Announcing: Walsh, John, “Digitalizing Public Services in Supporting Economic Development: The Case of Viet Nam,” in Lurong Chen and Fukunari Kimura, eds., Empowering Online Public Services in Asia: The Digital Frontier (Jakarta: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, 2024), pp.149-76, available at: https://www.eria.org/uploads/DIGIGOV-FULL-15March2024.pdf.
There will be a printed version soon. In lieu of an abstract, here is the beginning of the introduction:
In common with many other one-party nations, Viet Nam has appointed the ruling Vietnamese
Communist Party to play a leading role in enacting state-level developmental goals. It has also
followed the policy of creating large-scale plans for the transformation of the economy and society
in dimensions considered to be of strategic importance. In the case of digitisation, this is being
accomplished through the National Digital Transformation Programme (NDTP), which has strict
prescriptions up to 2025 and a vision towards 2030 (Vietnam Briefing, 2021). The plan contains a wide
variety of measurable targets and milestones, with some aimed at incorporating more Vietnamese
people into a developing, prosperous, and modern country, and others deepening the existing economic
model of reliance on inward investment. In the first category, it is planned that 50% of customers’
banking operations will be fully online, 50% of customers will have a digital checking account, and
80% of online public services at level 41 will be available through access to mobile devices. In the
second category, the digital economy should contribute 20% of the total economy by 2025 and 30% by
2030 (it is currently 5%), while Viet Nam should be listed in the top 50 countries of the UN ICT Index by
2025 (Vietnam Briefing, 2021). To ensure these goals are met, a committee has been established, with
16 members, including the Prime Minister and representatives from a wide range of ministries and
agencies. Named the National Committee on Digital Transformation, it will have the tasks of bringing
about administrative reform, implementing the NDTP, developing e-government and society and smart
cities, and monitoring the implementation of the National Strategy of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
(Dharmaraj, 2021b). Clearly, these are wide-ranging responsibilities, and it will be hard for any group
of people to fulfil such complex responsibilities. The situation is made more difficult because of the
current environment, which contains several dangerous if not existential threats, such as the ongoing
coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the climate emergency, and rising international tensions
focusing on the relationship between the United States (US) and China, as well as Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. Under these circumstances, it would be useful to try to identify exactly what the NDTP means
in terms of the definition of digitalisation, the forms that it takes with respect to different stakeholders
across the country, and the challenges that are likely to be faced (although the possibility of suggesting
solutions to such problems is likely to be beyond the scope of a chapter of this sort). The purpose
of this chapter, therefore, is to map the extent to which digitalisation policies have been established
and implemented in Viet Nam and, more importantly, to establish the gaps that exist in everyday life
between what is being made available for people and their experience of those opportunities. It is
argued that the gaps that do exist are likely to intensify existing problems of inequality in Vietnamese
society but that the government nevertheless will continue to pursue them to achieve the desired level
of economic growth.
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