects began. Project developers have executed only 10 per cent of total scheduled works.

Cao Manh Cuong, deputy director of the MPI’s External Economic Department, said one of the main reasons for the delay was the ineffective co-ordination of ODA in linking IT projects with e-government operations. The proposed works also require the efficient co-operation of state agencies for implementation.

“The country also lacks a masterplan for the deployment of ICT in at ministerial and local levels,” said Cuong.

Hoang Quoc Lap, director of the project management board on ICT Development in Vietnam under the MIC, said the ministry would meet to speed project implementation in 2009. “This is the most difficult period for project developers to restructure capital for different parts of each project, to define the content of e-government implementation and to prepare for it in Vietnam,” said Lap.

“The project donors will also meet with us to appraise the implementation early next year. However, so far there has been no word from donors about reneging on investment capital due to slow progress,” said Lap.

The Ho Chi Minh City project is still under appraisal. The Hanoi project will receive the largest loan package, $35 million, to be undertaken in 12 districts and three local state offices including the Department of Information Technology, the Department of Planning and Investment and the People’s Committee to promote information technology and design the municipal e-government process and basic exchange portals.

The capital city authorities aim to offer at least 3-5 per cent of government to business (G2B) services online, including the geographic information system (GIS), and 15 per cent of government services online. It is estimated that 35 per cent of small- and medium-sized enterprises will use ICT.

Website and exchange portals will be updated at least once a week, with 80 per cent of the content updated automatically.
Around 30 per cent of administrative procedures will be done online.

According to the World Bank’s ICT project management guidelines, a project must be able to identify and develop the capabilities needed in a system. The guidelines also set the key training objectives and offer alternatives to conventional training. There are other ICT projects in the works, including a 2007-11 project to improve ICT in post-graduate education, funded with $46.3 million by Japanese ODA. Japan is also funding a public internet network with $29.8 million in ODA during this time frame.

(Source: VIR)