The Hanoi Times - The Vietnamese government is taking concrete steps this year to speed up the development of e-government and the local IT industry.

The government office last week approved a new ambitious project to renovate and improve its IT infrastructure, in a bid to better serve the government in line with modern requirements for e-government activities.

The new IT infrastructure is aimed at matching other e-government offices in the ASEAN region. It will serve as the backbone for various IT applications, helping Vietnam keep up with the e-ASEAN programme that it committed to from 2008. The government office also announced several other IT projects to boost IT applications in the government. The biggest among them is a VND38 billion ($2.2 million) project to deploy the second phase of the government information portal at www.chinhphu.vn.

This will include a more specialised government e-news service, integrated in the portal. Moreover, by 2010, the portal will also be equipped with more technical features and applications, enabling better connection and information sharing among various government agencies and provide a variety of e-services to citizens. It will allow access from any computer as well as from mobile handheld devices.

Two other projects worth VND5.5 billion ($315,000) are aimed at developing and deploying new IT systems and applications to serve the daily operations of the government and integrate data from all ministries, cities and provinces for the longer term target of building a centrally managed data centre.

Governmental agencies at ministerial and lower levels are also pushing to make more e-government services available to citizens. The Ministry of Industry and Trade last week announced a score of new o­nline public services to be provided in 2009, including the issuance of franchising licences between domestic and foreign businesses, business licences for oil and gas exports, imports, electricity activities and consideration of commercial promotion programmes.

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is also expanding its o­nline services. MIC Minister Le Doan Hop said the ministry would increase o­nline communication with citizens by opening a question and answer section o­n its website. Discussions of IT issues by MIC leaders will also be broadcasted o­n VTC television channels.

Being the governing authority for the IT and communication (ICT) industry, the MIC also promised to push for high ICT growth in 2009, in spite of economic challenges. Hop was optimistic that ICT would be less hit by these challenges and still possessed many advantages to allow for better development. He pointed out that in 2008, the IT industry already posted an impressive growth of over 20 per cent, while the telecommunication and internet industry posted a 38 per cent growth.

As a result, the MIC set the growth target for the ICT industry in 2009 to be 40 per cent, aiming to make up for the other industries. Plans to deliver this include the preparations for 3G mobile services, the launch of more satellites, the deployments of more IT applications and e-government services and the training of more IT experts.