Ho Chi Minh City Open University: IT Governance in Vietnamese Higher Education

Ho Chi Minh City Open University (HCMCOU), a Vietnamese education provider established in 1993, decided to improve its IT areas to facilitate a timely response to the rapid development of technology including the implementation of IT in the governance of the university, whereby the top/middle management levels were able to get involved in the operations of the entire organization. HCMCOU had five satellite campuses providing academic training, and the main campus had the role of providing instructions to the other campuses. This required a system that could provide a website to link all campuses that worked seamlessly. As a result, in 2010, Mr Lam, Rector of HCMCOU, made a decision to develop a new system known as the LMS (Learning Management System) with the key purpose of enhancing the management and the quality of training. The objective was to maintain two competitive advantages – distance learning and high-quality programmes. The new system aimed to not only eliminate the geographic barriers for administrators, students, and instructors, but also to monitor the performance of students and facilitate real time communications between administrators, lecturers, and students.