Memoirs of the first Minister of Information and Communications

In the beginning, with 5 priority tasks.

On the occasion of the first-ever celebration of the founding day of the Information and Communications sector (August 28th), our reporter met with Dr. Le Doan Hop, the first Minister of Information and Communications, to learn more about this unforgettable milestone in the sector's historical development.

Dr. Le Doan Hop, the first Minister of Information and Communications.

With the perspective of someone who was directly involved, Dr. Le Doan Hop still vividly remembers stories from over nine years ago. That was in 2007, when the Ministry of Information and Communications was established based on the merger of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications with the Press Department and the Publishing Department of the former Ministry of Culture and Information.

“At that time, the Central Committee had a policy of establishing a multi-sectoral ministry with interconnected and interdependent fields. Based on that, the issue arose of reorganizing the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, linking it with the Press and Publishing sector of the Ministry of Culture and Information to form the Ministry of Information and Communications. This orientation aimed to connect infrastructure and content (communication as infrastructure, information as content) so that these two sectors would be linked together to maximize efficiency, like connecting railways with trains, runways with airplanes, and roads with cars. The Ministry of Information and Communications was born in this way,” Dr. Le Doan Hop began his story with Vietnam Post Newspaper.

The merger and formation of the Ministry of Information and Communications proceeded very quickly. As the first Minister of Information and Communications, Dr. Le Doan Hop faced a multitude of tasks. However, he and the Ministry's leadership at the time quickly identified five key priorities that needed immediate attention.

Firstly, the task of defining the functions, duties, and authority of the Ministry of Information and Communications was completed. With high determination, in just about 4 months, Decree No. 187/2007 on the functions, duties, and authority of the Ministry of Information and Communications, covering 5 areas of management (including: Journalism, Publishing, Postal Services, Telecommunications, and Information Technology), was completed.

Secondly, it involved establishing specialized agencies to fulfill the functions and tasks clearly outlined in Decree 187. Several new units were established, such as the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information, the Department of External Information, the Department of Telecommunications, and the Training School for Information and Communication Management Cadres (at that time, there was also a plan to establish a University of Information and Communication encompassing five academic disciplines to ensure specialization and professionalization).

Thirdly, the assignment of officials and leaders, and the review of leading officials, were crucial to meet the new functional and task requirements of the Ministry of Information and Communications. Highly valuing this work, the first Minister of Information and Communications recounted: “At that time, I told my colleagues that the Ministry leadership wasn't about replacing people, but only about changing the way of working. Leading officials would only be replaced if they didn't adapt their working methods to the new requirements. When assigning responsibilities to the Deputy Ministers, I determined that the Minister would handle tasks that the Deputy Ministers found difficult or slower to accomplish. Anything that subordinates could do, they would be fully assigned to them, while the superiors would be responsible for verification, supervision, praise, criticism, rewards, and punishments. This clearly distinguishes between strategic and tactical levels.”

The next priority was to finalize the institutional framework. Thanks to the decisive leadership of the first Minister of Information and Communications and the Ministry's leaders at the time, during the Ministry's first term, four new laws were enacted (the Law on Radio Frequency, the Law on Telecommunications, the Law on Postal Services, and the amended Law on Publishing).

“All those laws are embedded within one most important, overarching, and necessary idea: the gradual socialization of infrastructure. I am a supporter of the private economy, always considering it a crucial driving force for the country's development. As early as 1990, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on urban household economics within a market economy. I believe that the lifeblood of any regime is the private economy, and I want to support it to learn lessons for reforming the state economy and fundamentally changing the mindset of those in state management.”

And the fifth priority is to identify the core strategy, leveraging the greatest advantages of the country and the industry to fulfill the assigned functions and tasks.

And 5 strategies that are relevant to the times.

The first Minister of Information and Communications was quite closely associated with Culture and Information. Many people assumed that one of the Ministry's first key strategies would involve journalism or publishing.

However, the first of the five key strategies identified by the Ministry of Information and Communications leadership is to make Vietnam a strong country in ICT as soon as possible, a field in which Dr. Le Doan Hop is an "outsider".

