Vietnam’s Hanoi targets near‑universal e-IDs under new digital transformation plan

Vietnam’s capital city has approved an ambitious digital transformation plan involving AI.

Hanoi will require all municipal agencies to use artificial intelligence from October 1. The city also aims to issue electronic IDs to 95 percent of residents by this year’s end.

The measures are outlined in Plan No. 131/KH‑UBND signed by Vice Chairman Truong Viet Dung, as reported by Vietnam News. The plan targets 60 percent of official meetings to take place online, and all administrative dossiers to be processed electronically using official digital signatures.

All routine and ad‑hoc reports that are not classified as secret must be submitted through a unified city reporting system. The city will adopt an API‑first technical architecture supported by shared data platforms and security‑by‑design requirements.

A municipal data center will host a central operations dashboard and all new or upgraded systems must connect to the national Local Government Service Platform (LGSP). Government portals are required to be fully transparent and interoperable.

Hanoi has set economic targets for the digital sector, including raising the digital economy’s contribution to at least 22 percent of GDP and pushing e‑commerce to more than 17 percent of total retail sales. The city also aims to maintain its top national ranking on the annual E‑Business Index.

The plan includes assistance for 10,000 small and medium‑sized enterprises to adopt digital tools such as AI‑based marketing and automated accounting at low cost.

The plan expands the use of VNeID authentication across public services and proposes a proactive digital welfare model that automatically activates benefits when eligibility criteria are met. Data‑driven systems will be used to identify households at risk of falling back into poverty and workers vulnerable to automation, with linked training and job transition programmes.

Vietnam is pushing digital identity and biometrics in a big way. A mandate that took effect last Wednesday requires all new mobile devices to be registered with face biometrics. The policy is aimed at tackling identity fraud and other criminal activities related to SIM card and mobile device ownership.

The registration process entails submitting one’s name and date of birth, as well as their national ID number and face biometrics. The new policy requires not only new SIM cards to be registered using facial recognition, but also identities linked to newly registered devices to be verified against the national population register and the resident database.

In February, Vietnam.vn reported that the country, which is a single-party state, is preparing to fuse social media with its national digital ID system VNeID. The government sees it as a way to tighten online authentication to secure the national digital space, and, if achieved, would make anonymity on social media a thing of the past.

Article Topics

digital ID  |  e-ID  |  fraud prevention  |  government services  |  social protection  |  Vietnam  |  VNeID