DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2016.1757
title: The influence of government policies on the return of overseas Vietnamese in the information and communications technology sector (ICT)

description: In 2000, Vietnam strategised the national goal to turn Vietnam from a developing country into a developed country and clearly determined the role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as a key economic sector which could help the country industrialized and modernized. Therefore, Vietnam has been focusing on developing ICT sector. At the same time, the return of overseas Vietnamese impacts on the development of the Vietnam ICT not only from manpower aspect but also capital aspect. The government also conducted policies to get more open for their return. The aim of this research is to clarify interactions between the public policies and the return of those overseas Vietnamese. This research proves that there is a national sentiment in part of the overseas Vietnamese which can be seen as the bonding connection between them and Vietnam. By conducting in-depth interview with the group of Information and Communications Technology individuals who already returned, the returning wave of ICT manpower to Vietnam coincidently rolled during the time the government run policies to attract them. In other words, people who returned have got the personal motivations (egearness to know and support their root, economic opportunities that they can achieve) rather than the benefits that they see from the government policies.It is also important to address how government is aware of the connection between the returnees and Vietnam, which is the so-called ‘nationalism connection’ from the government’s perspective.  However, the policies have not impacted effectively on the decision of the returnees. The main reason is the passive engagement of the policy actors which also explains the situation of being stuck at the top level of the implementation process of those policies. The structure of policy-making itself is also problematic with a lot of issues of the bottom down way. This study has 5 chapters. Chapter 1 is introduction including statement of problem, scope and objectives. Chapter 2 reviews the previous studies on this topic and the research methodology which focuses on explaining the determinants for returnees to decide to go to Vietnam and the way the government can attract talent through policies and public management. Chapter 3 illustrates the policies from the general background to the detail of decision- making in policy-making process. Chapter 4 reflects the results and analysis from the interviews and reviews with returnees. Finding and recommendations are presented in Chapter 5. To sum up, this research concludes that when the local economic opportunities increase and the openness for overseas people is getting wider, the overseas Vietnamese have been returning to ICT sector and coincidently the government policies to attract those people have been running. Furthermore, it is important to see the important determination for their return is the connection between individual and Vietnam as a personal connection rather than a bond that is constructed thanks to the government policies.