The Vietnam Software and IT Services Association (VINASA) officially launched the Vietnam Smart City Award 2020, on 7 September.
According to a press release, the award promises to contribute to accelerating the construction and development of sustainable smart cities in Vietnam as well as to the process of national digital transformation, the realisation of goals and orientations, and state guidelines and policies. The Vietnam Smart City Award will be held annually starting from 2020.
The Vietnam Smart City Award 2020 aims to honour and encourage the units that have been contributing to making the cities of Vietnam smart. The award also creates a driving force for technological innovations in parallel with the innovation of mechanisms and policies to help cities become more valuable, vibrant, and competitive through sustainable development, the release noted.
The award will cover four groups, including:
- Cities belonging to six types of urban centres in Vietnam, according to the provisions of Decree No. 42/2009 / ND-CP
- Real estate projects, urban areas, and smart buildings
- Business parks
- Technology solutions for smart cities, real estate projects, and industrial zones.
The units participating in the Vietnam Smart City Awards 2020 will undergo three rounds of evaluation and voting, including the preliminary selection, presentations and actual assessment, and general selection.
The evaluation council is comprised of prestigious and highly qualified experts from the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and senior experts in the fields of planning, architecture and construction, management, socioeconomics, technology, telecommunications, innovation startups, and journalism.
The Chairman of VINASA, Truong Gia Binh, said that smart cities are one of the best ways to serve people and businesses. The Smart City Award has been organised to encourage and motivate the building of smart cities in Vietnam. This will also be an important launch pad to promote economic and social development.
The Vietnam Smart City Award 2020 will receive applications from now until 10 October. The awarding ceremony is expected to be held on 17 November, during the 2020 Vietnam Smart City Summit.
Earlier in August, Ho Chi Minh City’s Department of Information and Communications signed an agreement with the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) on technical assistance to build a smart city operations centre.
The signing took place at the Ho Chi Minh City – US Business Summit: Driving Partnerships and Innovation for the Future. The event was co-held by the Municipal People’s Committee, the US Consulate General, and the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham), HCM City Chapter, as OpenGov Asia had reported.
The smart city operations centre is among four pillars in a plan to transform Vietnam’s southern economic hub into a smart city in the 2017-2020 period and with a vision towards 2025. It is the centre of control, or the “brain”, of a smart city. It will collect and analyse real-time data and information to help decision-makers govern, plan, and shape the future development of HCM City.
The project on technical assistance for the building of the smart city will be carried out by US-based Winbourne Consulting. It has a total investment of more than US$ 1.4 million, close to US$ 1.2 million will be provided by the USTDA in the form of non-refundable aid, while the remainder will come from Winbourne Consulting, according to the agreement.
