Da Nang, 4 November 2019 – The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Da Nang 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 Da Nang People’s Committee Huynh Duc Tho and UN Development Programme Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen signed in Da Nang today a Memorandum of Understanding to this effect.

“The signing of MoU today is an important milestone in the cooperation between UNDP and Da Nang,” said UNDP Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen at the signing ceremony. “UNDP will mobilize its network and resources to support Da Nang 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 Da Nang 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 Parties will define as necessary and feasible.

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

To support Da Nang to operationalize the City Lab, later this month UNDP 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, fellow of MIT, Yale, Harvard, and one of the 100 most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine. She will provide the city with a more comprehensive picture of City Labs around the world and what might work best for Da Nang.

Regarding circular economy/ waste management focal area of the MoU, UNDP is working closely with Da Nang 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 Da Nang. UNDP will also bring a leading team on systemic design from Alberta CoLab, Canada, to work with Da Nang’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE) on a systemic assessment of waste management to identify leverage points for near, medium and long-term future.

The cooperation between UNDP and Da Nang city started in 2010, when Da Nang partnered with UNDP and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA) on public administration reform to strengthen resource management, salary reform and quality of public administrative service delivery via one-stop-shops.

Recently UNDP supported Da Nang 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.

Da Nang is consistently a good performer in PAPI (Viet Nam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index). Da Nang 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 Da Nang 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. 

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For further information, please contact:

Nguyen Viet Lan, UNDP Communication Analyst, nguyen.viet.lan@undp.org phone: 84-24-38500158