Information Sharing Measures Released
On September 20, the State Council released The Administrative Interim Measures for Sharing of Government Information Resources (referred to as “Interim Measures"), the first regulatory and important guiding document for the current and future government information sharing practice.
In the Interim Measures,
- government information is defined as the varied information resources produced or acquired and recorded or kept in certain forms, by administrative bodies in the process of performing their duties, and is classified into three categories: unconditional sharing, conditional sharing and non-sharing.
- The Interim Measures outline sharing principles, and calls for demand driven, free of charge, standardized and secure government information resources sharing.
- Moving forward, a Guide to Preparation of Government Information Resources Inventory will be created by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) to specify the classification, responsible parties, format, attributes, renewal time, sharing type, sharing mode, and operational requirements of shared information resource, and to guide government departments to make inventory based on standard guidelines.
- A national data sharing and exchange platform will be created to facilitate cross-department information sharing, and all the government department and administrative institutions should be connected with the national platform.
The Interim Measures calls for top level design and coordinated efforts in building an effective sharing mechanism and a clear information classification based on the Guide to Preparation of Government Information Resources Inventory that is in the making and will be published as the standard guidelines. This move is key to utilize and unleash the potential for government data’s in public service, big data innovation and industry integration, and potentially lays a good foundation for future open data initiatives.
