Ho Chi Minh City to Digitize Over 600 Million Archival Pages

Ho Chi Minh City is embarking on an ambitious project to digitize more than 600 million pages of archival documents dating from 1975 to 2025. The initiative, with an estimated cost of 2.67 trillion Vietnamese dong (approximately $105 million USD), aims to establish a unified digital database for long-term management and accessibility.

The plan, approved by the municipal People's Committee, focuses on accelerating digital transformation in document management and archiving. The digitized data will serve as a foundation for state management, supporting decision-making by government levels and meeting the needs of organizations and citizens for document access. The project emphasizes standardizing the digitization process, ensuring data integrity, authenticity, and long-term usability.

The total volume of documents to be digitized is estimated at 75,370 linear meters, equivalent to 602,970,000 pages. Approximately 20,460 meters of permanently archived documents are already held by the city's Historical Archives Center, while the remaining 54,900 meters are stored at the archives of various city agencies.

The digitization will be implemented in two phases. Phase one, from 2026 to 2030, will digitize about 54,350 linear meters of documents from 159 agencies, totaling nearly 435 million pages, with an estimated cost of over 1.925 trillion dong. Phase two, from 2031 to 2035, will digitize an additional 21,000 meters of documents from 181 agencies, amounting to over 168 million pages, at an estimated cost of over 744 billion dong. The city also plans to upgrade its IT infrastructure and invest in specialized equipment to support the digitization and data management efforts.