The portal was launched following the Government’s Decree No 47/2020/ND-CP, issued on April 9, 2020, on managing, connecting and sharing digital data of State agencies with the public.

The national data portal is designed as the focal point to provide information and data shared by State agencies as well as providing services, tools, applications to process and exploit the data.

Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Hung said data among State agencies had been dispersed and is yet to be connected and shared. It had caused an inability to utilise the available data sources.

Therefore, the provision of data shared by the State agencies to people and enterprises, had not been implemented, he said.

Viet Nam needed to transform in order to speed up both awareness and action to catch up with the world’s development, he said.

It meant that we had to develop a data-driven digital Government, focusing on digital data governance and providing open data to citizens and businesses, he added.

Accordingly, the portal was built with dual goals. For the State agencies, it would be a shared platform, where the State agencies publish their data; access other public State agencies' data; and share tools and skills to achieve sustainable-data infrastructure development goals in the digital Government, he said.

For citizens and businesses, they would be offered a chance to access the data of the State agencies to serve their purposes of research, study and manufacture, contributing to the country’s socio-economic development, he said.

Currently, the portal has provided more than 300 pieces of shared data of 12 sectors, including the list of administrative units, the list of agencies and organisations’ identification codes, data of the health sector and data of schools, he said.

In the first phase, the communication ministry will launch a number of basic modules of the system, encompassing posting data status in the State agencies and open data modules of the State agencies.

Besides, the portal also integrates several platforms such as a digital map (Vmap) and postal address (Vpostcode) to support users at an optimal level.

It is the first step for the development of the portal.

Then the ministry will continue to develop the portal so that it will become a tool and a foundation in implementing the Government policy of “data is the core to develop e-Government”.

Also at the event, representatives of ministries of Information and Communications, Natural Resources and Environment, Science and Technology, Health, Education and Training together with those from the Viet Nam Social Security, the Viet Nam National University-Ha Noi and the Viet Nam Post Corporation signed a co-operation agreement to promote open data and develop the portal./.