“We identified this as our number one strategy because Vietnam has three advantages; if we don't act quickly, we will lose the opportunity. The first advantage is that we have a golden workforce, with 70% of our workforce under 40 years old. The second advantage is that the young generation in Vietnam is very passionate about technology. There are many talented software professionals in our country, many earning $100,000 per month, or $1.2 million per year. If we don't take advantage of this opportunity, the younger generation will not have an environment to contribute their talents. The third advantage is that we are latecomers, but we have many lessons to learn from countries that have gone before us, allowing us to leapfrog and achieve breakthroughs faster. Based on these three points, I directly reported to Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and he agreed in principle. After that, I directed the entire Ministry to get involved, and it took 18 months to get the plan approved. This is a strategy of international and contemporary significance, and it also reflects the mindset of following Uncle Ho's words: 'Striving to bring about early'.” Vietnam stands shoulder to shoulder with the world's leading powers."

The second key strategy, implemented quite systematically by the Ministry of Information and Communications leadership, is bringing information to the grassroots level. “We realized that if we didn't bring information to the grassroots, mountainous and remote areas would suffer from both material poverty and information poverty, and information poverty would make it difficult to escape material poverty. However, it took persistent persuasion to get the Government and the National Assembly to agree to supplement and establish a National Target Program to bring information to the grassroots level, with the aim of bringing five key devices to households (including: telephones, computers, the Internet, televisions, and radio...). This is a revolution to revitalize awareness and innovate action. When I reported to the President of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), he said that if Vietnam could bring these devices to households, Vietnam would be one of the most civilized nations in the world. Telecommunications enterprises contributing capital to the Public Telecommunications Fund is precisely to fulfill this important task.”

Next, the third key strategic focus is human resource training, with three priorities: training and developing management personnel; training leading personnel; and providing specialized training for information technology engineers.

Particularly enthusiastic about training software engineers, Dr. Le Doan Hop excitedly shared: “Each excellent software engineer can earn $1 million USD per year. If we had about 1 million software engineers, our country would flourish. And those who work in software get rich by selling software to other countries, meaning they bring money from the world back to the country to help farmers more. At that time, I proposed that all technical universities should have an IT department; IT schools should focus on training cutting-edge professionals, cooperating with Israel to cultivate experts in IT. If we focused our efforts and received government investment to stimulate demand, things would certainly be much more positive and optimistic now.”

The fourth key strategy of the Ministry of Information and Communications in its early period was to inherit the foreign policy achievements of previous generations, continue to expand international cooperation, and compete comprehensively. According to former Minister Le Doan Hop's analysis, "Vietnam's weakest point is its unwillingness to compete, its preference for monopolies and subsidies. Comprehensive competition is necessary for the people to benefit. At the same time, we must know how to cooperate with the world, choosing Vietnam's strongest assets—land, people, traditions, and culture—and combining them with the strongest assets of foreign countries—markets, brands, financial capacity, and strategic thinking—to build new strength. When going abroad, we must bravely compare ourselves with the world in every field, assessing who we are, where we stand, and what we must do to avoid falling behind. Thanks to this, Vietnam's telecommunications and IT sector is now on par with the international stage." Along with expanding international cooperation, it is necessary to focus on synchronously linking with localities, businesses, and establishments in the direction of deep cooperation and broad linkages, ensuring rapid, sustainable development, and internal innovation synchronized with external integration.

The fifth strategy is: To focus on political and ideological work, and to strengthen and consolidate mass organizations. To link ideological work with political tasks, and connect mass work with professional tasks. To increase personnel, clearly linking each political position with the authority and personal interests of mass organizations such as Youth, Women, Veterans, and Trade Unions. To have policies that encourage full-time work and motivate part-time work. For all political activities such as studying resolutions, updating current events, mechanisms, and policies, and meetings with women's groups, youth, trade unions, and veterans on traditional days, the Party Committee Secretary dedicates time to attend, encourage, answer questions, and provide guidance on action. The Ministry leadership appoints a Deputy Minister to concurrently handle Party and mass organization work. By fostering a political atmosphere of trust, democracy, creativity, unity, and cooperation for a common goal, and working together to best fulfill the professional duties of a new, multi-sectoral ministry from its inception, we have created momentum, strength, lessons, and valuable experiences for the later stages.

According to Infonet