The 1st National Forum on Digital Economy and Digital Society Development

Head of the Central Economic Commission Tran Tuan Anh, Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung, Secretary of Nam Dinh Provincial Party Committee Pham Gia Tuc and delegates visited the exhibition on the sidelines of the forum.

Attending the Forum were Mr. Tran Tuan Anh, Politburo member, Head of the Central Economic Commission; Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung, Party Central Committee member, Minister of Information and Communications, Vice Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation; Mr. Pham Gia Tuc, Party Central Committee member, Secretary of Nam Dinh Provincial Party Committee. Also attending the Forum were representatives of a number of National Assembly Committees, representatives of leaders of ministries, branches, localities, representatives of a number of embassies and international organizations. On the side of the Ministry of Information and Communications, there was also the participation of Deputy Minister Nguyen Huy Dung and related units of the Ministry.

Digital transformation and digital economic development is a long journey, more about application than research.

Speaking at the opening of the Forum, Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung, Minister of Information and Communications, Vice Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation, said that the Resolution of the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam emphasized: Digital economy must become the main driving force for rapid and sustainable growth, improving productivity, quality, efficiency, and competitiveness of the economy. The National Strategy on Digital Economy and Digital Society Development to 2025, with a vision to 2030, signed by the Prime Minister, sets a target that by 2025, the proportion of digital economy will reach at least 20% of GDP, and by 2030, it will reach at least 30%. In particular, the digital economy of each industry and field will reach at least 10% in 2025, and at least 20% in 2030.

Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung speaks at the Forum

The Ministry of Information and Communications is the agency assigned by the Government to take the lead in promoting the development of the digital economy and digital society. According to the Ministry's estimates, the contribution rate of the digital economy to GDP has increased from 11.91% in 2021 to 14.26% in 2022 and in the first 6 months of 2023, it has reached nearly 15%.

According to the Minister, Vice Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation, to achieve the goal of the digital economy accounting for at least 20% by 2025 as set out in the Strategy, the digital economy must grow 3-4 times faster than GDP growth, that is, about 20-25%/year. This is a difficult and challenging task that requires breakthrough solutions to achieve.

The Minister of Information and Communications, Vice Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation, commented that digital transformation and digital economic development is a long journey, more about application than research. In application, national characteristics, culture, national context, and the specific characteristics of each industry and field are decisive factors. Vietnam must follow the Vietnamese path. And because we follow the Vietnamese path, we have the opportunity to take the lead. Following someone else's path will always mean being a follower.

Developing Vietnam's digital economy requires building digital institutions, digital infrastructure and digital trust. The digital economy must be based on digital innovation, integrating the digital economy into all industries and fields, implementing digital governance and training digital skills, digital human resources and especially attracting digital talent. Developing Vietnam's digital economy is based on three pillars: Digital governance; exploiting data to create value for the economy; developing productive forces related to the digital economy, in which the core is the ICT industry accounting for 20-30% and the remaining 70-80% is the digital economy of the industry, born from the digital transformation of industries.

The Minister of Information and Communications, Vice Chairman of the National Committee on Digital Transformation, believes that the goal of developing a digital economy is to make people richer. The goal of developing a digital society is to make people happier through digital technology. This is an important and constant goal in the process of developing Vietnam's digital economy. Digital technologies, especially artificial intelligence, must be used properly and ethically to achieve humane goals.

Breakthrough approaches and solutions are needed to achieve the goal of digital economy accounting for 30% of GDP by 2030.

On behalf of the Party and State leaders, Mr. Tran Tuan Anh, Head of the Central Economic Commission, acknowledged and highly appreciated the Ministry of Information and Communications, Nam Dinh Provincial Party Committee and relevant agencies and units for coordinating to organize the Forum, and expressed strong support for organizing this Forum to become an annual Forum to create profound changes in both awareness and action, mobilizing the comprehensive participation of people, the business community and state agencies.

Head of the Central Economic Commission Tran Tuan Anh speaks at the Forum

Specifically, promote propaganda work to raise awareness of the whole society about digital transformation and digital economic development so that state management agencies, people and businesses clearly understand the benefits, thereby actively participating and enjoying the benefits that digital transformation brings.

Promoting the development of the digital economy based on science and technology and innovation must be identified as a key and urgent task. Focus on implementing solutions to improve Vietnam's ranking in e-Government, Innovation and Global Competitiveness according to the criteria of international organizations.

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung announced the action program of the Forum.

Ministries, sectors and localities need to focus on prioritizing resources and have incentive mechanisms and policies, creating a legal framework for developing smart manufacturing and developing the digital technology industry in the direction of "Make in Vietnam".

National databases and artificial intelligence are important foundations for national digital transformation. Ministries and localities need to find new development space in these areas.

At the same time, synchronously implement development solutions, improve the quality of digital human resources associated with innovation, application of science and technology. Quickly deploy the digital university education model; innovate training programs, focus on training digital skills associated with the market and meet the requirements of national digital transformation; Building and developing a digital citizen ecosystem must be an important foundation of national digital transformation.

Mr. Pham Dinh Nghi, Chairman of Nam Dinh Provincial People's Committee

Countries can learn from each other to develop digital economy, digital data strategy

At the Forum, Mr. Toni Kristian Eliasz, Senior Digital Specialist of the World Bank, highly appreciated the strong growth of the digital economy in Vietnam. The World Bank representative commented that Vietnam has a high rate of Internet users (78.6%) and mobile device users (79%) compared to the world. In terms of access to broadband connection, Vietnam is in the top group. This is a solid foundation for Vietnam to continue developing the digital economy and digital society.

