The Law comprehensively regulates the development of the semiconductor industry, artificial intelligence (AI), digital assets, with the goal of promoting the digital economy, enhancing national competitiveness through mechanisms such as tax incentives, land, support for high-quality human resource training, building shared digital infrastructure, and creating a solid legal corridor for the high-tech industry to develop strongly. The Law not only creates a legal corridor for technology enterprises but also contributes to promoting sustainable socio-economic development. However, for the Law to be truly effective in practice, it is important to have appropriate and not overly complicated organizational solutions. The article will closely follow those important requirements.
Keywords: Digital Technology Industry Law; legal framework for industry; enterprise support; Development of digital ecosystem.
The Digital Technology Industry Law plays a role in creating a synchronous and comprehensive legal framework, strongly promoting the development of key technology sectors such as semiconductors, AI, digital assets; attracting investment, developing Vietnamese digital technology enterprises; creating momentum for national digital transformation; building a healthy, transparent, and safe digital ecosystem; enhancing national competitiveness and Vietnam's international position in the digital era.
OVERVIEW OF THE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY
1. General concepts:
At Clause 2, Article 3 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law, it is stipulated:
- Digital technology is the collection of scientific methods, technological processes, and technical tools for producing, transmitting, collecting, processing, storing, exchanging information, digital data, and digitizing the real world.
- Digital technology industry is an economic-technical sector based on the combination of science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation to create digital technology products and services; it is the next development step of the information technology industry.
- Digital technology equipment is equipment used to produce, transmit, collect, process, store, and exchange information and digital data, digitizing the real world.
2. About activities of the digital technology industry:
- Article 13 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law stipulates that digital technology industry activities include producing digital technology products and providing digital technology services. Specifically: Producing digital technology products involves performing one or more tasks of research and development, design, assembly, manufacturing, testing, product testing, and other tasks to produce the following digital technology products:
+ Hardware products are digital technology equipment products, parts of digital technology equipment, including: computers, network equipment, peripheral equipment; telecommunications equipment; multimedia equipment; transmission equipment; electronic equipment; integrated electronic equipment with digital technology; parts and component assemblies, electronic components, semiconductor chips, and other hardware products;
+ Software products are collections of instructions, commands, and digital data designed to control digital technology equipment to perform specific functions, including: system software; application software; utility software; tool software; digital platform software, and other software;
+ Digital content products are information created, processed, stored, and distributed in the form of digital data, serving entertainment, education, communication, commercial, or other social purposes. Digital content products include: text, digital data, images, audio recordings, video recordings, or other digital formats.
+ Providing digital technology services involves performing one or more activities: consulting, design, installation, integration, management, operation, training, digitization, data processing, warranty, maintenance, repair, refurbishment, publishing, distributing digital technology products; providing digital technology products in the form of services, and other digital technology services.
3. Development of human resources for the digital technology industry:
Article 18 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law stipulates the development of human resources for the digital technology industry as follows:
- The State has policies to support the development of human resources for the digital technology industry in educational institutions as follows:
+ Promoting training, retraining, and fostering activities in digital technology within the national education system;
+ Having preferential credit policies on interest rates, conditions, and loan terms for learners in digital technology training fields as prescribed by laws on education and finance;
+ Having policies for scholarships, social allowances; exemption or reduction of tuition fees, support for tuition and living expenses for learners in digital technology training fields as prescribed by laws on education and finance;
+ Developing open online teaching and learning platforms, adaptive digital technology training models for the digital transformation process, interdisciplinary training combining digital technology with other sectors and fields;
+ Supporting investment in material facilities including training equipment, laboratories, software copyrights, shared digital platforms, and other necessary technical tools for training human resources in the digital technology industry.
- The State has policies to support the development of human resources for the digital technology industry in enterprises and state agencies as follows:
+ Supporting the assessment of digital technology skills;
+ Supporting cooperation and connection between enterprises and research institutes, universities, and vocational education institutions in training human resources for the digital technology industry, prioritizing small and medium enterprises;
+ Organizing training and fostering to improve knowledge and digital technology skills for human resources in the digital technology industry;
+ Supporting additional income for those in specialized positions in digital technology industry as approved by competent authorities or individuals.
