Information technology (IT) application in environment management is absolutely essential, particularly as environmental pollution gets more serious and change climate worsens. Impressed with the Asian Third Prize for “Green E-government” earned by the Vietnam Environment Administration (VEA) under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, the Vietnam Business Forum interviewed Mr Nguyen Xuan Thuy, Director of VEA Informatics Centre, on IT application in environment management. Do Ngoc reports.
Under the trend of economising this sector and serving green e-government goals, what are the advantages and challenges of IT application in environment management?
In recent years, the Party and the State have adopted many policies and measures to develop and apply IT to State management, business development, public service, and socio-economic development. So, Vietnam has achieved impressive development steps in software and telecommunications industries. IT applications to manufacturing, business, service and management have basically changed the way the people manage, learn and work.
IT functions as software infrastructure for development and serves as a driving force for development of all areas of social life because IT lays the foundation for a series of new scientific, industrial and service sectors, resolves development problems, deal with difficulties and obstacles in management and operation of agencies, organisations and sectors. IT infrastructure is both economic and social infrastructure; the infrastructure behind infrastructure. IT not only plays the most important role in making breakthroughs in economic and social infrastructure construction, but also makes important contributions to administrative reforms, institutional reform, human resource development, livelihood improvement, poverty reduction, cultural development, information transparency, and social justice.
The VEA has achieved high efficiency in IT application to environment management because it gets the close attention and direction of leaders at all levels, particularly Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment and General Director of VEA, Bui Cach Tuyen, and the coordination of VEA units. Especially, IT staff at VEA are very enthusiastic, responsible and dedicated, and collaborate with other units and partners to create products crystallised from collective knowledge and effectively apply them to practice.
But, challenges are still plentiful and difficulties are universal for all sectors in applying IT to management, that is, security, privacy, IT personnel, and effective coordination of concerned parties. Perhaps, a universal difficulty remains human resources. This complex IT system requires profound knowledge, experience and expertise. State agencies lack IT personnel as pay and treatment are much lower than domestic companies, let alone foreign businesses. I see that Vinh Phuc province has introduced a policy that pays as much as three times the base salary for IT staffs in State agencies - a policy hailed for effective talent attraction and true care of the provincial government to IT application to management
VEA’s project “Strengthening IT application to serve management and operating activities at the VEA” was ranked third in Asia Green E-government Awards 2012. As a person devoted to the project, could you tell us more about this project?
Starting from management and administration requirements at the time of accelerated public administration reform, VEA invested in IT applications to motivate development, enhance management capacity, improve operating efficiency, and move towards e-Government. VEA built and completed its IT system by upgrading IT infrastructure, building an electronic portal (VEA Portal), operating public administrative services, and applying software like document - archives management, legal document management, and online dialogues.
VEA Portal is an information channel of VEA that provides official information on policies and guidelines of the Party, policies and laws of the State, directions and administration of State management agencies on environmental protection from central to local levels, on the internet. VEA Portal provides internet-ready information of State management agencies at all levels about environmental protection and builds online relationships between VEA, media agencies and the people. The VEA Portal is displayed in Vietnamese, English, French, Chinese and Spanish, and attracts some 3,000 hits a day. In the past three years, 20 million hits have mined data in the portal.
On October 19, 2012, the Organisation Board for FutureGov Asian E-government Awards organised a ceremony to grant awards to agencies with excellent information technology applications in Chiang Mai, Thailand. VEA was ranked third in Asia Green E-government Awards 2012 for this project.
2012 was the 6th year FutureGov Magazine held the awards ceremony, attended by over 160 delegates from more than 20 countries and organisations from Asia and around the world. Vietnam had 15 candidate projects and four were shortlisted for the final round. FutureGov Award is the only in the world to honour organisations, projects, and programmes in public administration, education and health fields in the Asia-Pacific region.
This was a strong recognition of effective IT application to the resource and environment field, and was one of the most outstanding events of the natural resources and environment sector in 2012.
Would you be kind enough to talk about the IT system application plans for the environmental sector in 2013?
In the coming time, VEA will strengthen IT application by building some more software for administration, operation, personnel, payroll, social insurance and asset management; building specialised databases related to biodiversity conservation, waste management, environmental inspection, and others.
The IT system will continue to be maintained and developed to enhance the safety and security of the system. VEA will apply some new technologies such as mobile communications, virtualisation, and cloud computing. In particular, online public services will be developed to Level 3 and head for Level 4, and digital signature services will be deployed system-wide.
The 4th Congress of the 11th Party Central Committee issued Resolution 13 which asserted that "ICT is the sub-infrastructure of national infrastructure." Is that statement correct?
Vietnam’s infrastructures like electricity, traffic, school, and hospital systems are burdened with hard "puzzles" such as overcrowded schools, overcrowded hospitals, power undersupply, and water loss due to lack of control and management solutions. These shortcomings are addressed as ICT is applied throughout the infrastructure field to enhance productivity and efficiency.
For some time, most Vietnamese people have deemed ICT as a product or a commodity made to sell and to use like telephones, internet-enabled TVs, and accounting software. Officials saw ICT as a key economic sector that generated revenues from products and services sold to contribute to the country's GDP. Technologists themselves also aimed to develop products for their own sectors. However, the modern trend asserts that ICT is not only for particular products or solutions, to increase utilities for people and businesses, but also as a key platform to support improved economic infrastructure and increase the efficiency of services. In other words, ICT is recognised as a point of cooperation for all national infrastructure.
From the perspective of environmental management, ICT helps accelerate the availability of and guarantee the accuracy of information and data, while helping implement its environment and sustainable development commitments.
Thank you very much!
Vietnamese
