Lesson 3: The Important Role of Digital Infrastructure in Socio-Economic Development

To develop the digital economy , we need digital infrastructure. Infrastructure must have the physical foundation and provide essential services to support socio-economic activities. Infrastructure is the foundation for development. This foundation must be sufficient and widely accessible.

Bộ trưởng Nguyễn Mạnh Hùng thăm quan Trung tâm Dữ liệu Viettel Hoà Lạc của Tập đoàn Công nghiệp Viễn thông Quân đội Viettel, ngày 10/4/2024 — Minister Nguyen Manh Hung visits the Viettel Hoa Lac Data Center of Viettel Military Telecommunications Industry Group, April 10, 2024.

Regarding Vietnam's digital infrastructure: Vietnam's digital infrastructure includes: 1- Telecommunications and Internet infrastructure; 2- Data infrastructure; 3- Physical-digital infrastructure; 4- Digital transformation infrastructure. To develop the digital economy, digital infrastructure is essential. Infrastructure must have its own physical foundation and provide essential services that support socio-economic activities. Infrastructure is the foundation for development. This foundation must be sufficient and widely accessible.

Vietnam's digital infrastructure includes:

1. Telecommunications infrastructure (fiber optic cables, transmission lines, base stations, etc.), Internet infrastructure (routers, DNS, etc.);

2. Data infrastructure (IDC, Cloud, etc.);

3. Physical-digital infrastructure (digitizing everything in the real world , simulating it, creating a one-to-one mapping and creating interaction between the real world and the digital world (IoT to digitize everything, IoT transmission, data simulating everything (if the physical world has a bridge, then in the digital world there is data because the bridge is digitized and the software simulates that bridge based on the digitized data), storage and processing, especially big data processing and AI);

4. Digital transformation infrastructure (Digital Utilities: digital ID, digital signature, digital payment, digital invoice, digital contract authentication, digital document).

Telecommunications infrastructure, the Internet, and data infrastructure are hard infrastructure, physical infrastructure. The physical-digital infrastructure—sensors, IoT, data transmission, storage, and processing—is hard, but the data itself, digitized by the Internet of Things (IoT) and the software simulating IoT, which form the core of this infrastructure, is soft. Therefore, this infrastructure is both hard and soft. The infrastructure of Digital Utilities serving digital transformation is entirely soft (software platforms). Thus, digital infrastructure includes both hard and soft infrastructure. The layers of digital infrastructure include hard, soft, and even hybrid (both hard and soft).

The greatest achievement of digital transformation is digitizing everything in the real world, simulating it, creating a one-to-one mapping, and fostering interaction between the real and digital worlds. People gain more space to live and work, and their wealth and creative potential at least double. Many tasks are performed faster, more comprehensively, and more efficiently in the digital environment than in the real world. But these tasks require tools to perform them, or to support their execution – Digital Utilities. The cyberspace also has infrastructure similar to that in the real world. This cyberspace infrastructure is the Digital Utility.

Lesson 4: Every organization must develop its own theory.

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