- On 2 February 2024, the Prime Minister issued Decision No. 142/QD-TTg approving the National Data Strategy towards 2030 ("Strategy"). The Strategy marks a significant advancement in transforming Vietnam into a digital nation, where data can be utilized to its full potential to drive economic growth and social progress. The Strategy is the first comprehensive directive document regarding digital data in Vietnam, clearly elaborating on the policy implications of the data management framework.
The Strategy sets out numerous critical national missions to achieve its objective, several of which are notable legislative initiatives. These encompass the formulation of the Law on the Digital Technology Industry to regulate data as a lawful property right and the formulation of the Decree regulating the purchase, sale, and exchange of private and copyrighted data to establish a data market, among others. The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) is assigned as the lead drafting agency for such digital data-related regulations, with a particular focus on the digital economy perspective.
- On 11 February 2024, in terms of the state administrative management, following the issuance of the Strategy, on 11 February 2024, the Prime Minister released Directive No. 04/CT-TTg ("Directive 04") regarding the improvement of the deployment of projects on developing residential data applications and electronic authentication to serve national digital transformation. Notably, under Directive 04, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) is assigned to propose the formulation of two critical data-related legislative projects, namely the proposal of Law on Personal Data Protection and the proposal of Law on Data.
- On 29 February 2024, as a prompt response to the Prime Minister's directive, the MPS published two proposal dossiers of the Law on Personal Data Protection and the Law on Data. Nonetheless, as these represent the preliminary steps to initiate the drafting process, the MPS has only published relevant materials, such as the impact assessment reports, without providing the outlines and completed drafts of these legislative projects.
While the proposal of a Law on Personal Data Protection has been in planning for years, expected to be an upgraded version and solve the potential conflicts between the current Vietnam Decree 13/2023/ND-CP on Personal Data Protection (PDPD) and other existing regulations on personal data protection, this is the first time the idea of formulating the proposal of data law has been introduced. According to the MPS, the data law shall cover several significant policies, including the comprehensive national database, the National Data Center, and data-related products and services.
Although the above-mentioned legislative projects are still in early progress, we can envision a broad outline of the three pillars of Vietnam's future data laws, specifically as follows:
- The Law on the Digital Technology Industry shall establish a legal basis for digital data as a property right, thereby facilitating the development of a data market in the Vietnam economic system
- The Law on Data shall be in charge of the technical aspect of data, such as the national database and data center
- The Law on Personal Data Protection shall play a vital role as the protector of data regulation compliance in Vietnam, prevailing the PDPD.
These data-related proposals have yet to be included in the National Assembly's (NA) legislative agenda for 2024. However, the MPS and MIC are required to submit relevant proposal dossiers to the government by the second quarter of 2024. Upon completing the reviewing process, the government may suggest that the NA add such proposals to the 2025 legislative agenda at the latest, given the rapid changes in technology and the government's heightened demand for digital transformation and digital economic development.
We will follow up closely on the ongoing development of data policy in general, and particularly the data privacy regime, and keep you posted with the latest updates.
