The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) is supporting the improvement of Ho Chi Minh’s city’s (HCMC)’s water supply network through a US$593,660 Technical Assistance (TA) grant that aims to improve Saigon Water Corporation’s (SAWACO) strategic ICT implementation plan.

HCMC is Vietnam’s economic and industrial hub. It is home to 7.1 million people, and experts estimate this figure to increase to over 10 million people by 2020. The high population growth, coupled with competing demands for globally competitive facilities, is putting a huge strain on critical infrastructure crucial for the delivery of public services.

In particular, SAWACO is under growing pressure to improve and modernise its service to achieve its vision of sustainably supply 100 per cent of consumers in HCMC with potable water by 2025,

According to an official statement, USTDA’s project complements on-going investments being made through the Asian Development Bank’s Water Sector Investment Program in Vietnam.

The TA would help enhance SAWACO’s information management and existing ICT strategy by: offering an objective assessment of the technical environment at SAWACO and then recommending an ICT architecture including ICT applications, data technology and network parameters; defining policies, standards, and procedures for ICT; and providing an ICT implementation plan.

In turn, the ICT implementation plan would focus on evaluating and recommending systems such as: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for water distribution efficiency, Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Geographic Information Systems, billing and accounting systems, and asset inventory and management systems.

Astro Systems, Inc., the U.S. contractor selected to perform the TA, kicked off its work with SAWACO in September 2013.