- Localities have policies to support the development of human resources for the digital technology industry working in key research projects and production of digital technology products, semiconductor chips, and artificial intelligence systems as follows:
+ Supporting part of the cost of hiring high-quality digital technology industry human resources;
+ Supporting part of the cost of training, retraining, and fostering to improve the quality of enterprise human resources.
+ Encouraging organizations and individuals to train, retrain, foster, assess, and recognize digital technology skills of learners according to international, regional, and widely recognized foreign standards.
- Responsibilities of Ministries, ministerial-level agencies, and provincial People's Councils:
+ The Ministry of Education and Training implements the provisions in Clause 1 of Article 18 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law; the Ministry of Science and Technology implements the provisions in Clause 2 of Article 18 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law from financial sources for digital technology industry development as stipulated in Article 11 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law;
+ Provincial People's Councils arrange local budgets, stipulate criteria, conditions, procedures, contents, and support levels as stipulated in Clause 3 of Article 18 of the 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law.
4. Role of the digital technology industry:
- Perfecting institutions: Establishing a solid legal foundation for the digital technology industry, regulating emerging fields such as semiconductor industry, AI, digital assets, and encrypted assets.
- Driving force for economic development: Turning digital technology into the main economic growth driver, with the target growth rate 2-3 times GDP. Strongly promoting mastery of core technologies, shifting from processing to innovation and production. Attracting investment capital, paving the way for major technology corporations to invest.
- Developing the digital ecosystem:
+ Enterprises: Creating preferential mechanisms, financial and tax support, and market connections for technology enterprises, especially innovative startups (sandbox).
+ Human resources: Encouraging training, attracting talent, and creating a good working environment to retain experts.
+ Infrastructure: Building shared digital infrastructure, promoting the development of essential digital infrastructure.
+ Enhancing national competitiveness: Affirming a pioneering position, competing fairly with leading digital economies worldwide, creating advantages for integration.
+ Building a safe digital environment: Strictly managing AI according to principles of safety, transparency, and human-centered; Building a legal framework for digital assets and encrypted assets, ensuring financial safety and user protection; Protecting data and privacy, creating a trustworthy digital environment.
+ Promoting comprehensive digital transformation: Converging technology and digital transformation in all fields (production, healthcare, education); Building a digital government and a modern, transparent, and people-oriented digital society.
It can be said that the Digital Technology Industry Law is the "golden key" for Vietnam to breakthrough in the digital era, creating a responsible digital ecosystem with sustainable development, contributing to common prosperity.
5. Benefits of digital technology for enterprises
5.1. Increasing work efficiency: Digital technology provides tools and software to automate business processes, reduce manual work, and enhance work effectiveness. For example, enterprise resource management systems (ERP) help businesses easily track and coordinate organizational activities.
5.2. Improving business processes: Digital technology allows enterprises to reorganize and improve business processes. For instance, customer relationship management systems (CRM) help track and manage information, improving customer relations. Moreover, digital technology helps optimize supply chains, manage inventory, and enhance integration between departments within the enterprise.
5.3. Expanding markets: Digital technology platforms provide enterprises with the ability to access broader markets. The internet and social networks have created new channels to reach and interact with customers. Enterprises can use online channels to promote products/services, attract new customers, thereby increasing sales revenue.
5.4. Enhancing customer experience: Digital technology provides customers with easier access to and use of services. With mobile applications, websites, and online platforms, customers can now research, interact, and purchase from anywhere and at any time they want. Digital technology platforms also allow enterprises to collect customer information to understand and meet their needs in a personalized way. This helps create personalized experiences, from suggesting suitable products to providing better services and support. Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots also help provide continuous customer support, enabling quick assistance for customers.
5.5. Data analysis and information storage: Intelligent algorithms and data analysis tools can extract useful information from large datasets, identifying patterns, trends, and hidden rules in data. Digital technology can help organize and visualize data intuitively through charts, graphs, and maps. Digital technology provides more efficient information storage methods compared to traditional ones. Digital-based data storage systems such as relational databases, electronic document management systems (EDMS), content management systems (CMS), and cloud storage allow storing large amounts of data securely and easily accessible. Blockchain technology helps store information securely and immutably.
5.6. Enhancing transparency and efficiency in enterprise governance systems: Tools like email, online document management systems, and internal portals allow employees in the enterprise to quickly access important information. This helps increase transparency, ensuring necessary information is shared and accessed fairly and efficiently. Collaboration software like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom allows employees to communicate and work together remotely easily. This enhances work efficiency, minimizes information loss, and increases quick interaction capabilities between departments and individuals in the enterprise.
