Hanoi (VNS/VNA) — All provinces and cities in the country need tofinish collecting data on local addresses by the end of January so that Vietnam’sdigital map project on map.itrithuc.vn can be operational byFebruary.

In a meeting held earlier this week to mark the start of nationwide datacollection, Bui The Duy, deputy minister of science and technology, said one ofthe fundamental information databases for any country is a complete map with afull address list and associated geocodes.

“In the era of Industry 4.0, map databases are playing an increasinglyimportant role, especially for the development of directory apps,” Duy said.

Vietnam needs to develop its own database to both serve as a decision supporttool for the Government and make it easier for businesses, organisations andcitizens to look up information, he said.

With its experience in collecting information on a nationwide scale such astaking stock of households participating in the health insurance scheme,compiling information related to war martyrs and their tombs and documentingpostal codes, the State-run Vietnam Post (VnPost) Corporation was chosen totake the lead in the aggregation of map data. It was charged with establishingIT infrastructure for the project and crafting information collection andreview plans.

VnPost Chairman Pham Anh Tuan said despite the rush of holiday shipping anddelivery surrounding Tet (Lunar New Year), the company pledged tofulfill the mission in time.

To meet the deadline within such a short time frame, Nguyen Van Tung, Vice Chairmanof the Government Office, asked all people’s committees to coordinate closelywith the science and technology ministry and VnPost. Local departments ofenvironment, transport and statistics also need to aid the informationcollection workers.

“Local authorities would also need to inform the implementation group on futureplans to change street names or address numbers,” Tung said. “Local people’scommittees would also allocate the necessary budget to cover the collectiongroup’s working expenses, for example high-speed internet or petrol.”

By January 11, a total of nearly 1.39 million addresses across the country hadbeen aggregated.

Phu Yen and Hau Giang, the first two provinces to have carried out thecollection process, said they are already done. In the next phase, localbusinesses and people are urged to provide necessary edits in three fields: thenames of households, establishments and landmarks, addresses and notes on sitetypes (residential houses, restaurants, banks or something else.)

The digital map is a component of the “Digital Vietnamese knowledge project”launched at the beginning of 2018, a Government-sponsored effort to create aVietnamese version of Wikipedia about everything Vietnam.

The project aims to become a comprehensive information portal that could helpall Vietnamese people, especially the younger generation, develop innovativetechnologies based on big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificialintelligence.-VNS/VNA