Ho Chi Minh City-based Quang Trung Software City has recently launched a bike share scheme, one of various pilot models under its Smart City project.

Accordingly, the bikes under the share scheme will be distributed at fixed spots across the park of Quang Trung Software City (QTSC). The users will use their customer cards (provided by QTSC) to pick up the bikes and then return the vehicles at spots placed around the park.

According to plans, four stations will be placed around the QTSC area by the end of July 2017.

Lam Nguyen Hai Long, general director of QTSC said, “After finishing the trial period, we will review the process and work on a detailed plan to submit to the city leaders with a view to replicate the model in many other areas in the city.”

Besides bike sharing, QTSC is deploying a raft of IT projects to boost management efficiency, such as face search, car detector, helpdesk, smart building or operations management systems (OMS).

Long shared, “The extensive deployment of the applications will lay the groundwork to turning QTSC into a world-class software city in the not-so-distant future.”

QTSC is known as a pioneer software city model in Vietnam. Its scope, however, still remains modest when compared to Southeast Asia and Asia.

To outline a well-conceived long-haul development strategy, earlier this year QTSC teamed up with KPMG, a world-leading professional services firm, to make a comprehensive assessment of its operations as well as its position compared to other hi-tech parks in Asia.

According to survey results, QTSC ranked the fourth in scale, operational efficiency of firms based in the software city, foreign direct investment attraction, business scope, and human resources qualification.

Based on the survey and study results, KPMG has advised QTSC leaders to raise capital from domestic and external sources under the public private partnership (PPP) model, as well as attract and support private firms to provide utility services, such as food and beverage, entertainment, and healthcare for workers in the park, and apply advanced IT solutions to build up QTSC as a smart city miniature.