UNDP aids Danang in building smart and green city

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Danang City will build a City Lab together to facilitate joint learning, exploration and experimentation of innovative solutions that accelerate the socio-economic development and achievement of Sustainable Development Goals of the city.

Chairman of Danang People’s Committee Huynh Duc Tho and UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen signs an MoU on November 4. Photo: UNDP

Chairman of Danang People’s Committee Huynh Duc Tho and UN Development Programme Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen on November 4 signed a memorandum of understanding to this effect.

“The signing of MoU today is an important milestone in the cooperation between UNDP and Danang,” said UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen at the signing ceremony. “UNDP will mobilize its network and resources to support Danang achieve its ambitions of becoming a smart, green city by 2045, drawing on UNDP‘s Accelerator Labs - a network of 60 labs in 78 countries designed to re-imagine development for the 21st century.”

Building on the past and on-going experience, cooperation between Danang and UNDP will focus on the areas of environment (such as plastics waste); application of innovative e-solutions for advancing public administrative services (such as faster learning and acting on citizens’ feedbacks and concerns, and application of AI empowered chatbots in providing public administration services).

In the later stages, cooperation will expand to other areas of development and social innovations that the two parties will define as necessary and feasible.

“City Lab is a very interesting initiative which Danang would like to learn from to help transform Danang into a leading smart, resilient and green city,” Chairman Huynh Duc Tho said. “Danang looks forward to learning from the global UNDP Accelerator Labs network.”

To support Danang to operate the City Lab, later this month UNDP will bring Ms. Gabriella Gomez-Mont, former founder and Director of the Mexico City Lab, member of the international advisory committee for the Mayor of Seoul. She will provide the city with a more comprehensive picture of City Labs around the world and what might work best for Danang.

A view of Danang

Regarding circular economy/ waste management focal area of the MoU, UNDP is working closely with Danang partners to design the first experiment on waste sorting in Khue Trung ward, Cam Le district. This experiment is expected to offer some useful learning to the wider waste sorting plans in Danang.

UNDP will also bring a leading team on systemic design from Alberta CoLab, Canada, to work with Danang’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment on a systemic assessment of waste management to identify leverage points for near, medium and long-term future.

Cooperation between UNDP and Danang city started in 2010, when Danang partnered with UNDP and the Ministry of Home Affairs on public administration reform to strengthen resource management, salary reform and quality of public administrative service delivery via one-stop-shops.

Recently UNDP supported Danang in the design and implementation of the chatbot initiative to provide real time public service information to the citizens. The chatbot has been applied in different sectors including land, transport, tourism, feedback on flooding and hope to expand to other areas.

Danang is consistently a good performer in PAPI (Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index). Danang has the highest scoring in E-governance and Public service delivery among provinces and very high scores in other index such as Transparency and Public Administrative Procedures.

UNDP will also support the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and Danang in Reducing Pollution and Preserving Environmental Flows in the Vu Gia Thu Bon river basin. This is part of a larger regional project that aims at Integrated River Basin Management in ASEAN Countries by improving governance, management responsiveness and building capacities in integrated water resources management and reducing pollution in rivers.

VNF ( Hanoitimes )