Vietnam – Digital Transformation and Reality
According to Deputy Minister Nguyen Huy Dung, 2020 is the year of starting the national digital transformation. Developed digital technology allows us to bring all of our operations to cyberspace instead of simply digitizing documents, digitizing processes as before. This movement will take place at a rapid rate, creating an ever greater impact on all three pillars of digital government, digital economy, and digital society.
Vietnam is considered as one of the 20 countries with the highest internet penetration in the world with 68.17 million users (accounting for 70% of the population). About 94% of Vietnamese users use the Internet regularly with an average usage time of up to 6 hours per day. According to the UN’s EGDI report, in terms of e-government development index, Vietnam now ranks 86th, up 2 grades, and has a higher score than the average of Asia and the world. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam currently ranks 6th in the e-government development index, behind the Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Regarding the index of telecommunications infrastructure, in the past year, Vietnam has increased by 31 places, ranking 69 in the world. With the ranking index of human resources, Vietnam increased 3 places and ranked 117th. In the online services index, Vietnam has dropped 22 places on the rankings (UN data are only updated to September 2019).
Currently, Vietnam has about 45,500 information technology (ICT) enterprises. The total revenue of these businesses is estimated at 126 billion USD, including contributions from FDI enterprises. The proportion of ICT exports currently accounts for about 30% of the total national export value. Vietnam’s ICT exports currently account for 3% of the global ICT exports. These are the bright spots in Vietnam’s ICT sector.
On June 3, 2020, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 749 / QD-TTG approving the “National Digital Transformation Program to 2025, with an orientation to 2030”. The decision clearly states that the tasks and solutions to create a digital transformation foundation are cognitive transformations; institutional construction; developing digital infrastructure; digital platform development; create trust, ensure safety and security of the network; international cooperation, research, development, and innovation in a digital environment. With the national digital transformation program approved by the Prime Minister, Vietnam is one of the pioneers in the world and the leading country in Southeast Asia has a specialized program on digital transformation. For each organization, this is also considered a “golden” time for digital transformation and needs to “act now”.
