Digital transformation is a trending term of the mass media in the past few years, although digital transformation is not a new term in the world, it has a very comprehensive connotation for the country in the process of building the government of “innovation, integrity, action, efficiency, and serving the people”. These are practical changes and breakthrough policies of the Party and State to solve the “problems” of adaptation and “shortcuts to gain a head start” in the Great Industrial Revolution 4.0 - demonstrate through the strong and outstanding development of electronic industries such as the Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing (cloud), big data, etc. For the first time, the concepts of digital transformation, digital economy, and digital society were introduced to the document content of the 13th National Party Congress and the connotation of these concepts has been institutionalized and emphasized many times in the development goals, perspectives, and strategic breakthroughs of the Central Government, and local authorities since the beginning of 2021.
Digital transformation, in a simple explanatory way, is moving the central position from the government to the people, from the costs to the benefits and from the separate values, software to the sharing digital platform, from the technology application to the shifts of working method, from the partial way to the comprehensive way, from the central position of chief information officer (CIO) to the head of organization, from the separate computers to cloud, from the investment to the device hiring, from the products to the services, from the technology expert groups to the community digital technology groups, from how to do these things to what things need to do, from the central position of people who are good at software to the central position of people who are good at applying software, from the information technology systems to the digital environment, from the automation to the intelligence, from the organizational data to the user data, from the structured data to the unstructured data. Digital transformation is information technology and the harmonious and powerful development of comprehensive digitization, data application, innovation, and digital technology (quoted the statement of Minister of Information and Communication Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung at a digital transformation conference in 2022).
The evolution of digital transformation is based on three main fields: The digital government, the digital society, and the digital economy which have initially brought some benefits and will continue to bring great and undeniable benefits to the government, society, and economy. Not only simply help to cut operating costs; optimize working efficiency; increase accessibility and interaction with people/businesses, report systems, smooth management control, and timely decision making; increase the operational efficiency and competitiveness of authorities/organizations/enterprises, but also keep pace with the advantages and trends of the times as well as meet global sustainable development challenges for the country and the society.
With the position as the third largest city of the country, where the economic growth rate is superior to the national average, the economic scale is over 10 billion USD and there is abundant space and potential for development, the Party Committee, the Authority, and the People of Hai Phong have realized that digital transformation is one of new driving forces that should be given special priority and explored among the main development fields of the City. This will be one of the key and cross-cutting tasks in the executive leadership and activities of agencies, organizations, people, and businesses in the city area in the coming time. With that spirit, on October 26, 2021, Hai Phong City Party Committee issued Resolution No. 03-NQ/TU on the digital transformation of Hai Phong City by 2025, with orientation to 2030 to create new value growth from the digital economy including three main economic fields (high-tech industry, seaports - logistics, tourism - commerce), the formation and development of a safe, convenient, and optimal digital environment to meet the production, business and community needs of the people, create a creative start-up environment, proactively approach and take advantage of opportunities brought from the 4.0 revolution to make a foundation to realize goals of becoming a modern, civilized, industrial city with regional and international stature in accordance to the spirit of Resolution No. 45-NQ/TW of the Politburo. Accordingly, Resolution No. 03-NQ/TU sets the goals to develop digital government, digital economy and digital society by 2025 with an orientation to 2030, in which people and businesses are the center of digital transformation, the participation of the whole political system, the synchronous thinking and action of agencies, units and localities, with the active participation of people and businesses are the foundation for ensuring the success of the digital transformation. In addition, at the city official conference to thoroughly grasp, propagate and implement Resolution No.03 of the Standing Committee of the City Party Committee on the digital transformation of Hai Phong City to 2025, with an orientation to 2030, Minister of Information and Communications Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung shared: Training and investing in digital infrastructure development is one of the ways and opportunities for Hai Phong to become a center of digital technology.
