As Vietnam advances its national digital transformation, building reliable digital data infrastructure is shifting from a support tool to a core strategy, with the country gradually establishing a secure, interconnected shared infrastructure to fully meet the needs of people and businesses.
CEO Nguyen Phu Dung of PILA Technology Company, said the core of the digital economy is not simply data but trust in data. Reliable data enables businesses to demonstrate their independent capacity and gain easier access to capital without relying on collateral. As real-world assets are increasingly digitized, their value lies in the verifiable link between physical assets and the digital data representing them.
To resolve the tension between data exploitation and privacy protection, the solution is self-sovereign identity (SSI). Under this approach, individuals must control their personal information, while businesses may only exploit data after it has been identified and standardized for artificial intelligence training, based on the principle of “minimizing sharing while maximizing the ability to prove.”
Therefore, the approach to building a data economy needs to shift toward a close “three-party” alliance: the State creates the legal framework, institutes and universities develop interoperable technical standards, and businesses develop products.
When digital identities, electronic documents and data are securely verified, cross-border transactions will become faster, more transparent and more efficient.
A notable example came in mid-August 2026, when PILA Technology Company and Singapore-based TOTM Technologies Group signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), opening a secure digital transaction corridor for businesses and financial institutions in the ASEAN region.
The two sides aim to build a digital verification platform for cross-border trade, including a pilot application of verifiable credentials (VCs) to supplement letters of credit (L/C) procedures between banks in the two countries.
CEO Chan Wei Jie of TOTM Technologies Company said that in a world being reshaped by increasingly pronounced trends toward multipolarity and economic fragmentation, it is more important than ever for Southeast Asian countries to strengthen connectivity and form a unified economic space. To realize this goal, trusted digital infrastructure based on self-sovereign digital identities and verifiable credentials will be a core foundation, building trust for sustainable cross-border trade models.
National Data Center, shared infrastructure spearhead digital growth
According to the National Data Association, Vietnam’s digital transformation has made rapid progress in recent years, with many significant achievements. A clear example is the VNeID electronic identification application, which has reached more than 80 percent of the adult population, opening up the potential to turn data into a highly valuable asset.
However, the picture still has some dark spots, with nearly 60 percent of domestic businesses yet to catch up with the digital shift.
Without a change in governance thinking, the huge volume of data accumulated over the years cannot realize its value and could even become an enormous operational burden.
Head Nguyen Huy of Technology at the National Data Association said the establishment of the National Data Center is crucial to ensuring that all digital transactions are backed by reliable data and to building a foundational layer of trusted data. The national data system is being developed in multiple layers.
The trusted data layer, or foundational layer, is secured by the National Data Center to address data fragmentation among ministries, sectors, localities and businesses. This connectivity is guided by regulations on digital transformation and the national data architecture framework.
In particular, the National Data Association’s receipt of the national blockchain technology platform in late June 2026 provides the strongest foundation for the entire system.
However, the national trusted digital infrastructure cannot operate on its own. To promote the comprehensive development of the data economy, the Government and the National Data Center play a pioneering role in building shared infrastructure, while the active participation of businesses is an important factor.
Businesses need to begin integrating their solutions into the four-layer infrastructure architecture in order to utilize it.
“Businesses need to clean their data sources, treat data as a core asset and proactively filter and refine data internally; apply identification technologies to establish clear identities; and build trusted data infrastructure. At the same time, they need to closely coordinate with the National Data Center to apply new technology standards and jointly build trusted national digital data infrastructure,” Nguyen Huy emphasized.
The National Data Center serves as the integration hub, connecting 20 national databases and 116 specialized databases operated by ministries, agencies and localities. It standardizes and synchronizes more than 6,300 core data attributes, gradually forming a centralized, unified and shared national database.
The National Data Center provides core and trusted data to support innovation, artificial intelligence development, financial technology, e-commerce and emerging technology sectors. It is essential infrastructure for ensuring digital sovereignty and national data security and safety, contributing to the formation of a new growth model based on science, technology and digital transformation.
