Ho Chi Minh City unveils $100mn plan to digitize 50 years of archival data

Under a newly issued roadmap from the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, the project aims to digitize records and archival documents held across municipal agencies following the restructuring of the city's administrative apparatus.

The project will cover materials created between 1975 and June 30, 2025, with an estimated budget of nearly VND2.67 trillion (US$101.4 million). 

In total, selected materials span 75,371 linear meters of shelving, equivalent to about 603 million pages.

Of this total, 20,460 linear meters consist of permanent records transferred or scheduled for transfer to the Ho Chi Minh City Historical Archives Center. 

The remaining 54,911 linear meters are currently held at various agency levels, including 21,558 linear meters at the provincial level and 33,353 linear meters at the commune level.

The digitization project will be carried out in two phases.

During the 2026-2030 period, the city will digitize 54,348 linear meters of documents, equivalent to about 434.78 million pages, from 159 agencies and organizations. The estimated cost is more than VND1.925 trillion ($73.1 million).

From 2031 to 2035, it will digitize another 21,023 linear meters of documents, equivalent to about 168.19 million pages, from 181 agencies and organizations, at an estimated cost of more than VND744.7 billion ($28.3 million).

Funding will be allocated from the state budget in line with local spending decentralization and the city's annual fiscal capacity.

Priority will go to permanently preserved records, historically significant documents, frequently requested materials, and files essential for day-to-day administrative processing.

Once digitized, the data will be uploaded to an electronic records management system and a specialized digital archive, and connected to the city's shared information systems to support management and access.

In addition to records from the 1975-2025 period, Ho Chi Minh City has also instructed agencies and organizations to accelerate digitization and ensure that all archival documents from the three most recent years are fully digitized.