The remarks were made at a conference on solutions for building and developing a smart city in Ho Chi Minh City, jointly organized by the municipal Department of Construction and the city's Association of Construction Science and Technology. Cuong said the city's administration on July 29 issued a smart-city development plan for 2026-30, with a vision to 2045, charting the city's development path in the digital era. Under the plan, Ho Chi Minh City aims to reach the highest level of smart-city maturity under Vietnam's national criteria for sustainable smart cities and become one of the Asia-Pacific's leading cities and centers for science, technology and innovation by 2045. The plan aims to make the city a smart and sustainable city based on green growth, with urban governance relying on data and digital technologies. To put the plan into action, the city has identified six key groups of tasks, six implementation solutions and a three-phase roadmap, Cuong said. The plan is guided by nine core principles, including compliance with the law and unified management; putting residents and businesses at the center; using data as the foundation; and ensuring interoperability, integration and data sharing. The remaining principles are to protect information and privacy, clearly define the roles and responsibilities of agency heads, ensure safety through controlled implementation, follow a roadmap suited to available resources, and maintain an open and flexible approach to technology to avoid technological lock-in. To facilitate the application of new technologies, services and ideas to smart-city development, the city will create a transparent business environment and introduce breakthrough mechanisms, Cuong said. The city’s smart-city development efforts must also serve as a model for other localities in Vietnam and help turn its goal of entering the world’s top 50 smart cities into reality, Tran Quoc Thai, director of the Department