HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Industry and Trade is shifting its digital transformation efforts from building platforms to making deeper use of data and digital infrastructure.

The ministry said completing digital infrastructure, strengthening digital architecture, improving connectivity and raising data quality were essential to improving management, administration and public services.

Key priorities involve data quality and a unified architecture, which are part of implementing Politburo Resolution 57-NQ/TW to accelerate the development of science and technology, innovation and national digital transformation.

This extends beyond moving existing procedures online to changing the way the ministry operates, with data and digital systems supporting management and decision-making, the ministry said.

This is increasingly important to ensure that agencies, businesses and organisations can operate in a coordinated, secure and efficient digital environment.

Digital architecture across platforms will help determine which systems need to be built, which data should be shared, which platforms can be used jointly and how different components should connect.

This allows digital transformation to follow a common roadmap rather than having individual agencies develop separate systems.

The need is becoming more pressing as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) are increasingly adopted. Digital systems must not only meet current requirements but also be flexible enough to integrate new technologies and expand as needs change.

Resolution 57-NQ/TW calls for modern, synchronised, secure, safe and efficient digital infrastructure while maximising the value of data and developing large databases, the data industry and the data economy.

The central government has also been moving towards a unified national digital architecture with the issuance of the Prime Minister’s Decision 1425/QĐ-TTg on the national digital architecture framework, version 1.0 to establish a common governance structure for digital systems nationwide, helping improve transparency, accountability and public services.

Strengthen data architecture

The ministry has made significant progress on data architecture development.

Nguyễn Thị Lâm Giang, director of the Department of Science, Technology and Digital Transformation, said the ministry's data centre and shared platforms were basically operating safely and stably.

Its local government service platform (LGSP) has been connected to the national business registration database, while e-commerce data is shared with the Ministry of Finance and its task-monitoring system is connected to the Government's system.

The ministry's industrial and trade economic database has synchronised all 16 groups of indicators with the national data Centre. Its chemicals and precursors database containing about 204,000 records are being connected through an application programming interface and undergoing further cleaning and verification.

The ministry’s centralised administrative procedure system has been deployed across all 34 provinces and centrally governed cities. All 234 ministry-level administrative procedures are available online. More than 160,000 organisations and individuals regularly use the system.

The ministry has also developed an electronic data repository for organisations and individuals and connected it with the National Public Service Portal's data repository and national databases.

The ministry also put into operation Verigoods system for origin traceability, the administrative violations system, the national petroleum management system, “Quanh tôi” app to help nearby petrol stations.

The ministry added that they will continue to clean and verify data for better quality, Giang said, adding that this is particularly important as the ministry moves from building systems to exploiting data, she said, noting that data must be accurate, complete, clean and continuously updated to support management and decision-making.

The ministry’s Decision 235/QĐ-BCT on establishing its data architecture framework sets a vision for the ministry to operate management, administration and public services on a unified, secure and intelligent digital data platform by 2030, with the capacity to analyse information, make forecasts and support decision-making. — VNS