Upcoming Changes to Personal Identification Documents

In the near future, identification documents will undergo certain changes (Illustrative photo)

1. Renewal of Driver's License and Identification Card:

- Identification Card embedded with a chip:

This content was proposed by the Ministry of Public Security during the discussion session on the draft Law on Residence (amended) by the National Assembly Standing Committee, expected to issue the new identification card model embedded with an electronic chip to the public by the end of 2020. On this basis, on September 3, 2020, the Prime Minister of Vietnam issued Decision 1368/QD-TTg approving the investment policy for the project of producing, issuing, and managing identification cards, including investments in infrastructure; biometric recognition systems, servers, workstations, peripheral devices, storage devices, and security devices; investment in commercial software and application software. The total investment for this project is more than 2.696 trillion VND, sourced from the state budget.

- Driver's license with 12 points:

The Ministry of Public Security proposed this in the Draft Law on Ensuring Road Traffic Order and Safety, whereby the driver's license will have 12 points per year, and points will be deducted when the driver violates laws on road traffic order and safety. Data on the driver's deducted points will be updated in the database system immediately after the penalty measure comes into effect. This proposal was agreed upon by the Government of Vietnam at the Resolution 123/NQ-CP 2020 session on the Government of Vietnam's legislative construction in August.

2. Some shortcomings and obstacles:

- For identification cards embedded with electronic chips:

The new identification card has many integrated benefits such as storing various documents, preventing forgery, and the chip's cost is cheap and manufactured by domestic enterprises. Thus, with the chip-embedded identification card, citizens only need to carry this card for transactions and procedures, avoiding cumbersome other documents.

However, the implementation of this new policy faces many shortcomings, especially the need to re-issue identification cards that have just been issued. The issuance of barcoded cards has been synchronized nationwide and has been issued in 16 provinces and cities with 16 million identification numbers. Therefore, applying for chip-embedded cards means many people who have just received barcoded identification cards will need to replace them with chip-embedded cards, causing waste to the state budget.

- For driver's license:

The Ministry of Public Security has anticipated the corresponding points to be deducted per violation, for instance, running a red light may result in a deduction of up to 6 points. Thus, a driver needs to commit this violation only twice to lose all points. Hence, with such strict regulations, this proposal aims to maximally raise the awareness of the public when participating in traffic and drastically reduce violations.

However, in section 4 of Resolution 123/NQ-CP, it states "if within a year, all points are deducted, the driver has to retake the driving license test. If not all points are deducted, 12 points will be restored for the following year or if no violations occur within a year, points will be added." The question arises whether if a person does not commit any traffic violations within the year, will the points be accumulated for the following year? Based on the meaning of this statement, the answer is yes, and the driver's license could reach up to 24 points after a year without traffic violations. Additionally, the negative conduct of some Traffic Police officers is also a concerning issue.

See more details at:

- Resolution 123/NQ-CP, effective from August 31, 2020.

- Decision 1368/QD-TTg, effective from September 3, 2020.

Nguyen Phu

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