Alongside the Certificates of land use rights and certificates of land use rights, house ownership rights, and land-attached assets, the Household Registration Book is considered one of the important assets of each family in Vietnam. However, in the recent Draft of the Law on Residence, it has been proposed to abolish the Household Registration Book and replace it with a personal identification number for managing residents. So, what is a personal identification number?
Article table of contents
Vietnam: What is a personal identification number?
1. What is a personal identification number in Vietnam?
The personal identification number is the number on the Citizen ID Card. Vietnamese citizens aged 14 and above are issued with a Citizen ID Card as per legal regulations.
According to Clause 1, Article 12 of the Law on Citizen Identification 2014, the personal identification number is defined as follows:
Personal identification numbers
1. A personal identification number shall be established from the national population database and used for the connection, update, sharing and exploitation of citizen’s information in the national population database and specialized databases.
2. personal identification numbers shall be uniformly managed nationwide by the Ministry of Public Security; each Vietnamese citizen shall be granted with one number which is not identical to another’s number.
Thus, the personal identification number is a piece of information about a citizen that is collected and updated in the national database on population. This number will be linked to an individual from birth to death, does not change, and does not duplicate with any other individual’s identification number.
2. Structure of the personal identification number in Vietnam
According to Article 13 of Decree 137/2015/ND-CP, guided by Article 7 of Circular 07/2016/TT-BCA, the structure of the personal identification number is as follows:
- The identification number is a natural number string consisting of 12 digits, structured with 6 digits representing the century of birth, gender code, year of birth of the citizen, code of the province or central-affiliated city or the country code where the citizen registers the birth, and 6 random digits.
- Specific order is specified as follows:
- The first 3 digits are the code of the province or central-affiliated city where the citizen registered the birth, or the code of the country where the citizen registered the birth.
- The next 3 digits are the code for the century of birth, gender code, and year of birth.
- The last 6 digits are random numbers.
- The personal identification numbers are fully confidential.
3. Procedures for issuing personal identification numbers
For cases of birth registration:
According to Article 16 of the Law on Civil Status 2014, the issuance of personal identification numbers in cases of birth registration is conducted as follows:
- Application: Birth registrants shall submit declarations made according to a set form and birth certification papers to the civil status registration agency.
+ If having no birth certification paper, a document of a witness certifying the birth shall be submitted;
+ If there is no witness, there must be a written pledge of the birth; for birth registration for abandoned children, there must be a written record certifying the child’s abandonment made by a competent agency;
+ For birth registration for children born by surrogate mothers, there must be a document proving the surrogacy as prescribed by law.
Procedures: Immediately after receiving full papers specified in Clause 1 of this Article, if seeing that the birth declaration is complete and proper, justice and civil status officers shall record birth registration contents under Clause 1, Article 14 of this Law in the civil status books and update them in the electronic civil status database and the national population database for getting personal identification numbers.
For citizens who have already registered birth and permanent residence:
- If citizens have registered birth and permanent residence but have not been issued a personal identification number as per the regulations, the citizen identification management agency is responsible for collecting and transferring the citizen's information as regulated in Clause 1, Article 9 of the Law on Citizen Identification to the population database management agency of the Ministry of Public Security.
- The information must include at least the following to issue a personal identification number:
- Full name, middle name, and given name at birth;- Date, month, year of birth;- Gender;- Place of birth registration;- Hometown;- Ethnicity;- Nationality;- Place of permanent residence;- Full name, middle name, and given name, personal identification number, or identification card number of the household head, and the relationship with the household head.
Once the information is collected, the population database management agency of the Ministry of Public Security verifies the citizen's information, issues, and immediately transfers the personal identification number to the Citizen ID Card issuing agency.
In cases where the issued personal identification number contains errors due to incorrect information entry, the head of the population database management agency of the Ministry of Public Security decides to cancel that personal identification number and re-issue another personal identification number for the citizen.
The above is the consultation of the editing board of Lawnet on the personal identification number. We hope this information will help our customers and members better understand the personal identification number - a dataset that may be used to manage residents instead of the Household Registration Book in the future.
Thuy Tram
