National digital transformation: Breakthrough from institutional foundation to digital infrastructure

In the context of digital transformation being an inevitable trend globally, national digital transformation has recorded many positive results in the first half of 2025, while identifying strategic and fundamental tasks to make a breakthrough in the last 6 months of the year. With the strong direction of the Government, the companionship of businesses and people, national digital transformation is gradually going into depth, towards building a digital government, digital economy , and digital society.

Photo caption — The command center monitors the operations of Terminal T2 under the Noi Bai International Airport Customs Branch ( Hanoi Customs Department). Illustrative photo: Hoang Hung/VNA

Clearly define strategic tasks

According to the report of the Ministry of Science and Technology , in the first 6 months of 2025, the national digital transformation work continued to be strongly promoted. Many breakthrough goals and solutions to implement strategic tasks in the short and long term were clearly identified at the 2024 year-end review meeting and 2025 orientation of the National Committee on Digital Transformation chaired by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh as well as at two meetings of the Government's Steering Committee on science and technology development, innovation, digital transformation; "Project on Developing the application of data on population, identification and electronic authentication to serve national digital transformation in the period of 2022 - 2025, with a vision to 2030" (Project 06) in March and April 2025.

One of the outstanding results is the operation of the Monitoring and Evaluation System for the implementation of Resolution 71/NQ-CP dated April 1, 2025 of the Government on amending and supplementing the Government's Action Program to implement Resolution 57-NQ/TW dated December 22, 2024 of the Politburo on breakthroughs in science, technology, innovation and national digital transformation, and the System for receiving and processing feedback, recommendations, and initiatives on science, technology, innovation and digital transformation. This is an important step in building a governance platform based on real-time data.

The provision of online public services throughout the process also recorded many improvements, with the rate of online records throughout the process in June 2025 reaching 39.51%, of which the Ministry and Sector sector reached more than 51%. However, the local sector only reached more than 15%, still a significant gap compared to the target of 80% for 2025.

The number of transactions through the National Data Sharing Integration Platform (NDXP) reached about 630 million transactions, equivalent to 73% of the annual plan. The proportion of the adult population with digital signatures or personal electronic signatures reached 35.48%, with about 20 million digital signature certificates issued. Cumulative fees collected from the National Electronic Certification Center reached 31.3 billion VND; contributing 4.7 billion VND to the state budget.

In addition, the Ministry of Science and Technology has issued the Digital Government Architecture Framework version 4.0, built a free mass open online training platform and submitted many important legal documents such as the proposal to develop the Law on Digital Transformation, Decree on national database and trusted services.

However, the report of the Ministry of Science and Technology also pointed out some shortcomings in the national digital transformation work such as: The quality of online public services is still low; data integration and sharing is still scattered; legal policies have not kept up with the speed of digital transformation...

Breakthrough from institutions to digital infrastructure

Based on the results achieved, the Ministry of Science and Technology has identified three main tasks for national digital transformation in the last 6 months of 2025: Perfecting institutions, promoting digital platforms and improving public service experience. Specifically, the Ministry of Science and Technology is urgently developing and submitting the Law on Digital Transformation, which is expected to be discussed at the 10th Session of the 15th National Assembly at the end of this year. According to Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Manh Hung, this Law will fill in the missing pieces and be a framework to unify and connect the driving forces related to digital transformation drafted by ministries and branches to form a complete digital Vietnam architecture framework.

“The Law on Digital Transformation defines the role of the State in promoting digital transformation as leading, facilitating and supervising, creating a mechanism for managing digital data, an institutional framework for digital platforms and digital services, finance for digital transformation, digital culture, developing skilled human resources; especially having digital language as a third language, besides Vietnamese to preserve Vietnamese identity and English for international integration, so that every Vietnamese person is proficient in these three languages. At the same time, it is managing risks in the digital transformation process and ensuring the safety of the digital space, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of digital transformation, especially the issue of monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of digital transformation,” Minister Nguyen Manh Hung stated.

In parallel with institutional development, the Ministry will carry out tasks to thoroughly resolve areas with low mobile signal. Specifically, for 238 villages with low signal that have electricity, the Ministry will direct telecommunications enterprises to urgently complete the infrastructure before August 31, 2025 and broadcast no later than the second week of September 2025. For 117 villages without electricity, the Ministry will coordinate with the Ministry of Industry and Trade to direct EVN to develop a power supply plan and assign telecommunications enterprises to survey and build infrastructure in sync with the power supply plan, to be completed before November 30, 2025.

In order to promote the rapid development of the 5G network, the Ministry strives to reach 68,457 5G stations by the end of 2025, equivalent to 57.5% of 4G stations, covering 90% of the population, towards 99% of the population by 2030. Along with that, licensing and piloting controlled telecommunications services using low-orbit satellites (LEO) for enterprises immediately after the enterprises complete investment procedures and establish legal entities in Vietnam, with the goal of being licensed enterprises to be able to officially deploy services in the fourth quarter of 2025; supporting Vietnamese enterprises to deploy the construction of the first international submarine optical cable line owned by Vietnam, directly connecting to Singapore, ensuring the signing of agreements with partners in early 2026; by the end of 2025, continuing to license the deployment of at least 1 new submarine optical cable line. In August 2025, VSTN land optical cable line (Vietnam - Laos - Thailand - Singapore) will be inaugurated with an initial capacity of 2 Tbps, expandable up to 12 Tbps...

The Ministry shall develop and promulgate the National Digital Architecture Framework, ensuring connectivity, synchronization, and interoperability among agencies (Party, State, Fatherland Front, and socio-political organizations), in accordance with the government model from the central to communal levels, to be completed in August 2025; preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance to guide localities in building and deploying the Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) to ensure interconnection, effectively exploit information and data to serve the direction, administration, and socio-economic development of localities, to be completed in July 2025; preside over and coordinate with relevant ministries and branches, and direct technology and postal enterprises to resolve difficulties of localities in completing information technology systems, equipment, connections, and shared software to serve the operations of local governments at two levels, to be completed before August 31, 2025.

Regarding the implementation of online public services: The Ministry of Science and Technology shall preside over and coordinate with the Ministry of Public Security, the Government Office and localities to review, restructure processes, digitize and provide all administrative procedures (online public services) under the scope of management and implementation at 2 levels of local government according to a centralized implementation model, ensuring consistency and synchronization on the National Public Service Portal, to be completed before January 1, 2026.

The Ministry of Science and Technology plans to coordinate with the People's Committee of Da Nang City to develop and implement the Digital Twin Pilot Project, develop and implement the Low-Economic Development Pilot Project, to be completed before December 31, 2025.

The Ministry will also research and submit for promulgation the National Data Economy Framework, promote the development of primary and secondary data markets to serve the digital economy and digital society, to be completed before August 31, 2025; implement the Digital Transformation Project for small and medium-sized enterprises, business households, and cooperatives, complete the platform for assessing the level of digital transformation of enterprises and the ecosystem of platforms supporting digital transformation of enterprises, to be completed before October 31, 2025.

Source: https://doanhnghiepvn.vn/chuyen-doi-so/chuyen-doi-so-quoc-gia-but-pha-tu-nen-tang-the-che-den-ha-tang-so/20250724085421978