This represents major reform in social governance, directly affecting tens of millions of citizens and the entire administrative system.

Before 2021, there were around 5,400 administrative procedures under the management of ministries, branches and localities. Population management was carried out by many ministries, branches and localities, largely through manual and traditional methods to serve state management, direction, administration and public service delivery.

On January 6, 2022, the Central Public Security Party Committee and MPS leaders coordinated with the Government Office to advise and submit to PM Pham Minh Chinh to sign Decision No06 approving the "Project on developing the application of population data, identification and electronic authentication to serve national digital transformation in 2022-2025, with a vision to 2030".

The project is the "backbone" of national digital transformation, for the first time making the National Population Database a shared infrastructure for 63 provinces and cities with more than 700 districts, towns, and cities, and nearly 11,000 communes, wards, and townships.

MPS reported that in the first 11 months of 2022, the processing of dossiers on the ministry’s public service portal increased from below 10 percent in the first six months of the year to 15 percent. 

The number of accounts registered to use online public services on the ministry’s portal increased increased from nearly 66,000 accounts in early August to more than 340,000 accounts, an increase of over five times.

During this time, over 76 million chip-based citizen identity cards were issued and integrated with various information such as personal details, health insurance, driver's licenses, and ATM cards, allowing citizens to use only one type of identity document when going for medical examinations, administrative transactions, or banking services.

On July 18, 2022, MPS announced the electronic identification and authentication system, making Vietnam one of the countries implementing national electronic identification.

By December 2025, the National Population Database contained 107 million citizen records, was connected with 15 ministries and branches and 34 localities, and had handled 2.1 billion authentication requests.

VNeID ecosystem 

With “accurate, complete, clean and live” population data, MPS has built and gradually perfected the VNeID electronic identification ecosystem. To date, 67 million electronic identification accounts, including a large number of level-2 accounts, have been activated, allowing citizens to use digital information to replace many traditional paper documents.

According to MPS, as of December 2025, the VNeID application had offered 48 utilities, with the number of citizens accessing and using utilities and services via electronic identification accounts reaching up to 3 million visits per day.

At certain times usage reached as high as 5.7 million visits. Notable activities include driver’s licenses on VNeID averaging 607,340 uses per day; vehicle registration 309,195 uses per day; residence information (electronic household registration) averaging 389,992 uses per day; and electronic citizen ID averaging nearly 392,000 uses per day.

National Data Center 

On February 25, 2025, the National Data Center was officially launched, marking an important breakthrough that gave Vietnam, for the first time, a specialized unit responsible for state management and coordination of data. The center plays a key role as the “brain” and “heart” of the national digital transformation process.

Major General Nguyen Ngoc Cuong, Director of the National Data, said the investment and construction of the center's infrastructure were done with a sense of urgency. The the grand opening on August 18, 2025 was three months ahead of schedule.

Regarding the legal corridor, the center advised the issuance of four decrees and four guiding decisions, creating a solid legal corridor for data governance and exploitation. 

Regarding the integration of national data, a large amount of data has been entered into the synthetic data warehouse, including 157 million records from 16 National/specialized databases. This is a valuable source of material serving state management and socio-economic development.

Also according to Cuong, the center coordinated with the Government Office to restructure the processes for 82 groups of administrative procedures. The National Public Service Portal is being operated at the center towards becoming a "unique centralized digital one-stop shop", helping simplify procedures based on existing data, with citizens and businesses put at the center.

Dinh Hieu