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HCM City looks to improve services
A pilot project to promote service science, an inter-disciplinary approach to the study, design, and implementation of services systems, will begin this year in HCM City to increase quality and added-value in the services sector. Viet Nam News spoke to Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Van Lang about it.
Can you define how the city would promote service science?
Service science applies new management science and technology to bring benefits to an organisation and its partners and customers. In fact, the science has existed in daily life for a long time although it has not been mentioned in our research and policies.
However, one thing we realise for sure is that service science is the key to the current ‘knowledge economy', and Viet Nam will take that path.
I think HCM City is the place where we have enough conditions and opportunities to boost service science by increasing the proportion of services to GDP, especially luxury services using high value-added, modern technologies based on the information technology (IT).
With a modern IT infrastructure, the city should choose the service to develop.
Tourism is a potential sector with [up to] 10 million visitors arriving in HCM City in the near future. Therefore, the city could pick the industry to improve service quality, develop tourism through mobile phones and the internet.
The city should also think about banking and financial services and shopping.
To successfully achieve the target, awareness of service should be changed. At present, around 75 per cent of GDP in developed nations and 45 per cent in developing countries come from services.
How to increase the proportion of services to the GDP is a common question for all economies. For Viet Nam, becoming an industrialised nation also means developing services.
IT has been used in the services industry for a long time. Will the Government have policies to promote this?
There is no policy or resolution directly talking about the issue but in each industry and sector, we can find some regulations related to service science.
The most important way the Government can support enterprises with service science is to create a good IT infrastructure. During the last decades, the internet and IT infrastructure have grown remarkably with healthy competition among providers.
This is the best support that the Government can offer. However, the Government should spell out what kind of services Viet Nam can do best to develop.
It is a fact that there is not enough co-operation between ministries and industries in drafting policy support for them. We need someone to lead. In my opinion, because service science will develop based on IT, the Ministry of Information and Communications should be the leader in setting up networks, bringing in the latest IT technologies, setting up training courses, and defining what industries or localities should do to boost various services.
It is a fact that some localities cannot spend their research outlay but many others lack money. How will the ministry tackle this issue?
The budget laws clearly stipulate what we should do. But we should remember that the outlay, of around 1 per cent of GDP, cannot be divided equally among all localities. Big cities like HCM City, Ha Noi, Da Nang, Can Tho and Hai Phong must get bigger amounts.
Furthermore, basic research and deployment study should be separated.
Deployment study should carefully consider what technologies to use and how to make use of them in production to get the greatest benefit.
Basic research should be done at the central level because there is not enough quality, infrastructure, and human resources at the local level.
Besides, Viet Nam should also choose unique areas for basic research.
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