ASEAN IT Pioneers Heralded

Award winning CIOs

On the sideline of the ceremony, the CIOs talked to the media about the challenges and achievements as well as the experiences they have gained in the application of information technology (IT). Vietnam Economic News would like to present the opinions of some CIOs.

Doan Quang Hoan, director of the Authority of Radio Frequency Management under the Ministry of Information and Communications: The CIOs in State organizations have to cope with more difficulties.

The CIOs in State organizations have to cope with more difficulties than those working in businesses. The first reason is that due to their limited financial capacity, State organizations cannot invest sufficiently in developing IT infrastructure, software and hardware. The second reason is that to develop e-government successfully, it is necessary to make transparent all administrative procedures and processes related to this field. Notably, a unified database system is required. In fact, however, administrative procedures in this field still lack unity. Therefore, it is uneasy to develop e-government as well as to bring into play the role of CIOs.

More importantly, for CIOs working in State organizations to ensure effective operation of e-government, there must be 'e-citizens' to prepare and send e-documents to State organizations to deal with. However, the number of 'e-citizens' remains small.

Dang Thi Phuong Ba, director of the Information Technology Center of the Saigon-Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB): CIOs themselves must take the initiative in all activities.

I think CIOs themselves must take the initiative in all activities. They should not sit idle waiting for a requirement of the technical staff but always have to seek updated information about new technologies and know well about the technical requirements of the bank so that they can propose new technological solutions which can be applied in the bank's operations.

I'm doing my job that way in SHB, i.e. updating on a regular basis my knowledge of new technologies as well as difficulties and challenges which face the bank and proposing suitable technological solutions. A favorable condition for my job is that the chairman of the board and the board of directors at SHB highly support the application of new technologies in banking operations.

Dam Thi Huyen, deputy general director in charge of sales management, Vietnam National Petroleum Corporation (Petrolimex): Whatever you do, you must have a passion for your job.

Whatever you do, you must have a passion for your job. Businesses have encountered many obstacles when promoting IT application. Impatient businesses will feel discouraged to do this. CIOs must know who they must coordinate with and how they will coordinate. Importantly, they must persuade others to apply IT and make them understand that IT application will benefit the entire system and that each person who is involved in IT application will benefit from the technological solutions they apply.

To promote IT application, in my opinion, CIOs must be members of a company's management board. In addition, CIOs must have not only good knowledge of IT but also technical knowledge of the fields in which their companies are operational. If they lack technical knowledge, they will be unable to apply IT properly and persuade others to join in IT application. The role of CIOs is persuading others to apply IT and showing them how to apply IT most effectively.

Amarit Laorakpong D.Eng, vice chairman and CIO of SIAM Commercial Bank (Thailand): If you invest a sum in IT, you must get back a triple of that.

Our bank has an IT management department and we often invite consultants, sometimes foreign consultants, to propose solutions for IT architecture development at the bank. Our bank also has internal consultant teams to do that. IT architecture is the key to future growth of the bank. We review our IT architecture every five years. We completed this task last year, setting a business plan for the next five years based on IT development.

At our bank, each department has established a team which we call the 'innovation team'. Each innovation team has about 10 members who hold key positions and are selected from the IT department and the sales department. The innovation teams always receive assistance from functional departments and are responsible for proposing new ideas and innovation projects. If an innovation project receives support from all departments of the bank, it will be selected to help the bank develop business activities in the future. We assess the efficiency of CIOs based on a formula like this: if they invest a sum in IT, they must be able to get back a triple of that sum./.

Collected by Quynh Nga