The digital data market is tipped to develop exponentially in Vietnam amid demand from e-government, education, health care and business, representatives of foreign companies have said.

Photo shows workers at VNPost Express sending mail the traditional way. However, the digital data market in Viet Nam is forecast to strongly develop thanks to high demand. — VNA/VNS Photo Minh Tu

A number of these companies entered Vietnam in mid-2000 and opened digital data centres in the country, providing business process outsourcing services (BPO) primarily to foreign clientele.

Digital data covers a wide range of areas, including the entering of data, outsourcing business processes, managing and storing data, and providing content services and customer care, among others.

Two German firms, Digi-Texx and GHP, have been in the nation for the last decade, providing digital data services to Vietnamese and German customers.

GHP specialises in digitalising audio-visual data for storage and transmission, and research data and customers\' bills.

Digi-Texx enters data and designs reports for German clients, and digitally stores data for newspaper offices and libraries.

In recent years, Digi-Texx has expanded operation in the country.

Its HR Manager, Vu Thanh Nam Duc, said that despite initial difficulties, the company\'s operations have enjoyed more favourable conditions thanks to rising market demand, with revenue in this year\'s first-half up 160 percent over last year\'s.

Their customers are mainly multinational firms and a number of State-owned companies.

Local pioneers in digital data market are Lac Viet, FPT, CMC and Tinh Van, all of whom are carrying out major projects based on learning resources, investigative materials, documents, and online trading data.

Since 2000, Lac Viet Informatics Joint-Stock Company has handled library management procedures for learning resource centres in the central cities of Hue and Da Nang, and has so far expanded the service to libraries in southern provinces of Dong Nai and Binh Duong.

In anticipation of market potential, FPT, a Vietnamese information technology group, opened a centre for business process outsourcing in central Da Nang City several years ago.

The group has recently signed an agreement with Hanoi National University to build an open library system called OpenBook Viet Nam that is expected to provide users with 200,000 free material sources.

The system is part of FPT\'s long-term programme to digitise learning resources and teaching and research materials at universities that can be uploaded onto the internet and mobile devices.

Prof. Mai Trong Nhuan, director of Hanoi National University, said that OpenBook would help create a learning environment where many people can access knowledge more easily.

IDC Vietnam estimates that revenues from business-process outsourcing services from Vietnam\'s State sector last year reached USD23.6 million, a modest figure which indicates the market promises big opportunities to many suppliers.

The Government Office signed a memorandum of understanding in 2009 with South Korea\'s Ministry of Public Administration and Security on a project on the Information Centre for Government Digital Data.

US-headquartered Laserfiche, a global group in digital data solutions and document management, as well as digital data technology firms, such as Kodak, ABBYY and InfoConnect, and big data management and software suppliers like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are all present in Vietnam.

The General Department of Taxation (GDT) said the department would hire a company to gather information on payment of personal income tax.

GDT statistics showed that nearly 400,000 forms to declare personal income tax were sent to the department in 2009, or 20 per cent of the total number of forms.

This year they are expected to receive an estimated 10 million forms on declarations of 2010 personal income tax, according to the GDT.

A GDT representative said hiring a company to process tax-related data would help ease pressure on the recruitment of more employees, and cut costs on training, administration and equipment.