A view of HCM City. The city is speeding up its project to become a smart city by 2025. — VNS Photo Nguyễn Diệp

HCM CITY — HCM City is speeding up the progress of key sub-projects under the project to turn the city into a smart city from 2017 to 2020 with a vision to 2025.

The smart city building project aims to resolve problems such as unsustainable economic growth, flooding, traffic congestion and pollution, and improve interaction between the city’s administration, businesses and residents.

It gives priority to four key sub-projects, including a smart urban operation centre, a centre for receiving and processing urgent information, a control centre for surveillance cameras, and a database management system under the city’s existing common-use shared data warehouse.

According to the city’s Department of Information and Communication, the city will enhance disbursement of all planned capital this year to implement ongoing sub-projects on schedule.

The smart urban operation centre worth VNĐ969 billion (US$41.8 million) began in 2019 and will be completed in 2022.

With a total investment of VNĐ993 billion ($42.8 million), the centre for receiving and processing urgent information is expected to operate by 2025.

The control centre for surveillance cameras will be implemented from 2019 to 2022, with a cost of VNĐ549 billion ($23.7 million).

Around VNĐ49 billion ($2.1 million) is needed to build the database management system in the 2019-22 period.

Dozens of other sub-projects are also being implemented.

Võ Thị Trung Trinh, deputy director of the department, said there have been obstacles to sub-projects' progress, including a lack of efficient coordination between departments and agencies in determining information technology application.

Guiding documents related to conditions and order and procedures for implementing public investment projects have not been clear enough.

The city authority is continuing to receive feedback on measures to build a smart city from residents and the business community. — VNS