Thua Thien – Hue (VNA) – The central province ofThua Thien Hue and Facebook have launched a comprehensive partnership programmeon the application of digital economy in promoting the heritage city’spotential and innovation.

According to the provincial People’s Committee, theprogramme contains a series of activities to support the province in itsdigital transformation process with the aim of turning Hue city into a centrally-runmunicipality in the near future. This is Facebook's first-ever comprehensivepartnership with a province or city in Vietnam.

The cooperation programme between Facebook and Thua ThienHue province will be part of Facebook’s campaign named Facebook for Vietnam,which involves the digital economy, innovation, digital safety and skills,smart city and Facebook for the community.

One activity under the programme is to deploy AugmentedReality (AR) to promote the image of Thua Thien Hue province, contributing tothe development of local programmers and software developers while encouragingthem to create and apply new technologies to serve the practical needs of theirhome province.

Besides, the social network will assist in equippingteachers and students with digital skills based on the ‘We Think Digital’programme.

It will help training Government Facebook page admins on howto enhance their capability to use Facebook as an effective and quickcommunications channel within their organisations and with the public.

The comprehensive partnership programme also aims to raise thecapacity of disaster response for local officials.

Nguyen Phuong Chi, Vietnam Public Policy Manager atFacebook, said: “We are very pleased to be a part of the effort on conveyingthe strategic vision outlined by Thua Thien - Hue People's Committee, aiming atmaking Hue a Tier 1 city on the basis of promoting heritage values andinnovation, taking information and communication technology as a breakthroughfactor for development."

Vice chairman of the provincial people’s committee, PhanThien Dinh, said the partnership is expected to support the province indeveloping e-Government and becoming a ‘smart city’.

He noted the local authorities are speeding up the processto help the province achieve this goal as soon as possible, including promotingthe development of information technology and digital transformation.

Thua Thien – Hue would like to cooperate with Facebook inall pillars that the company is running in Vietnam, especially in terms ofcapacity building and innovation, he said.

The official stressed his belief that the comprehensivepartnership can address and focus on strategic issues of the province inaccordance with the Politburo’s Resolution 54 dated from 2019 and developmentgoals of the two parties.

In 2018, Facebook cooperated with the Vietnam Chamber ofCommerce and Industry, organising three training courses in three key cities,namely Ha Long, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang.

In 2019, the company teamed up with Da Nang for the firsttime to strengthen the digital capabilities of government agencies and supportdisaster management efforts. The successes and practical lessons from thiscomprehensive programme serve as the premise for Facebook to replicate the modelin other provinces, cities and governmental agencies in the future.

Thua Thien-Hue is working to build its capital Hue intoVietnam’s first smart communication city.

It decided to spend 325 billion VND (nearly 14 million USD)to carry out a project on development smart urban services to 2020, with avision to 2025. The project aims to streamline urban management, offerconvenient and quick public services, and improve the environment.

The province envisions that it will reach the same standardsof health care, education and tourism services as those available in smartcities in the region and the world by 2025./.