What is a digital address, how is digital address issuance different from current address?

'Number address' refers to the address of each house recorded in the national number address database. When you want to find this house number, the app will provide precise directions right to the house's door.

'Địa chỉ số' là gì, tại sao cần đẩy nhanh việc cấp 'địa chỉ số'? - Ảnh 1. — Main interface of the national digital address website - Photo: Screenshot

According to the Prime Minister 's decision on the "Postal Development Strategy to 2025 and Orientation to 2030", the goal is that by 2025, 100% of households nationwide will have a "digital address".

However, many people are still unclear about what a numerical address is.

To offer additional perspectives on this newly emerging issue, Tuoi Tre Online presents the opinions of experts Le Hong Boi and Vo Anh Tuan to further clarify the matter.

What is a numerical address?

"Numerical address" is a series of numbers representing a physical address, which is the address of each house recorded in the national numerical address database.

Each address is a ten-digit number. The first five digits (from left to right) are the postal code of the ward/commune where the house is located, and the next five digits are used to distinguish each house within that postal code.

The advantage of numerical addresses is that they use numbers and the geographical coordinates of the house instead of the long, hard-to-find numbers currently used.

For example: The house's actual address is 275/3/18/... Nguyen Thai Son Street, Ward 5, Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City, but the address number will be a different sequence of numbers.

When you want to find this house number, the Diachiso mobile app will provide precise directions right to the house door.

Furthermore, merging wards or communes will not have any impact. The address number remains unchanged and is legally valid.

Numbered addresses solve the problem of knowing house numbers but being unable to reach the address in many residential areas, and the problem of houses without numbers in remote areas. These are issues that were very difficult to solve with traditional address systems.

Thanks to geographical coordinates, digital maps on smartphones can be used to find the exact house. This is beneficial for people in determining their destination.

Every house in the country is assigned a numbered address when postal workers arrive at the door, recording the geographical coordinates of the entrance and other details.

This approach is very labor-intensive and time-consuming, while there is only one year left until the deadline for achieving the goal of 100% of households nationwide having digital addresses.

Assign numerical addresses to vacant land plots.

To expedite the issuance of digital addresses, the Ministry of Information and Communications needs to coordinate with the General Department of Land Management (Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment) to access data from all land use right certificates nationwide.

Each land use right certificate already contains the land parcel coordinates in the VN2000 coordinate system; all that's needed is a software program to read each land use right certificate sequentially.

Doing so would only require the software development once, saving the time and effort of tens of thousands of postal workers.

The addresses assigned by this software contain at least geographic coordinates, plus code, WhatsApp words, and may also include the traditional address and plot number.

Other information will be added and updated gradually by the user: transaction name, phone number, email address, etc.

To make reading house numbers easier, the addresses of adjacent houses should be consecutive numbers. To achieve this, each postal code area should be divided into zones.

For example, divide a ward into 50-100 zones, each zone being a street or alley with many houses, and each zone having 1,000-2,000 consecutive numbers to assign to houses within that zone.

Vacant land plots are also assigned numbered addresses. Larger plots have a few reserved addresses that are not assigned in case the land is subdivided. The number of reserved addresses is equal to the total area of the land plot divided by the minimum area allowed for subdivision.

Plots of land adjacent to multiple roads are assigned corresponding numbered addresses.

The addresses assigned by the software may be slightly different from the actual entrances and exits of large properties; in such cases, users can submit adjustment requests via the app and web for the administrator to update.

Once the goal of having 100% of houses with a digital address is reached, each person will know the digital address of their current location by opening the Diachiso app.

The coordination between the two relevant ministries will also facilitate the future use of digital addresses in legal documents.

How is the national "digital address" platform being implemented?

A representative from Vietnam Post Corporation (VNPost) stated that VNPost is the unit assigned to lead the construction of the technical infrastructure and operation of the national digital address database.

This is one of 35 national digital platforms prioritized for development to promote the development of digital government, digital economy, and digital society.

To date, VNPost has completed the construction of the technical infrastructure system, website, and mobile application for digital addresses, enabling citizens, agencies, organizations, and businesses to participate in proposing, editing, and searching the digital address database.

Along with building the technical infrastructure system, VNPost has implemented the collection, creation, updating, and supplementation of basic information fields, forming a digital address database with more than 23 million addresses.