Fostering the spirit of innovation in every citizen: Technology radiates into life

Connecting government with people in the digital environment

Over the past few months, Ms. Nguyen Thi Phuong (living in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City) has regularly used Metro Line 1 to go to school in Thu Duc City. Since the city has a policy of reducing metro ticket prices for students on the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, Ms. Phuong only needs to log in to the application, enter personal information, take a photo of her student ID to register and use the QR code to go through the electronic ticket gate.

District 1 Youth Union members went to each house to guide people to install and learn about the utilities on the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen Application. Photo: QUOC THANH

On the way from her house to Ben Thanh metro station, seeing a lot of garbage dumped haphazardly under Calmette bridge, Ms. Phuong took a photo with her phone and sent her feedback to the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application. Just a few minutes later, Ms. Phuong's feedback was received and processed by the local government, with a response right on the application. "The Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application has many utilities, especially the connection between people and the government. Just log in to the Digital Citizen application to send and track the processing of your feedback right on the application," Ms. Phuong shared.

Ms. Vo Thi Trung Trinh, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Transformation Center (the agency directly building and operating the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application), said that before the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application, to solve the needs of life, people had to contact and use many different applications and systems. Although the reception was similar, these systems operated separately, lacking a unified central point, causing inconvenience to people. From there, the initiative to build a unified application connecting and interacting in two ways between the government and the people was born. By November 2024, the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application was launched, becoming a means of connecting the Ho Chi Minh City government with the people in the digital environment.

According to Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Vo Van Hoan, the awarding of the Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award aims to honor and encourage innovative and creative activities in production and business, in the daily work of each individual, agency, unit and enterprise. Ho Chi Minh City is focusing on implementing Resolution No. 57 of the Politburo on breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and national digital transformation. The 4th Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award is also one of the activities to implement Resolution 57. In particular, the 52 works awarded this time have demonstrated the creative spirit of Ho Chi Minh City people at all times, everywhere, in all fields.

According to Ms. Vo Thi Trung Trinh, the Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application was built to become a single, unified mobile application serving people in all aspects of social life, a two-way communication channel between the city government and people with easy "one-touch" interaction, bringing many practical benefits to people.

“The Ho Chi Minh City Digital Citizen application is the first application to integrate all public services into a single platform, helping people to quickly interact with the government, reduce costs in implementing administrative procedures and facilitate policy dissemination in the digital age,” Ms. Vo Thi Trung Trinh informed. Up to now, the application has connected the Shared Data Warehouse with the VNeID electronic identification accounts of nearly 6 million people in Ho Chi Minh City. In the future, the city will continue to improve and integrate other utilities to build an application that is both a platform to solve public administrative problems and can serve all public services, becoming a tool for people to communicate with the government.

"Covering" technology, pushing back black credit

In recent years, Ho Chi Minh City has faced an increase in black credit crimes and increasingly bold and sophisticated fraud. Along with that, there are a series of leaflets, black credit advertisements, services such as "septic tank pumping", "concrete drilling and cutting" ... with inflated prices, affecting people's lives and damaging the urban landscape. In this situation, the creative project of Ho Chi Minh City Police entitled "Strengthening the application of technology in preventing crimes related to black credit and handling illegal advertising to preserve urban landscape in the city" has opened a new direction, combining direct propaganda and technology application.

Ho Chi Minh City police apply digital maps in monitoring illegal credit activities. Photo: CHI THACH

As one of the people directly implementing the project, Major Dang Van Thang, Head of the Youth Department of Ho Chi Minh City Police, and his colleagues in the unit had many concerns. “Our work does not stop at preventing crimes or improving urban aesthetics, but also calls on people to join hands to contribute, so that they themselves do not become prey of black credit. However, black credit subjects often change their sophisticated methods of operation on cyberspace, and flyers are torn and then found a way to post at night. Everything seems to have no end,” said Major Dang Van Thang.

According to Major Thang, in the long-term fight to prevent black credit crimes, thanks to the application of technology, the City Police have handled more than 3,000 phone numbers related to financial lending; combined with professional measures, administratively sanctioned many subjects for lending behavior and illegal advertising behavior. At the same time, the City Police have issued more than 130,000 propaganda leaflets and used social networking platforms, including the fanpage "Government Information" and fanpages of the Ministry of Public Security , National Television to reach people, improving communication effectiveness.

In 2024, Ho Chi Minh City Police organized 7 campaigns to remove illegal advertising products with more than 45,000 participants, coordinated with the City Advertising Association to display more than 620,000 propaganda videos on electronic boards, outdoor LED screens... The method of transmitting information outdoors brings modernity, freshness, and attracts people's attention. Not stopping at removing illegal advertising on walls, electric poles..., after the campaigns, Ho Chi Minh City Police coordinated with units to create high-quality mural paintings with the theme "Beautiful Vietnam". After nearly 6 years of implementation, 17 vivid, colorful mural paintings have replaced old, shabby advertising leaflets.

The application of technology to solve problems arising in daily work is also implemented by Saigon Newport Corporation through the project: "Smart port in the new era: Integrated digital solutions in port management and operation". According to the representative of the corporation, the port and logistics industry is increasingly competitive, with many challenges in terms of pressure to reduce costs and optimize operations. The strong growth of e-commerce and global supply chains, along with customers' increasing demands on delivery time, so the diverse application of advanced information technology such as AI, cloud computing, blockchain has created a highlight in the method of port management and operation.

To realize the strategy of building a "Smart Port - Green Logistics" model, in the period of 2020-2024, Saigon Newport Corporation has deployed a series of technology initiatives, including the e-SNP ecosystem with ePort, eDO, Auto-gate, AI chatbot to optimize the delivery process, shorten the time for processing documents and transactions; Applying VR360 virtual reality technology to provide online port tour experience; Pi virtual assistant automatically supports customers 24/7 with more than 4,500 questions and scenarios; eWMS electronic warehouse management system; Automating port operation processes through automatic gates with driver and license plate recognition features to shorten the time for port gate entry and exit procedures. These solutions not only help the unit improve operational productivity but also reduce operational pressure, while significantly improving customer experience.

The 4th Ho Chi Minh City Innovation Award received 292 projects, works, solutions, and topics registered to participate in 7 fields. The City-level Award Council met and gave opinions on selecting 52 projects to submit to the City People's Committee for awarding. Specifically:

- Sector 1 (economic development) has 9 solutions.

- Sector 2 (defense, security) has 6 solutions.

- Sector 3 (state management) has 7 solutions.

- Sector 4 (communication) has 6 solutions.

- Field 5 (literature and art) has 9 works.

- Field 6 (science and technology) has 9 topics.

- Field 7 (creative startups) has 6 solutions.

PV GROUP

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/thuc-day-tinh-than-sang-tao-trong-moi-nguoi-dan-cong-nghe-toa-vao-cuoc-song-post789895.html