Zhejiang taps internet to enhance govt services

East China's Zhejiang province has seen remarkable progress in its efforts to enhance government services and functions in recent years by fully leveraging the internet, according to a senior official in charge of big data development in the province.

Jin Zhipeng, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Big Data Development Administration, briefed participants on the achievements the province has made in this regard at a news conference during the ongoing sixth World Internet Conference on Monday.

According to Jin, the province has launched Zheliban, an online government service platform that covers 412 public services in various aspects of life, streamlining administrative procedures and reducing related materials by sharing data on the internet.

Currently the platform has 28 million registered members who can obtain most of the services simply with an ID card.

Government work has also been facilitated thanks to Zhezhengding, a digital platform of administrative collaboration co-developed by the provincial government and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Based on DingTalk, an all-in-one mobile workplace from Alibaba, Zhezhengding has created an all-weather online digital government. It has achieved coverage of organizations at all levels in Zhejiang province, with 1.23 million activated users, 260,000 working groups, and 715 online office and decision-making assistance applications.

Due to the platform's strong synergy capacity, government staff members can use Zhezhengding during their daily inspections across different departments and systems, Zhang Jianfeng, chief technology officer of Alibaba, said at the conference.

At the same time, important data, key indicators, and an index of praise for the government administration are all displayed in the Zhezhengding platform, which promotes transparency and openness.

"We aim to reshape the government functions and operations in a systematic and digital way to promote the modernization of the governance system and capacity of our government," said Jin.

Pioneering the digital transformation of government in China, Zhejiang took the lead in the nation to provide online government services in 2014 and proposed the "At Most One Visit" reform in 2016, enabling individuals and enterprises to fulfill administrative procedures with just one visit to the related authorities. The reform was included in the provincial government report in 2018.

Government digitalization has increasingly been a top priority in China's government reforms in recent years.

The State Council issued a guideline on accelerating the integration of the internet and government services in September 2016 and Premier Li Keqiang set out specific work tasks to promote online government services at an executive meeting of the State Council.

Answering the call of the central government, Zhejiang put forward the strategy of promoting overall government digitalization in 2018.

"Zhejiang has been focusing on digital transformation of the government in recent years to deepen the 'At Most One Visit' reform, promote high-quality development and enhance the business climate," said Yuan Jiajun, governor of the province, at the 2019 Hangzhou Apsara Conference on Sept 25.

Zhejiang aims to establish a digital government system covering the entire province by the end of 2020, and realize the full integration of digital technologies and government duty performance by 2022, according to an overall plan published by the provincial government at the end of 2018 on deepening the "At Most One Visit" reform and promoting digital transformation of the government.