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Smart rural service applications are benefiting farmers and local authorities.

Upgrading new rural commune standards

After more than 14 years of implementing the National Target Program on New Rural Construction (NTM), the entire Thua Thien Hue province has 75 communes meeting NTM standards and 8 communes meeting advanced NTM standards.

Currently, the province continues to develop advanced new-style rural communes and model new-style rural communes with higher standards, focusing more on increasing rural people's income, improving rural landscapes, and developing the economy based on local advantages...

The pilot construction of smart new rural communes is also focused on increasing conveniences for rural people by applying digital technology solutions and local innovations associated with ecological environmental protection.

Recently, in response to the province's order, the Digital Agriculture Cooperative carried out the project "Research on the application of smart rural services to build a smart new rural commune model with the province's characteristics".

The Digital Agriculture Cooperative has chosen to survey two communes that have met the new rural standards, Quang Tho (Quang Dien) and Vinh Hung (Phu Loc) to grasp the current status of the results of implementing the new rural model, the conditions of facilities, infrastructure, rural services, people... to meet the necessary conditions for implementing the smart new rural commune model.

Mr. Le Anh Hoang, Director of the Digital Agriculture Cooperative, project leader, said that the criteria for building smart communes will be a measure and a compass to help rural people easily access basic public services, increase income and quality of life, gradually narrow the gap in service quality between rural and urban areas; change thinking and approach to production and business methods, enjoy smart rural services, promote unique cultural values ​​in the digital space, towards smart new rural areas.

Choosing the two communes of Quang Tho and Vinh Hung to carry out the project, according to Mr. Hoang, basically the two communes that have met the NTM standards have partly met some necessary requirements compared to the smart commune criteria set.

Quang Tho commune achieved a higher rate, due to its focus on applying digital transformation solutions in rural management such as security camera systems, broadcasting and OCOP products.

Increase interaction and production efficiency

The application of digital technology solutions can only solve a part of the many necessary needs to build a smart NTM commune model. Therefore, the project implementation unit selected a number of research directions and applied digital technology solutions for a number of important directions and fields to hand over to the two communes of Quang Tho and Vinh Hung, including 5 solutions: Smart operation center software at the commune level; software to support the operation and management of agricultural production; water/air environment monitoring system serving agricultural production activities; software to interact with the government and rural people; tourism promotion system in the commune using VR3D technology.

The two localities that benefited from the smart commune model, Quang Tho and Vinh Hung, both said that the solutions for applying smart rural services have helped the localities build support tools to enhance connectivity, interaction, and dissemination of information to people's phones.

The commune-level smart operation center software solution also helps improve agricultural production management and agricultural production data management, ensuring overall management and transparency in agricultural production activities of production facilities.

Through the software system, agricultural data of the commune is digitized by agricultural specialists on the software system to serve annual monitoring and evaluation. The seasonal calendar management feature helps commune officials proactively notify the agricultural production seasonal calendar directly to local people in the fastest way.

For agricultural production activities, the software solution provides functions for managing and digitizing product production processes, managing raw material areas, managing members, recording production logs and tracing origins.

A representative of Quang Tho 2 Agricultural Cooperative said that applying the system helps the cooperative, cooperative members, and farmers get closer to digital technology applications.

Thereby helping the agricultural cultivation process to be convenient and increasing the exchange of information between participating factors. Currently, Quang Tho 2 Agricultural Cooperative and a number of cooperatives and agricultural production establishments are effectively operating software to support the operation and management of agricultural production.

Or with VR3D technology, now Quang Tho and Vinh Hung communes have their own website to promote images, tourist attractions, services, and production facilities of typical local products so that many people know and visit.

Chairing the project acceptance council, Director of the Department of Science and Technology Ho Thang assessed that after the model implementation process, the number of criteria for achieving smart commune status in the two pilot communes has more than doubled.

However, in absolute terms, for localities striving to build smart communes to achieve all 37 criteria, there needs to be a process of approach, application and participation of the government, people and the NTM program for a long enough period of time, additional investment in facilities, infrastructure, local action programs and technological solutions.

According to HOAI NGUYEN (Thua Thien Hue Newspaper)