He recommended that Vietnam should focus on improving digital capacity and digital skills, as this is an important driving force contributing to increasing labor productivity, and at the same time, it is necessary to focus on increasing the proportion of households with computers at home. Computers play a role in promoting knowledge.

Vietnam's digital economy goals are very ambitious, so Vietnam needs to invest accordingly to realize these goals.

Mr. Toni Kristian Eliasz, Senior Digital Specialist of the World Bank, highly appreciated the strong growth of the digital economy in Vietnam.

Mr. Toni Kristian Eliasz shared the successful lessons of Korea and Singapore in building digital platforms and digital data. Singapore has built a very successful large startup ecosystem because it has always had direction from the Government from the beginning; Participation from the private sector; Scale and systematic, scientific approach over a long period of time (30 years). Korea has set a goal towards a Government with a digital platform, decisions are made based on data, AI technology.

Sharing his experience in developing digital data, Mr. Matthew Francois, senior digital expert at McKinsey & Company, said that Vietnam is on the right track in building a digital economy to increase the contribution of the digital economy to GDP in the next decade.

According to Mr. Matthew Francois, there are three areas of the digital economy that can benefit Vietnam: the increasing online e-commerce transactions contributing to the promotion of the digital economy; Digital transformation is being implemented in the fields of health, education, finance, promoted by digital infrastructure. This is an opportunity for Vietnam to use digital transformation to promote productivity, thereby enhancing national competitive advantages; Promoting digital skills will increase labor productivity, creating new growth space for businesses, especially in the ICT sector.

Regarding digital data development, countries can exchange and learn from each other's experiences, in which building data architecture, data governance, and data protection are important factors.

The McKinsey representative appreciated Singapore's use of open data to attract investment from both the public and private sectors to develop data. Ireland and the Netherlands, two European countries, have been successful in attracting global technology companies to invest in building data centers.

Director of the Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society Tran Minh Tuan presented the Report on the implementation of the Development Strategy.

At the Forum, Mr. Tran Minh Tuan, Director of the Department of Digital Economy and Digital Society, Ministry of Information and Communications, presented a report on the implementation of the Strategy for developing digital economy and digital society to 2025, with a vision to 2030, and the annual report on Vietnam's digital economy in 2022.

At the end of the High-level Forum, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Huy Dung announced the Forum's action program with 10 specific actions.

The Forum's Action Program with 10 specific actions:

1- Promote the rate of people using smartphones, aiming to popularize smartphones in localities across the country in the immediate future, each household will have a smartphone; complete smartphone support for poor and near-poor households through the Vietnam Public Telecommunications Service Fund and go hand in hand with popularizing fiber optic cables to each household. Completion time is December 2024.

2- Develop and promote the use of national shared digital platforms, focusing on areas where Vietnam has strengths such as manufacturing, processing, agriculture, tourism, logistics and textiles. The Ministry of Information and Communications and ministries, branches, and competent agencies in each field, and core enterprises develop platforms and localities promote their use. Implementation roadmap in the fourth quarter of 2023, the Ministry of Information and Communications and ministries and branches will announce outstanding national digital platforms in each industry and field, and in 2024, localities will develop plans for implementation and use.

3- Build and deploy a free digital skills training platform with basic skills courses for people, especially popularizing artificial intelligence (AI) for content creation.

4- Deploy 3 national pilot projects on AI application, specifically building a large Vietnamese language model and building a virtual assistant to support civil servants and officials in the executive sector; virtual assistants to avoid overlapping legal documents for legislative officials and especially legal virtual assistants to serve the people.

5- Continue to guide and disseminate the implementation of the Community Digital Technology Team, synchronously nationwide so that this team can guide people in using digital services.

6- Digital transformation, bringing people and businesses' activities to the network environment while ensuring information security. The goal is to ensure network information security for at least 70% of Internet subscribers to have safe access.

7- Develop and popularize digital signatures for people, strive to complete popularization of digital signatures for people by 2025.

8- Measure and periodically announce the proportion of digital economy in GDP every quarter, especially in the fourth quarter of 2023, launch a digital economy measurement toolkit, allowing localities to use it to measure their province's ICT economy every quarter.

9- Quickly develop and submit to the Government for promulgation 3 Decrees guiding the implementation of the Law on Electronic Transactions before the second quarter of 2024 to take effect in sync with the effect of the Law.

10- The Ministry of Information and Communications shall preside over the drafting of documents guiding ministries, branches and localities in implementing the development of digital economy and digital society within the locality; at the same time, submit to the Government for approval an action plan for the development of digital economy and digital society to complete the goals set out in the National Strategy to 2025.

* The National Forum on Digital Economy and Digital Society Development includes: Plenary Session; Thematic Workshop Session on related issues such as: Developing innovation to become the driving force for building a digital economy; Developing digital technology industry to become a widespread platform industry to promote digital economy and digital society for all people; Data and artificial intelligence serving the development of digital economy and digital society.

Parallel to the Conference program is the Exhibition on technology applications for digital economic development with the participation of leading information technology solution providers such as Viettel, VNPT, Misa, MobiFone, FPT, Shopee, VNPay,... Outstanding solutions introduced in the exhibition include: Digital payment/E-wallet; Contact and contactless payment EMV and non-EMV; NFC (Near Field Connection); Mobile payment system; Digital signature; Blockchain technology; E-commerce; Digital ecosystem; Blockchain; Information security...

Giang Pham - Duc Huy

Source: https://mst.gov.vn/dien-dan-quoc-gia-phat-trien-kinh-te-so-va-xa-hoi-so-lan-thu-i-197240110163409726.htm