State Council Promotes Government Utilization of Big Data Technologies

On July 1, the State Council General Office released Several Opinions on Strengthening the Service for and Supervision of Market Subjects by Utilizing Big Data, aiming to increase the effectiveness of government services and regulation by expanding utilization of advanced information technologies including big data and cloud computing.

The Opinions outlined several key objectives including:

  • Use big data to improve government services for and regulation of market subjects, establishing credit rating motivation system, product information traceability system, and e-commerce market regulation.
  • Promote opening and sharing of government and social information resources
  • Improve government capability to utilize big data, strengthening e-governance, promoting government purchase of public big data resources and technologies
  • Actively cultivate and develop credit reporting systems, introducing "blacklist" exposure systems for low-credit or illegal market subjects

In addition, the Opinions included a few key supportive measures to realize the goals, including:

  • Encourage collaboration between enterprises, universities and scientific research institutes on high-performance equipment development and innovation, such as computers, storage devices, network equipment, smart terminals, and database software
  • Establish rules on enterprise trade secret protection, personal information and privacy protection, IP protection, as well as uniform social credit code system
  • Complete technical standards on government information collection, storage, disclosure, sharing, usage, quality assurance and security management
  • Strengthen risk assessment and network and information security protection of big data technologies, equipment and service providers; implement national information security Multi-Level Protection Scheme

A detailed assignment chart of 26 key tasks specifying responsible government entities and respective timelines was attached at the end of the circular, with the latest implementation date by 2020.