Vietnam embraces digital ID, smart cities, and robots in digital transformation

Vietnam’s rapid adoption of digital ID, smart cities, and AI have fueled a remarkable leap into the digital age. According to a recent GSMA market report, Vietnam’s digital market is set to grow 43 percent within the next five years thanks to the country’s rapid developments in digital governance, infrastructure, and e-commerce. Similar developments such as Smart Cities, IoT-driven agricultural tech, and AI robots show Vietnam’s multifaceted innovation efforts towards sustainability.

The 2020 GSMA market report on digitized nations tracks the progress of 11 Asia Pacific countries (APAC) in the digitization of identity, citizenship, lifestyle, and commerce. According to this report, Vietnam has seen rapid growth between 2018 and 2021 as its state of digitization has shifted from ‘emerging’ to ‘transition’ status in only three years.

The 2019 target to transform Vietnam’s economy to become a digital leader by 2030 is well underway as reflected in the country’s Industry 4.0 Strategy. The modernization roadmap outlines the implementation of policy, infrastructure, and interconnection to provide the foundation of the country’s digital age.

A key aspect of Vietnam’s rapid adoption of digital technology has been its government’s openness and active support of the necessary legislation to nurture this technological growth. One such legislature is the 2020 e-commerce development plan which forecasts 25 percent annual growth in the e-commerce sector due to the online sales target of approximately $35 billion.

To support the online shift, Vietnam has realized the need for a solid digital ID platform and is actively promoting digital citizenship, identity, and lifestyle. This resulted in Vietnam’s digital citizenship data portal launched in 2020 developed by the Ministry of Information and Communications. This new portal will enable government agencies to share their data with the public to better aid research, innovation, and product development.

As a result of these combined efforts, Vietnam’s digitized foundational ID systems are now closely following Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and Thailand who have all established solid public key infrastructure (PKI) necessary to support digital ID. These efforts will aid Vietnam’s long-term goal of establishing a solid interconnected digital economy driven by innovative human resource development, e-commerce, and e-governance.

Robot teaching assistant with ‘five senses’

A 3D-printed humanoid robot dubbed ‘Tri Nhan’ with biometric capabilities has been developed by Vietnamese edtech startup Open Classroom, Tech Wire Asia reports.

The 1.8-meter Tri Nhan is designed to be a teaching assistant, and is equipped with computer vision including face detection, audio, tactile and olfactory sensors, as well as temperature and heart-rate measurement, and sensors for humidity and to simulate taste. The robot can do math problems, translate between Vietnamese and English, and even tell jokes, according to the report.

Article Topics

AI  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  ecommerce  |  education  |  government services  |  IoT  |  robots  |  smart cities  |  Vietnam