Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has announced that it will provide a safe and secure e-identity account for all Vietnamese citizens. This will allow all Vietnamese citizens an official digital authentication method for verifying their identities, , and also log into the public services national e-identification app, to perform public sector transactions more easily, and without the need for physical documents.
This announcement marks the culmination of many years of digital identity policy developments in Vietnam. Like many other countries in Asia, Vietnam originally started administrating its citizens through a household registration book (sổ hộ khẩu), which manually registered individuals according to their household family group. In 2020, the Vietnam National Assembly agreed to replace this with an online database of citizen information.
As the replacement of this system had to be conducted in tandem with the development of a new citizen management system, a number of important policy decisions were undertaken:
- firstly, the decision to increase the citizen registration number from nine digits to 12 digits,
- secondly, to issue the citizen identity number at birth rather than at 14 years of age, along with a citizen ID card management system and
- thirdly, to develop a new National Population Database for managing each individual citizen record.
The National Population Database had been under development since 2015, and due to the urgent needs of COVID-19, was completed and made operational on 1 July 2021. This was followed by rapid pilot testing where the interoperability of the database was put to use in tracking vaccination statuses, and also to help the government identify those who require social assistance.
Access Partnership believes that the management of a national digital identity system is one of the core foundational components of a strong e-government system. We offer regulatory monitoring and analysis for Vietnam’s digital transformation and government policy developments. For more information on this, please contact Lim May-Ann at [email protected].
