Trần Minh Tân, deputy head of the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy. Photo vietnamnet.vn

Trần Minh Tân, deputy head of the National Institute of Information and Communications Strategy under the Ministry of Information and Communications, spoke to online newspaper Vietnamnet about the recently-approved information and communications infrastructure planning for the 2021-30 period with a visionary outlook extending to 2050.

There were many plans for single fields such as telecommunications, postal services, information technology. But this is the first time a plan for information and communication infrastructure has been developed, covering many fields. Why did the MoIC develop this master plan and what will it cover?

Before the 2017 Planning Law took into effect, to meet the needs and development orientation of essential fields, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) developed plans in the 2011-20 period for single fields such as postal planning, telecommunications, transmission, radio and television broadcasting, national digital information security planning.

According to the provisions of the Planning Law, the Prime Minister assigned tasks to ministries to organise national sector planning for the 2021-30 period with a vision to 2050.

The MoIC has been assigned to build the information and communications infrastructure plan for the 2021-30 period with a vision to 2050 and a plan to develop a network of press, radio, television, online information, and publishing facilities for the 2021-30 period with vision towards 2050.

The information and communication infrastructure planning aims to concretise the Party's strategy and ensures that the development of information and communication infrastructure stays relevant with the global trend and Việt Nam’s specific conditions.

It also aims to ensure the planning consistent with the national master plan, national land use planning, national marine spatial planning and national sector plans related to information and communications infrastructure, at the same time, consistent with the country's socio-economic development, defence and security strategies.

What is the general idea of the information and communications infrastructure planning?

The planning’s thorough idea is clearly demonstrated in the planning's perspective.

Planning must meet long-term development needs, be open, ensure compatibility and anticipate new technologies in the future.

Right now, information and communications infrastructure must serve national digital transformation, open up new development space for the economy and society, connect development in the digital space with the physical traditional development space, creating a favourable environment for innovation to improve national competitiveness.

To ensure that, the information and communication infrastructure must ensure unification, and be formed on the basis of links between the postal network, digital infrastructure, information technology, industrial infrastructure, and international digital conversion platforms.

It must also create a safe and reliable environment for the development of digital government, digital economy, and digital society.

The infrastructure must keep up with the Make in Vietnam orientation, using products and solutions owned by Vietnamese people, to ensure network information safety and security as well as national sovereignty.

During the digital transformation, digital platforms play a decisive role as a tool for users to easily engage. Therefore, the new perspectives mentioned in the planning are to focus on developing the digital platform as a new infrastructure to quickly, universally and comprehensively deploy essential social activities in the digital environment.

The digital technology industry is also identified as a foundation industry, requiring special policy mechanisms to promote development.

The information and communication infrastructure planning is a synchronous planning, with modern technology towards sharing, integrating the national telecommunications infrastructure planning, and properly inheriting the information and communication infrastructure.

Which areas will be most affected by this plan?

One of the plan’s general perspectives is to emphasise unity and close connection of infrastructure components including: Postal, digital infrastructure, information technology industrial infrastructure, national digital conversion platforms and systems to ensure network information security and network security. Five subjects and fields will be affected by the planning.

The postal network will form a national public postal network including area-level postal centres and regional postal centres.

Telecommunications infrastructure will become digital infrastructure including broadband telecommunications infrastructure, cloud computing infrastructure and the Internet of Things.

Information technology application infrastructure will focus on developing digital platforms, with the nature of national-scale infrastructure, serving the digital Government, digital economy, digital society, and connectivity. Data interconnection improves competitiveness and national governance efficiency.

Regarding network information security and network security, the planning focuses on developing technical systems, solutions, and platforms to ensure network information security and network security to serve the digital government, digital economy, digital society.

In the field of information technology industry, the plan aims to form concentrated information technology parks to establish industry clusters, specialised product groups with high efficiency and making use of localities’ advantages.

The planning has been approved but the ways it will be implemented will determine its efficiency. What will the ministry do to implement the planning?

The MoIC has determined from the beginning that in order to make the planning practical, its feasibility must be ensured first.

While building the planning, the ministry closely coordinated with relevant ministries, sectors, localities and businesses to carefully study the draft.

The ministry has asked for building a draft plan to implement the planning and collecting feedback of localities, enterprises and other subjected directly affected by the planning. VNS