No additional procedures or costs

The Citizen Identification Law Project (amended) was submitted to the National Assembly for comments at the 5th session of the 15th National Assembly. This is a Law project that has received much attention and comments from National Assembly deputies, agencies, organizations, experts, scientists, and affected subjects, and the vast majority of opinions agree with the necessity of promulgating the Law to create a legal basis for implementing and building an e-Government, creating a breakthrough in digital transformation in our country;

Meet the requirements in handling administrative procedures and providing online public services, serving the purpose of economic and social development, building digital citizens, perfecting the ecosystem to serve the connection, exploitation, supplementation and enrichment of population data and the direction and administration of leaders at all levels.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, using the name of the Law as "Law on Identification" as the Law dossier that the Government submitted to the National Assembly will ensure full reflection of the amended and supplemented policies in this Law project (additional adjustments for subjects of Vietnamese origin, electronic identification), in accordance with the scope of regulation, applicable subjects and content of the draft Law.

Along with that, the information shown on the citizen identification card is also changed from "Citizen identification" to "identification card".

The Ministry of Public Security said that such regulations help to properly reflect the nature of the card as a type of document containing information about the identity of the people; help to distinguish one person from another; determine identity in transactions...

The regulation that the name is ID card also does not affect the legal status of the citizen's nationality (because the card clearly shows information about the nationality of the card holder, which is Vietnamese nationality).

Changing the name of the card to ID card is also to ensure consistency with international practice (many countries in the world are currently using ID cards).

Changing the card name also ensures universality, creating a premise for international integration, for the recognition and recognition of identity documents between countries in the region and the world; limiting the need to amend and supplement the Law when Vietnam signs agreements with other countries to use identity cards instead of passports in travel between countries (for example, travel within the ASEAN bloc).

Currently, the ID card is designed in compliance with ICAO's common standards on organizing the storage and exploitation of information on electronic chips; the card has high security, making it convenient for people to preserve and use in the international arena.

If the card name is “Citizen ID card”, it does not ensure the card name is consistent with the common practice of the world. Therefore, the card may not be usable when integrating internationally if the card name is continued to be “Citizen ID card”.

Changing the card name does not incur any procedures or costs for the people or the State budget because Article 46 of the draft Law has transitional provisions: Legal documents that have been issued using information from the identity card and citizen identification card remain legally valid;

Citizen identification cards prescribed in legal documents before the effective date of this Law have the same value as identification cards prescribed in this Law.

Integrate information into ID cards

Regarding the integration of information into ID cards and electronic ID cards, a representative of the Ministry of Public Security said that the use of chip-based ID cards with additional information integrated is a new method, in addition to the current method of using existing documents issued by competent authorities to people, with the aim of facilitating people when carrying out administrative procedures and other transactions.

This regulation does not conflict with the provisions of relevant specialized laws on the management and use of the above documents; does not affect the State management function of ministries, branches and localities with the types of documents and data being managed.

Citizen information in the national population database, identity database, identity card, and electronic identity is important information that needs to be protected.

Accordingly, the Law on Identification clearly defines the principles of managing identification, the national population database and the identification database as ensuring human rights and citizen rights, and strictly protecting and securing personal data. At the same time, in practical implementation, the Ministry of Public Security has solutions to ensure information security and safety in exploiting data from chip-embedded identification cards.

The exploitation of information in the ID card is decentralized and specifically authorized, ensuring that the exploitation subject is only allowed to exploit when performing the assigned functions and tasks and must be agreed by the citizen through authentication by scanning fingerprints, faces on the device or via the VNeID application (the citizen has the right to allow which organizations and individuals to exploit information, which will be decided and approved on the VNeID application).

In case people lose their ID card and are not able to reissue it, they can exploit and use integrated information through electronic ID.