Based on management previously formed and with the above policy suggestions, in the past time, although Hai Phong foreign affairs sector did not take the lead, but actively cooperated with other sectors and levels in the development of digital transformation toward building a smart city, actively promoting, attracting, exploiting and enriching current cooperation relationships and looking for experienced and potential partners in digital transformation.
Through the diplomatic channel, the foreign affairs sector promotes research on the strengths and potentials of localities, actively innovates methods, and seeks foreign partners with experience in digital transformation in operating governmental management, building a digital society, and promoting the value of the digital economy. Strengthen and promote the role of multilateral cooperation mechanisms to share knowledge and experience in such areas as building a digital urban platform, applying digitalization in traffic management, and improving digital transformation capacity for officials and civil servants (the most recent example is the K-City Network Program).
The foreign affairs sector is designing a favorable environment and bridge for investment and business activities and foreign investment attraction in the fields of semiconductor technology, research and development, and e-commerce. Although in the context of COVID-19 disease response and control, and impossible to conduct delegation exchange activities with foreign partners, online promotion activities with foreign authorities, partners, and investors are still effectively deployed, and coherently conveyed the calling message for investment in the field of digital technology and digital transformation. Since the beginning of 2022, the delegation exchange has been actively resumed, and many foreign diplomatic delegations have visited and worked with the City to study the business environment, economic development needs, and clean energy. The foreign affairs sector has actively approached and exploited the experience and need for cooperation in digital transformation. At the same time, flexibly and promptly support foreign partners to remove challenges in the process of implementing research and investment activities in the city area, contributing to creating trust and giving opportunities for new cooperation activities in the future, especially building international/global training centers.
In addition, the opening and connecting projects with tier-1 partners/branches/distributors of the world’s leading technology corporations such as Apple, Amazon, Google, etc. or attract technology start-ups in the fields of data analysis, programming - automation, fintech, payment platforms - online sales, etc. should be prioritized for policy consultation and implementation. The core values are quality of investment projects, intelligence, transfer of high technology and added values, and influence on the sustainable development of the economy, society, and environment, which may be more important than the value or scale of the investment. This will demonstrate the strength and position of the City in the context of evolving spatial competition that can extend beyond administrative boundaries.
From another perspective, the digital transformation will also become an indispensable secondary step to serve Hai Phong core value of building a smart city, where it is necessary to use effectively, efficiently, and economically, environmentally friendly energy for infrastructure such as the transportation; the collection, management, treatment, recycling of wastewater, water supply; the collection, classification, treatment, domestic waste recycling, etc. to optimize resources, serve the development needs of urban society, as well as ensure a green, clean, civilized and modern space for the people. In this correlation, the foreign affairs sector is the main force with the other sectors to promote the calling for investment resources to upgrade and develop the city infrastructure, and mobilize foreign partners to invest in upgrading and developing smart infrastructure projects, such as energy-saving buildings, public lighting infrastructure projects using sensors, ecological industrial parks, etc.
In order to achieve the above objectives, the strengthening of research, forecasting, and consulting activities, ensuring practicality and efficiency in leading the implementation of international cooperation activities to exploit the bilateral and multilateral cooperation relationships in realizing digital transformation in the management and operation of government, society, and the seaport economy, one of the key fields bringing economic efficiency with high GDP growth rate of the City. Along with that, on the basis of the importance of external propaganda information in the current era - the fourth power in democracies, the foreign affairs sector needs to step up the construction and development of multilingual information and propaganda contents, which integrates information on mechanisms and policies, investment incentives, investment environment, key economic sectors that are being paid attention and interest to the city and sought the international cooperation, on potential development and cooperation needs in the field of digital transformation of the City. And especially, the quality of the human resources of the City in general and the foreign affairs sector in particular needs to be concerned about improving, raising the level, and making breakthroughs to be able to provide a feasible, visionary solution and effectively solve the problems about digital transformation towards building a smart city on the basis of the unique identity and internal resources of each sector. /.