Local officials and entrepreneurs in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday exchanged experiences with experts from Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and the Asia Foundation on implementing e-government and e-administrative services in enterprises. HCM City is considered Viet Nam's leading locality for applying e-government initiatives and IT forms in administrative management. The city has already invested around 17 billion VND. The city's planning and investment service is the first administrative agency in the country to implement an electronic office system and a direct bussiness registration service that has met 30 percent of the people's demands. The Hochiminh CityWeb provides 11 services for locals, including dialogues between enterprises over the Internet.
However, a recent survey conducted in HCM City found that 80 percent of local people and enterprises said that the prices of Internet services and subscription fees, that are higher than those in other regional countries, is hindering the implementation of e-Government.
Raising local authorities' awareness about the IT application as well as building an electronic data bank will become the city's top priorities in the future.
Quelle: Viet Nam News Agency, 13.11.2003
