Awarding to authors and groups of authors winning prize at the Provincial Technical Creation Competition 2022

Developing digital government

Over the past years, the concept of Open Data has become more and more popular and important in the transformation from E-Government to Digital-Government. The sets of Open Data allow citizens and organizations in both public and private sectors to access and use it with commercial and non-commercial purposes. Furthermore, Open Data also leaves a huge impact on the work of state management, upgrading transparency and accountability, pushing up the participation of people, businesses into the operation of state management.

The process of building e-government is strongly carrying out in Vietnam in general and in Thua Thien Hue in particular. The province has been being proactive in the work of building and completing specialized open databases to the maximum serving and exploitation of information system for the government and e-government, serving the social-economic development, as the same time raising state management ability, upgrading transparency, and fostering the interaction between state agencies and people, businesses.

According to Mr. Le Vinh Chien, Deputy Director of HueCIT, the provincial Open Data system has been researched and implemented from 2018 and it is working so well in Thua Thien Hue at the address http://data.thuathienhue.gov.vn and http://opendata.thuathienhue.gov.vn.

“Hue CIT builds Open Data System with the aim to collect, publicize, and share the sets of Open Data, as well as to connect with the provincial joint using systems, connecting the National Data Portals to serve people and businesses. Besides that, Open Data also allows to customize the criteria related to functions and missions at each unit, department, sector and locality to reckon, monitor, manage, and support the process of making decisions in running, heading to the purposes of e-government and smart urbans, providing data services to the public,” said Mr. Chien.

The system also provides documents, services, tools, as well as applications to handle and exploit data published by state agencies directly to people, businesses and startup ecosystems.

Creating economic efficiency

When Information Technology is enjoying a boom, data and digitalizing data play critical roles. Thua Thien Hue’s Open Data system is one of the important foundations in the provincial strategy of completing e-government, developing digital government, and building up smart urban.

According to Mr. Hoang Bao Hung, Director of the Provincial Center of Information and Technology, along with the huge demand as well as the level of IT development of Vietnam in general and Thua Thien Hue in particular, providing essential sets of data in the form of Open Data will support the creativity, innovation, and economic growth. Furthermore, it also opens up the information flow between agencies, departments, central and local authorities, at the same time supporting other provincial purposes such as developing a framework of monitoring the performances of administrative agencies, promoting data management ability, and the process of IT management in government agencies.

Open Data is also known as a clue providing open data of state agencies, connecting it to the National Data Portal. “People, businesses, and community will reach the favorable conditions to exploit the state agencies’ data to serve the research, studying, making product; to contribute to the development of the State and society and join their hands to promote economic development,” shared HueCIT’s director.

Additionally, Open Data will be the place to provide the new digital services, allowing users to access their data managed by the state agencies. This is also an information channel to receive suggestions from agencies, organizations, businesses, and individuals so that the state agencies can get much more data to effectively operate and serve people and businesses better.

Currently, Open Data is being published, providing data under the topics such as Education System, IT and Communication, Transport, Science, Economy, Labor, Environment and Natural Resources, Agriculture, Finance, Tourism and Culture, etc.

Although the application is working well, Open Data just brings its best into play with the active participation from individuals, organization, and businesses. “It is necessary to have the synchronous coordination from many parties, from the government, authorities at all levels, experts in many fields, agencies, organizations, and individuals, etc., so as to be able to bring fully into play the potential and benefits of Open Data in all aspects of the social life,” shared Director Hoang Bao Hung.

Story and photo: Lien Minh