COMPLETING THE UNIFIED LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR NATIONAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

01 July 2026 marks an important milestone in the process of improving Vietnam’s institutional framework for science, technology and digital transformation, as the Law on Digital Transformation 2025 and the Law on High Technology 2025 officially come into effect.

Requirements to improve the legal framewwork arising from the practice of digital transformation

Before the enactment of the Law on Digital Transformation 2025, legal provisions on digital transformation were scattered across various legal instruments, including the Law on Information Technology, the Law on Data, the Law on Electronic Transactions, the Law on Telecommunications, the Law on Cyber Information Security, and others. These regulations lacked overall connectivity, a unified legal framework, common principles, and comprehensive regulation of activities involved in the national digital transformation process.

In addition, after a long period of implementation, the Law on High Technology 2008 revealed numerous shortcomings in response to the rapid development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, big data, cloud computing, quantum technology, and biotechnology. Many of its provisions had become outdated, were not synchronized with sector-specific legislation, were impracticable, or were no longer suitable for current circumstances. Unless timely amended and supplemented, these shortcomings would become obstacles to the development of high technology in Vietnam.

In response to the above circumstances, the Law on Digital Transformation 2025 and the Law on High Technology 2025 were enacted to establish a unified legal framework, ensuring that digital transformation is carried out in the right direction, safely and effectively, overcoming the fragmented and disconnected nature of digital platforms, creating a favourable environment for innovation, and promoting the development of the digital government, digital economy and digital society.

Significance of the Law on Digital Transformation in building a digital nation

The Law on Digital Transformation 2025 was enacted to transform policies, programmes and objectives relating to digital transformation into legally binding, stable and uniformly applicable legal provisions.

Previously, many digital transformation tasks were mainly implemented through strategies, programmes and plans of the Government or individual ministries, sectors and local authorities. Once codified into law, digital transformation is no longer merely a management task encouraged by policy, but becomes a legal responsibility of the relevant agencies and organizations.

The Law also helps clarify the relationship among the three pillars of digital government, digital economy, and digital society. Accordingly, the State is responsible not only for digitising the operation of the administrative system, but also for developing infrastructure, data, standards and the legal environment to enable businesses and citizens to participate in the digital transformation process.

Another noteworthy feature is the establishment of a national coordination mechanism for digital transformation. In practice, digital transformation is highly interdisciplinary. A platform or database developed by one authority may need to be connected to and utilised by many other authorities. Without unified coordination principles, the risks of duplicated investment, fragmented data and a lack of interoperability between systems will continue to exist.

The codification of mechanisms relating to financial resources, the development of the digital workforce, periodic assessment, and public disclosure of digital transformation results is also of significant importance. These provisions provide a basis for shifting the focus of governance from evaluating the number of systems or software solutions invested in to assessing actual effectiveness, service quality, and the level of benefits received by citizens and businesses.

Significance of the Law on High Technology in Enhancing Technological Self-Reliance

One of the notable new features of the Law on High Technology 2025 is its emphasis on the concepts of strategic technologies and strategic technology enterprises.

Strategic technologies are identified not only based on their level of technological advancement, but also on their capacity to create breakthroughs, strengthen national technological self-reliance, establish long-term competitive advantages, and satisfy national defence and security requirements. Enterprises operating in these sectors may enjoy preferential incentives under the laws on investment, taxation and land, while projects for the production of strategic technology products may be considered for the application of special investment incentive policies.

This provision demonstrates that legal policy is shifting from broad-based support to concentrating resources on technologies that are decisive to the country’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty.

The Law also places emphasis on establishing a high-technology ecosystem and strengthening cooperation among the State, enterprises, research institutes and higher education institutions. This is an appropriate approach, as high technology is unlikely to develop if research, education, manufacturing and the commercialization of research outcomes continue to operate separately.

In addition to financial, tax and land incentives, the value of the Law also lies in creating a legal environment capable of accommodating the risks inherent in research and innovation activities. In the field of emerging technologies, research outcomes cannot always be predicted in advance. Accordingly, legal policy should encourage experimentation, long-term investment and controlled testing, rather than focusing solely on projects with clearly foreseeable profitability.