What is a digital address, and how is digital addressing different from current addresses?

'Number Address' is the address of each house recorded in the national number address database. When you want to find this house number, the app will give you exact directions to the door of the house.

Main interface of national digital address website – Photo: Screenshot

By decision of Prime minister Goverment Regarding the "Postal Development Strategy to 2025 and Vision to 2030", the goal is that by 2025, 100% of households nationwide will have a "digital address".

However, many people do not yet understand what a digital address is.

To contribute additional perspectives on new issues of concern, Youth Online Send readers the opinions of experts Le Hong Boi and Vo Anh Tuan to clarify this issue.

What is a digital address?

A “digital address” is a series of numbers that represents a physical address, which is the address of each house recorded in the national digital address database.

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

The advantage of digital addresses is that they use numbers and the geographic coordinates of the house instead of the long, hard-to-find numbers that are used today.

For example: The house has the actual address 275/3/18/… Nguyen Thai Son, 5 ward, Go Vap district, Ho Chi Minh City but the digital address will be a different series of numbers.

When you want to find this house number, the Diachiso mobile app will give you exact directions to the door of the house.

In addition, in case of merging into a ward or commune, it will not be affected. The address number remains unchanged and is legal.

Digital addresses solve the problem of knowing the house number but not being able to reach the place in many residential areas, and the problem of houses without numbers in remote areas. These are problems that are very difficult to solve with traditional address allocation.

Thanks to the geographical coordinates, it is possible to use the digital map in the smartphone to find the right house. This is beneficial for people in determining the necessary location.

Every house in the country is assigned a digital address when a postal worker arrives at the door, recording the geographic coordinates of the entrance and other details.

This method takes a lot of effort and time, while there is only one year left until the target of 100% of households nationwide having a digital address.

Assigning digital addresses to vacant lots

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

Each land use right certificate file has the land plot coordinates in the VN2000 coordinate system, just need to create a software to read each land use right certificate file in turn.

Doing so only requires one-time software development and saves the work of tens of thousands of postal workers. 

The digital address issued by this software has the minimum information of geographic coordinates, pluscode, what3words, and can also have the traditional address, land plot number.

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

For ease of reading house numbers, the addresses of adjacent houses should be consecutive numbers. To do this, each postal code area should be divided into zones.

For example, divide a ward into 50 - 100 regions, each region is a street or an alley with many houses, each region has 1.000 - 2.000 consecutive numbers to assign to houses in the region.

Vacant lots are also assigned a numbered address. Large lots are reserved with a few unassigned addresses in case the lot is subdivided. The number of reserved addresses is equal to the total area of ​​the lot divided by the minimum area that can be subdivided.

Land plots adjacent to multiple roads are assigned multiple corresponding address numbers.

The digital address provided by the software may be slightly different from the actual entrance of large plots of land. In that case, users can send a request for adjustment via the app and web for the admin to update.

Once the goal of 100% of houses having a digital address is reached, each person will know the digital address of the place they are standing by opening the Diachiso app.

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 deployed?

Representative of the Corporation Post office Vietnam Post (VNPost) said that VNPost is the unit assigned to take charge of building the technical infrastructure system and operating 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.

Up to now, VNPost has completed the construction of technical infrastructure system, website, mobile application (app) of digital addresses so that people, agencies, organizations, and businesses can participate in proposing, editing and looking up the digital address database.

Along with the construction of technical infrastructure, VNPost has deployed the collection, creation, updating, and addition of data of basic information fields, forming a digital address database with more than 23 million addresses.

Some figures about the digital address platform as of 31-10-2024

– Total number of user accounts registered on the digital address platform: 30.524 accounts.

– Total number of devices with installed address book application: 9.972 (9.922 Android and 50 IOS).

– Total cumulative number of visits to the website “diachiso.gov.vn” from January 1, 1 – October 2024, 31: 10 visits.

– Total number of queries to the digital address platform from 1-1-2024 – 31-10-2024: 354.460.623 queries.