During the current years, foreign affairs information work has got various adjustments to adapt to the new contexts and to ensure well meeting up political tasks assigned by the Party, State and Foreign Affairs Sector. The pandemic COVID-19 came and made heavy impacts on all over the world. There is one undeniable fact, however, the COVID-19 helped the world acknowledge roles of informative technology and digital transformation. In a such difficult situation born by the epidemic outbreaks, when physical connection was interpreted between countries and countries, humans and humans, informative technology has brought countries and humans closer. Online meetings, bilateral and multilateral appointments, even negotiations and signing agreements were conducted online. It was the moment that all countries in the world acknowledged the significance and effectiveness of digital transformation; Vietnam has been one of countries catching up on time and applying informative technology to deploy quickly and efficiently activities related to the country’s economic and social operation and management. That is an essential ground for the country to enter the era of digital transformation.
Center of Information and External Affairs Development (in short: the Center) has been the singular career-unit under the Foreign Affairs Department’s management, displaying functions on foreign propaganda work.
Gradually increased quality of Hai Phong Foreign Affairs Newsletters
Foreign Affairs Department has led the Center in the way of being proactive, creative, efficient, and on-time. Hai Phong Foreign Newsletters drafted, edited and launched by the Center have got increasingly improved and upgraded quality with attractively designed and performed articles, enriched contents and articles’ quality. Bilingual foreign news in both English and Vietnamese were released quarterly; they have been not only a channel for propagating and advertising the city but also becoming a product of reading culture that has become familiar to numerous readers. Besides, foreign languages training programs and foreign affairs skills under the slogan “Practical, effective, center is learners” have made contributions to upgrade the international integration capacity of public officers, organizations, and enterprises in the city.
Hai Phong has been one of leading localities in providing multilingual foreign information, abundant contents toward foreign organizations and individuals and Vietnamese communities overseas
Since 2021, the Center has been assigned by the Director of the Department to manage operation of the Multilingual Informative Website, which contains 05 different languages: Vietnamese, English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Project on the Multilingual Website construction hosted by Foreign Affairs Department had got approval by the City People’s Committee right on the booming time of digital technology. The Project was the heart of the Department’s Directorate for establishing an official informative channel comprehensively and effectively uploading such information as economic-social-cultural development, well-known tourist spots, and incentive policies for calling investment, trade, tourism, international cooperation and international integration of the city. To manage those, a huge volume of information needed to be accessed per year: more than 3,000 collected articles, 300 articles including news, reports, photographs, graphics, etc.; thousands of translated news among fourth languages. Such huge and complicated volume of work requesting intense concentration, correction, and smooth collaboration between the Department’s functional divisions and the Center, focusing and maximizing current sources to provide fast, timely, and completely a comprehensive picture of the city and the country to foreign organizations and individuals, Vietnamese communities overseas across the world. It was the first time when the city has got an official multilingual website with a diversity of news, articles, vivid and quality contents, awesome photos that has gradually increased attention and following from domestic and foreign audiences. After almost 2 years of operation, by now, the Center has received more than 63,000 visitors, particularly numerous articles written with foreign languages on the city’s economic, cultural, and tourist sectors have attracted thousands of visitors.
In the context of globalization, advertising the country on a unified framework will help the world recognize the country’s image, through that measure, boosting up activities exchange in terms of diplomacy, tourism, trade, and investment attraction, upgrading the country’s competitiveness, and serving economic and social development. Gradually moving advertisement from the Central to the Local and creating unique stories, putting the Local into “the core” to make the country’s image and lift up the ranking of Vietnam on the global ranking boards has been considered a crucial and urgent task in the current period. Hai Phong has been leading in establishing and operating the Multilingual Foreign Informative Website, in which audience has not only seen a complete picture on economic and social performance but also observed values system, life quality, business potentials, culture-heritage, tourism, and local product origin – figures have been put into criteria pack for national image branch assessment.
Scenic spots, landscapes, cultural and historical relics with beautiful and attractive images posted on the Foreign Affairs Newsletters making contribution to promote the city
Identify foreign affairs information as an important pattern of Party’s Foreign Affairs, State’s diplomacy, and people’s diplomacy; the Center will have implement measures as bellowing:
First, research, identify targets, measures, plan foreign affairs work for short-term and long-term in the context of digital transformation and indeed international integration nowadays.
Second, be proactive in displaying measures with information tech application and new media trends, upgrade the foreign affairs information quality ensuring precision, timely, attractiveness, efficiency and effectiveness, and metalinguistic performance.
Third, nonstop fostering and upgrading awareness and facilitating the Center’s public officers, servants, and labors attend professional training courses on journalism, informative techs, digital information management, media crisis handling skills, etc. to upgrade human source’s quality of the unit’s informative propaganda work.
Fourth, prioritize sources on infrastructure, equipment, and humans to serve the operation of the city’s Foreign Newsletters.
It is believed that by continuously moving in chosen direction and effectively deploy the aforementioned measures, the Center will greatly contribute to effective implementation of the foreign affairs work’s essential tasks, which is to bring Vietnam to the world and to take the world closer to Vietnam, establishing images, contributing to arouse patriotism, national pride, and aspiration to develop such strong and wealthy country./.