“WE have a five-year plan to make Suva City a smart city,” said Suva City Council’s Information Technology (IT) specialist Albert Wong.
Mr Wong said this at a question-and-answer session during a visit by the Fiji delegation attending the two-week “Digital Culture Construction for Belt and Road Countries” seminar in Beijing
The question-and-answer took place at the Inspur Software Technology Co. Ltd in Jinan City.
The seminar is part of the Chinese Government’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, established in 2013 with the aim of enhancing cooperation and supporting 144 developing countries worldwide.
“One of the things that I lead is the digital transformation strategy in our council, so I’ve developed a five-year plan for the council and we’ve just come to the conclusion of our first phase, which is the first year,” Mr Wong said speaking to delegations visiting the software company as part of their itinerary at the seminar.
Mr Wong said he was more interested in learning how Inspur and China began to implement most of the technologies that were already integrated into their daily lives, noting that it was so “advanced”.
“We in Fiji are now just beginning on our journey, so it would be interesting to find out how China began on this journey because those are the lessons we could take back with us,” Mr Wong said.
“We’ve just begun to implement digital platforms especially for our council in Suva, we’re slowly going into smart parking and there are a lot of other smart processes and applications that we are now beginning to implement as a city in our goal of making our capital a smart city.”
Mr Wong said technology in the Pacific was not as advanced as those available in China.
“That’s something that I would like to understand; how we could tailor-make the technology in China to suit the third world countries, rather than having software that is so advanced and we wouldn’t be able to control.”
Inspur Software Technology Co. Ltd is China’s leading provider of cloud computing and big data services.
The group comprises three listed companies — Inspur information, Inspur Software and Inspur Digital Enterprise.
Mr Wong was nominated by the Chinese Embassy and the Chinese Cultural Centre in Suva to represent Fiji at the seminar.
Note: This article was first published on the print version of the Fiji Times dated June 25, 2025
