Vietnam has been developing open source software for the
last 10 years, but it has witnessed no considerable progress so far, according
to the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC).

At the workshop on improving the application and development open source
software held in Hanoi on December 14, Nguyen Thanh Tuyen, Deputy Director of
the Information Technology Department under MIC said that under the Instruction
No 07/2008 on using open source software at state agencies, four softwares asked
to be used at the agencies include, OpenOffice, Mozilla ThunderBird, Mozilla
FireFox and Viet Unikey.

The instruction stipulated that by December 31, 2009 at the latest, state
agencies belonging to ministries, branches and provincial authorities must have
70 percent of workstations installed with open source software, while at least
70 percent of workers must be trained to use the software, and at least 40
percent of workers must use the software in their works.

However, by 2010, only four out of 12 ministries and branches have installed
open source software for workstations. Of the 12 ministries and state agencies
which have sent reports to MIC, only three ministries and branches have
installed Open Office, seven out of 12 ministries have installed Unikey, 6/12
Firefox and 4/12 have ThunderBird.

“These are really low numbers,” Tuyen concluded.

Support is needed

Tuyen said that Vietnamese organizations and enterprises are already
familiar with closed source software, therefore they hesitate to shift to use
open source software.

However, analysts believe that the key problem here is that the state agencies
which use open source software still lack support.

The leaders of the Information Technology Department also admitted that when
local agencies apply the use of open source software, technical assistance
remains very weak. Most local authorities complain that they have difficulties
in human resources. Information technology officers still cannot meet basic
requirements and the knowledge of supporting staff members remains modest.

The lack of a proper financial mechanism has also been cited as one of the
biggest difficulties. Every locality has 1.2 billion dong to encourage the use
of open source software for four years, from 2009 to 2012, which means that they
have 300 million dong a year.

The Vietnam National Institute of Software and Digital Content Industry (NISCI)
under the MIC itself, the unit that directly assists authorities, branches and
ministries to utilize open source software, also said that the total budget for
the institute is only one billion dong a year for 40 workers.

The institute’s head Le Hoang Minh complains that with such a budget, it is very
difficult to provide technical assistance to localities, even though the
infrastructure for utilizing open source software is ready.

The IT department said that besides the issued instruction, it is necessary to
promulgate another legal document, stipulating detailed spending on implementing
the open source software development plan. The document should be promulgated in
early 2011.

It’s necessary to create a community of users

It is clear that many software products are reliable and user-friendly which can
replace many kinds of closed source software. The development of open source
software will help organizations and individuals to reduce the reliance on
exclusive solution providers, cut spending on software purchases, and
especially, this will help encourage the development of the local software
industry.

However, according to Le Trung Nghia, Director of Nhat Vinh Company, software
products will not be able to “live”, if they are not protected and supported by
a community of users. Meanwhile, Vietnam still does not have a policy aiming to
develop the community of open source software users.

Experts believe that the government needs to give support to ensure the success
of the program on utilizing open source software. For example, it can stipulate
a reserved budget for open source software development. If so, this will be an
impetus for enterprises to invest in software utilization.

According to Tuyen, the government, can also build up a mechanism requiring all
workstations and servers to be purchased by state agencies, to install the
stipulated software.

Source: Thoi bao Kinh te Vietnam