March 2004 updates

Vietnam Adopts a FOSS Master Plan
By Sarmad Hussain in Hanoi, Vietnam. March 2004

Vietnam has formally adopted a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) master plan. It was announced by Dr. Hoang Le Minh, on 2 March 2004 during the Asia Open Source Software Symposium organized by the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and the Centre of International Computer Cooperation (CICC) of Japan.

The plan was formalised in the Decision by the Prime Minister Approving the Master Plan "Applying and Developing Open Source Software in Vietnam for the 2004-2008 period" signed by the Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem earlier that day.

The plan has three primary objectives:

1. Accelerating the use of FOSS throughout the country, both in the public and private sector.

2. Building technical capacity on FOSS and increasing the number of trained technical staff.

3. Developing specialized IT products suitable for domestic requirements and conditions.

There will be a total of 112 pilot programmes in various areas, ranging from higher education to national security. There will be nine key focuses handled by various agencies. Some of the more important ones include:

Implementing legal and policy foundations to support FOSS usage in the country. This is the responsibility of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) which will ensure that Vietnamese laws and policies are consistent with FOSS needs. Vietnam will be one of the few countries with top-level government policies, documents and legislation supporting FOSS.

Integrating FOSS into the formal educational curriculum (Ministry of Education).

Application of FOSS in government offices (Ministry of the Interior).

Experimental development of FOSS use in defence (Ministry of Defence).

Vietnam sees FOSS as presenting several different opportunities, including reducing software piracy and reducing implementation costs in ICT investments. However, several challenges face this initiative, ranging from current over dependence on proprietary products, lack of skilled local capacity and low levels of awareness on FOSS.

Vietnam already has a number of ongoing FOSS initiatives. Linux has been localized to FOSS by the Vietkey group and the government is planning to distribute 5,000 copies of localized Linux to secondary schools in the country. In the long run, it will also be introducing a low-cost PC similar to initiatives in Thailand and Malaysia.