5.7. Connecting departments/units and employees in the enterprise: One challenge of traditional management models is the separation between departments, leading to stagnation and reduced work efficiency. But now, with the advent of digital technology, stronger connections between departments have been created, allowing units to share responsibilities and task progress. Related departments and units only need to perform simple operations on software to access necessary information.
5.8. Applications of digital technology in enterprises: Digital technology has many important applications in enterprises, helping improve operational efficiency, enhance competitiveness, and create economic benefits.
Some current applications of digital technology in enterprises include:
- Production: Digital technologies such as automation, robotization, and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to enhance production processes, reduce dependence on labor, and increase productivity. Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain can help track and manage supply chains, from inventory monitoring to transportation tracking and product origin information management.
- Sales and customer care: Chatbots, process automation, customer data analysis,... help improve customer experience. Or by operating e-commerce platforms, allowing customers to shop online and experience high-quality services.
- Human resources: Digital technology is applied in human resources for recruitment, training, and employee evaluation effectively and transparently.
- Financial management: Digital technology is applied in financial management to manage cash flow, costs, and assets more effectively. Automated financial risk management systems monitor and analyze financial risk factors, such as price fluctuations, credit risks, and system risks. This helps enterprises identify and respond to financial risks quickly and timely.
- Applications of digital technology in Marketing: Digital technology has a strong impact on the Marketing field and has created many new opportunities for advertisers and marketers. Including:
+ Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is used to analyze data, automate Marketing tasks, create creative content, chatbots,... AI helps enterprises better understand customers, create content suitable to their needs, automate Marketing tasks, saving time and costs.
+ Machine Learning: A branch of AI, focusing on learning from data. Used to analyze data, predict customer behavior, optimize Marketing campaigns,... Helping enterprises better understand customer behavior, thereby developing more suitable Marketing campaigns.
+ Big Data: Large collections of data, diverse in origin and format, used to analyze customer behavior, market trends,...
+ Marketing automation: Automating Marketing tasks such as sending emails, chatbots, customer management,... Helping enterprises save time and costs while improving the effectiveness of Marketing campaigns. The most recent typical example is chatbot platforms like Chat-GPT, Poe, Bard,... which have significantly impacted how enterprises approach Marketing. These chatbots can create blog posts, social media updates, and text documents, helping enterprises save time and resources.
Digital technology is an inevitable trend of the era. It is and will continue to change the way we live, work, learn, and entertain. Enterprises, organizations, and individuals need to continuously update knowledge and skills to grasp and effectively apply digital technology to keep up with the trend and develop sustainably, ensuring no one is left behind.
THE 2025 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY LAW
1. The Digital technology industry law is built to: Institutionalize the national digital transformation guidelines; Develop industries based on digital technology such as: software, artificial intelligence, big data, microchips, digital platforms; Encourage innovation and mastery of technology. The Law aims to build an independent, self-reliant digital technology industry that integrates internationally, suitable to Vietnam's development conditions.
2. The Digital technology industry law plays an important role in economic development, specifically:
a) Promoting economic growth and improving productivity: The Law creates a favorable legal environment for digital technology enterprises to develop, thereby increasing the value of high-tech industrial production; Improving labor productivity through digital technology applications; Contributing to restructuring the economy towards modernization.
b) Supporting enterprises in innovation: The Law encourages innovative startups in the technology field; Research, development, and mastery of core technologies; Producing "Make in Vietnam" digital technology products. This helps enhance the competitiveness of Vietnamese enterprises in domestic and international markets.
c) Attracting investment and international integration: A clear legal framework will help: Attract domestic and foreign investment capital into the digital technology field; Deeper participation in global value chains; Strengthening scientific and technological cooperation with advanced countries.
3. The impact of the Law on social development:
a) Creating jobs and developing high-quality human resources: The development of the digital technology industry helps create many new jobs for young workers; accompanied by the demand for high-level human resources; while promoting innovation in education and training digital skills for students.
b) Promoting digital transformation in social fields: The Law contributes to accelerating the application of digital technology in fields such as Education (online learning, digital schools), Healthcare (electronic health records, remote diagnosis and treatment), Public administration (digital government, online public services). Thereby, the quality of service to people is increasingly improved.
c) Contributing to building a safe and sustainable digital society: The Law also orients technology development associated with information safety and cybersecurity; Protecting the legitimate rights and interests of people in the digital environment; Narrowing the digital divide between regions.
