Veterans, Martyrs and DNA Results in One Database: Thông tư 26/2026/TT-BNV Takes Effect on 29 November

Việt Nam pays monthly allowances, health insurance, housing support and many other benefits under its policy for người có công với cách mạng: people with meritorious service to the revolution. The group covers war invalids, families of fallen soldiers (liệt sĩ), Heroic Vietnamese Mothers, people exposed to Agent Orange and their dependants. For decades the records behind these benefits were kept as paper files spread across ministries, provinces and communes. A new circular now sets out how that information becomes one structured, connected database.

Thông tư 26/2026/TT-BNV was issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (Bộ Nội vụ) on 15 October 2026 and signed by Deputy Minister Nguyễn Thị Hà. It takes effect on 29 November 2026. It has 15 articles in three chapters, plus three annexes that list every data field. Its legal bases are the Law on Identification, the Law on Data, the Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân (Personal Data Protection Law, 91/2025/QH15) and the Law on Digital Transformation (148/2025/QH15).

Three databases under one roof

Article 5 splits the system into three component databases:

Beneficiaries of preferential policies: personal details of the people with meritorious service, the policies they receive under the Ordinance on Preferential Treatment, allowance payments, and non-cash benefits.
Martyrs, martyrs’ graves and cemeteries: data taken from death notices and certificates of sacrifice, relatives named in the recognition file, graves in martyrs’ cemeteries and graves kept by families, the cemeteries and memorial works, and remains that have been found and reburied.
DNA of martyrs and their relatives: sampling records, requests for DNA testing, the testing units, and the expert conclusions that identify remains. The circular states plainly that this database holds those conclusions but does not store gene sequence data (không lưu trữ dữ liệu trình tự gen).

The annexes classify each field as source data (dữ liệu gốc), master data (dữ liệu chủ) or reference data (dữ liệu tham chiếu). Reference data comes from another system and must not be typed in again. Name, date of birth, sex, personal identification number, permanent address, ethnicity, religion and phone number are all marked as coming from the national population database. Health-insurance fields come from the national insurance database. The benefit fields are very granular. They cover orthopaedic devices and when the next one is due, education support by school year, land-use fee exemptions with plot details, preferential loans, tax relief and even the value of commemorative gifts.

How data gets in, and who can see it

Under Article 7, data enters the system in three ways. Some is produced when an administrative procedure is completed. Some comes from planned digitisation of archived paper files. The rest is synchronised automatically from other systems. Records are approved with a digital signature or electronic authentication. When an approver is absent, there must be a written or electronic delegation so that approvals are not delayed.

Article 8 makes the Department for People with Meritorious Services (Cục Người có công) the only body that issues access accounts. The system must use multi-factor authentication at login and keep a history of permission grants. An account is revoked immediately when its holder retires, resigns, transfers or is disciplined over the database, or when the agency loses the competence to access it.

Every change must record what was changed, when and by whom (Article 9). Records that rarely change, such as martyrs and cemeteries, are reconciled every six months. When the database and the population database disagree, the managing agency must investigate, write up a record of the check and correct the data. Data that is no longer needed must be destroyed so that it cannot be recovered.

Sharing within the ministry runs through its LGSP/LDOP platform. Sharing with other ministries and with provinces goes through the national NDXP and NDOP platforms, by API or by synchronisation (Article 10). Master and reference data must sync in real time. Agencies that use the data may use only the fields their registered purpose needs. They may not pass the data to third parties without permission, and every query on sensitive data is logged (Article 11).

What changes for citizens

For beneficiaries, the most visible change is in Article 11(3). People with meritorious service, their relatives and other beneficiaries can look up their own records through their VNeID electronic identity account. Article 14 also tells the ministry to work with the Ministry of Public Security to connect the database to the population database and the e-identification system. That would let it check citizens’ details and reuse data already on file. The stated goal is to cut the number of documents people must submit when they apply online. In practice, a family applying for a benefit should no longer need to provide copies of papers the state already holds.

The ministry must also publish open data on people with meritorious service. Personal data, sensitive data and state secrets are excluded.

Who is affected

Provincial and commune Departments of Home Affairs carry the main workload. They must digitise, standardise and update the records they hold, and they answer for the accuracy of what they enter.
Cemetery management boards and DNA testing units feed the martyrs’ and DNA databases.
IT vendors that build or maintain these systems must deliver MFA, change logs, real-time sync and APIs that follow the technical guide the managing agency issues.
Beneficiaries and their families get self-service access and should face less paperwork. They should also check that what VNeID shows them is correct.

Open questions

The circular sets the rules but not a timetable. It does not say when the backlog of paper files must be fully digitised. It also gives no date for when VNeID lookup will actually go live. On transition, it says only that data created before 29 November keeps being used and is standardised under the new rules. Much of the detail is delegated. Data updating follows Article 7 of Thông tư 19/2026/TT-BNV, the ministry-wide database circular issued on 20 August 2026 (our earlier post). Storage happens either at the ministry’s data centre or at the National Data Centre, and the circular does not say which records go where. DNA results are a special category of sensitive personal data under the Personal Data Protection Law. The circular relies on the general logging and access rules rather than setting extra safeguards of its own for them.

Sources

This post is general information, not legal advice.