Service science sounds to be a new concept but it has been strongly developed in many countries around the world and is becoming a trend. At a seminar on "Building and developing service science in Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City" held by the city’s Department of Science and Technology, experts reaffirmed the necessity of the birth of service science.
Priority for service science development
Professor Phan Minh Tan, Director of the HCM City Department of Science and Technology, said: Services science is a general scientific branch. If it is given priority for development, it will significantly contribute to the increase in revenues of science sectors in the city. He pointed out that services make up more than 70 % of GDP in developed countries like the US, Japan and the EU. But in Vietnam, the contribution of services is just 38 %, led by HCM City with more than 57 %. That is why HCM City will prioritise the development of service science, also called as knowledge economy, to keep up with current development trends.
HCM City, the largest economic centre of Vietnam, expects to see about 400 graduates from service science training in the next five years. In 2011, the city will join the World Service Science Association. This first step will be applied to the tourism industry but the most important issue is human resource training for this sector. To achieve this goal, the Department of Science and Technology is cooperating with IBM to introduce service science to some universities like the University of Natural Sciences and University of Technology. Accordingly, these universities will provide courses on service science.
Long strides
Ho Chi Minh City has restructured its economy in the direction of raising industries with higher added value ratio, more environmental friendliness. Particularly, it is striving to increase the proportion of GDP. By 2010, the services contributed 55.5 % to the city’s GDP and expanded over 12 % a year. This asserts the importance of services in the development of the city in particular and the country in general.
Therefore, delegates attending the conference said service science will be predominant in the coming decades when the world economy has largely shifted to knowledge economy. Service science not only contributes to improving productivity and quality of current service provision systems but also helps create high value-added services and boost effective use of resources to meet the increasing demand of customers. This is extremely important for Vietnam in general and the city in particular.
Addressing at the seminar, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Nguyen Van Lang, said HCM City is the economic, financial, trade and service centre of Vietnam with modernising infrastructures and expanding markets; thus, it holds many potentials for the formation and development of service science.
Mr Kris Singh, President of Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII) of IBM, asserts that services play an important role in the economy. Services are not confined to an area but open to the entire world. Previously, services require a lot of capital and manpower but information technology today helps reduce costs and creates huge changes. Information technology is the foundation for all service activities. For Vietnam in general and HCM City in particular, service science does not stand separately but also combines with and supports industry and agriculture to improve the quality of products, services and added value.
P.V
Vietnamese