The 2025 Digital Technology Industry Law plays an important role in promoting Vietnam's socio-economic development in the digital age. The Law not only creates a legal foundation for the digital technology industry to develop but also contributes to enhancing national competitiveness, improving quality of life, and building a modern and sustainable digital society. Effectively implementing this Law will be the key for Vietnam to rise strongly in the digital technology era.
SPECIFIC AND FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS TO EFFECTIVELY IMPLEMENT THE 2025 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY LAW
1. Perfecting institutions and guiding implementation: Promptly issue decrees and circulars with detailed guidance in the first year of implementation (clearly defining digital technology products, digital technology enterprises, incentive criteria…). Simplify administrative procedures, apply digital one-stop shops for digital technology enterprises. Pilot sandbox mechanisms for new fields (AI, blockchain, fintech, big data…).
2. Developing the digital technology enterprise ecosystem: Corporate income tax incentives, R&D tax, preferential credit for "Make in Vietnam" digital technology enterprises. Support small and medium enterprises and startups: state-private venture capital funds, incubators, local innovation centers. Promote linkages between enterprises - research institutes - universities.
3. Strongly promoting digital human resource development: Update IT training programs according to practical needs (AI, information security, semiconductor chips, data). Encourage enterprise-linked training models (enterprise semesters, ordered training). Policies to attract high-tech experts domestically and abroad, including overseas Vietnamese.
4. Developing digital infrastructure and data: Synchronously invest in telecommunications infrastructure, 5G/6G, data centers, national cloud computing. Expand and standardize open data from state agencies for lawful enterprise exploitation. Encourage enterprises to build shared digital platforms.
5. Promoting markets and the "leading customer" role of the State: Prioritize domestic digital technology products and services in public procurement. Order digital technology enterprises to solve major problems: digital government, smart cities, digital healthcare-education. Support enterprises in exporting digital technology products.
6. Protecting intellectual property and standardization: Simplify procedures for registering software copyrights and digital inventions. Support costs for protecting intellectual property domestically and abroad. Build national technical standards and regulations for digital technology products.
7. Ensuring safety, cybersecurity, and digital ethics: Integrate information safety and personal data protection requirements from the product design stage. Strengthen supervision and risk assessment for new technologies (responsible AI, big data). Raise legal awareness for enterprises and users.
8. Organizing implementation and monitoring: Clearly assign responsibilities among ministries, sectors, and localities. Build annual indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of Law implementation. Regularly engage in policy dialogue with the digital technology enterprise community.
In conclusion, the effective implementation of the 2025 Law on Digital Technology Industry requires a comprehensive, integrated, and long-term approach, in which close coordination among policies, resources, markets, and human factors plays a decisive role. The Law can only be fully effective when it is translated into appropriate mechanisms and policies that ensure feasibility, transparency, and stability, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to the rapid development of science and technology and the context of deep international integration.
In this process, the State plays a developmental and enabling role by providing strategic orientation, building institutions, investing in digital infrastructure, and supporting research and development, thereby creating a favorable legal and policy environment for innovation. Enterprises especially digital technology companies should be identified as the core of the innovation ecosystem, proactively seizing opportunities, investing in technology, developing digital products and services, and enhancing their competitiveness. At the same time, the market functions as a mechanism for selection and innovation promotion through healthy competition, while society becomes a key driving force of digital transformation through the widespread adoption and effective use of technological advances.
In particular, human resources must be placed at the center, with a strong focus on developing high-quality digital talent, digital skills, and a culture of innovation. The coordinated and synchronous engagement of all stakeholders will create a solid foundation for the 2025 Law on Digital Technology Industry to be effectively implemented in practice, thereby contributing to the development of the digital economy, strengthening technological autonomy, and realizing the goal of rapid and sustainable development in the digital era./.
Master Lam Xuan Trung
REFERENCES:
- Digital Technology Industry Law 2025 (No. 71/2025/QH15)
- The Vietnamese Government has approved a detailed plan to implement the Law, including disseminating content, issuing decrees and guiding circulars for implementation from 2025–2026 (chinhphu.vn)
