The Vietnamese government is getting hip to the times and joining roughly 25 million of its fellow citizens on the country's favorite social network.
While some local politicans were already on board with the social network – and other, less tech-savvy officials have faced a flood of false fanpages – the central government is now embracing the internet with its own official Facebook page.
In a press conference on Tuesday, officials announced two new Facebook accounts run by the Vietnamese government, reports VnExpress.
The main page, titled Government Information, provides Vietnamese citizens with official, up-to-date information. As of yesterday afternoon, the page had over 38,000 Likes and featured several photos of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung meeting international diplomats and world leaders as well as other news items.
The government's Facebook presence is part of Resolution 36A, a new program which aims to improve the quality and efficiency of government activities and services. Depending upon the success of the program's trial run, Vietnamese officials may establish a long-term project as well as a formal partnership with Facebook.
For Vietnamese officials, the overall e-government project has three main objectives: transferring a range of public services onto the internet, creating an online page for citizens to access public information and providing access to government documents for all cities, towns, communes and villages across the country.
In order to successfully carry out the project, officials say, the government must find solutions regarding investment, finances, human resources, technical implementation and organization.
The entire project is part of a larger plan being implemented from now until 2017 to increase the use of information technology among government agencies.
So far, the Vietnamese government is testing out its new software internally. Twenty-seven provincial and municipal People's Committees and three ministries have been connected through the new software since July, and central agencies aim to provide 100% of their government services online by the end of 2016.
