The International Conference on Digital Transformation and Smart City - Quang Ninh 2019 is within the framework of APICTA Awards 2019 - the international award of Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA). With the aim of sharing experience in implementing digital transformation for smart city application, the conference had the participation of 400 delegates and international experts. Attending the conference were Mr. Pham Tan Cong (Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Centrally-run Business Sector), Mr. Dang Huy Hau (Vice Chairman of Quang Ninh People's Committee), and Mr. Stan Singh (Chairman of APICTA).

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Mr. Dang Huy Hau (Vice Chairman of Quang Ninh People's Committee) thanked APICTA for choosing Quang Ninh Province as the host for APICTA. In recent years, Quang Ninh Province has been actively building e-government and digital government and has started building a smart city. To date, Quang Ninh Province has completed the construction of e-government; however, there are still many difficulties in awareness and operation. Through the conference, the government of Quang Ninh Province wants experts to advise on the roadmap as well as how to deploy and handle difficulties in the process of running digital government. 

Mr. Nguyen Trung Chinh gives speech at the conference

Speaking as Vice Chairman of VINASA, Mr. Nguyen Trung Chinh (Chairman of Board of Directors / CEO of CMC Corporation) said: “On behalf of VINASA and the Organizing Committee, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the representatives of 11 provinces and cities and APICTA experts for attending the conference on digital transformation and smart city. We've all heard about digital economy, digital transformation and smart cities, with the advent of technologies like AI, Big Data, Blockchain, etc. In the journey of national digital transformation, the creation and operation of smart cities are essential, since these cities are going to be socioeconomic hubs as well as centers of innovation, education, scientific research, commercial production and international integration. In Vietnam, the Politburo has promulgated Decree 52 on participating in Industry 4.0, with the target of having at least 3 smart cities and 3 key economic regions from the North to the South by 2025, and creating a chain of smart cities connecting to the region and the world by 2030. In today's conference, I hope the experts will share their knowledge and practical views as well as experiences in building and running smart cities, so that the authorities can learn from and apply such insights to the local development. ” 

At the conference, Mr. Le Anh Vu (Director of VAS, CMC Telecom) talked about technology infrastructure for smart cities. Mr. Vu defined smart city as a place where data is analyzed and used to better the lives of people as well as to help organizations and governments cope with different situations, exploit and make the best use of information and technology for life. According to Mr. Vu, a prerequisite for building a smart city is to consolidate the digital infrastructure. Mr. Vu gave an example of what CMC has done for some provinces, which is the traffic surveillance camera system using artificial intelligence (AI), and another example of the data system of Alibaba Group (China), which is able to process up to 3.5 million transactions in a second. In order to be able to do that, organizations need to have solid and reliable digital infrastructure. Currently, CMC has built a cloud computing platform (CMC Cloud) to provide private transmission lines which directly connect to Google Cloud Interconnect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and Azure ExpressRoute, ensuring low latency, high stability, and absolute safety and security.

At the seminar on "Building smart cities for sustainable development", Mr. Le Anh Vu also gave his advice and suggestions to leaders of Quang Ninh Province. When asked about his advice on telecommunications infrastructure for the authorities and the problem of whether it is "nice to have" or "must have", Mr. Vu replied:  "When advising on smart cities, one of the difficulties is building architecture for digital infrastructure, as well as sharing and exploiting data and applying cloud computing model to digital infrastructure. There is a huge amount of data, and if we do not exploit it efficiently and flexibly, when the need to extract data for further exploitation arises, or when there is a problem relating to data processing, the operator will be as clumsy as a bear. So in my opinion, digital infrastructure is "Must Have", and everyone needs to change their perception of that."

Mr. Le Anh Vu (Director of VAS, CMC Telecom) talks about technology infrastructure for smart cities.

Earlier on the morning of 19 November 2019 in Ha Long City (Quang Ninh), the opening ceremony for APICTA Awards 2019 - the annual international award ceremony of Asia Pacific ICT Alliance (APICTA) was held. This is the first year that Vietnam is the host country of APICTA Awards. This year, there are over 300 nominations from 16 member countries for this award. The award ceremony is held in Ha Long from 19 to 22 November 2019. At the opening ceremony, Mr. Ha The Phuong (Deputy General Director of CMC Cyber Security) represented CMC Corporation to receive the logo of Silver Sponsor for APICTA Awards 2019. This year, CMC brought to APICTA Awards 2019 three products, namely CMDD - malware prevention solution, CMC Multi Cloud - cloud computing platform, and C.OPE2N - open infrastructure ecosystem for enterprises and organizations.

Mr. Ha The Phuong (Deputy General Director of CMC Cyber Security) represents CMC Corporation to receive the logo of Silver Sponsor for APICTA Awards 2019.