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Story of Digital Reform in Hangzhou

International Department of the CPC Central Committee & Zhejiang provincial publicity department| Updated: April 12, 2021 L M S

At the beginning of 2020, as COVID-19 swept across the country, all parts of China faced the challenging task of epidemic prevention and control. The national, provincial and municipal governments made policies to help enterprises and employees to weather the epidemic. In order to deliver the support promised to companies in a timely and non-face-to-face manner, Hangzhou Municipal Government's "Qinqing Online" digital platform was launched, facilitating direct communication between the government and companies, which is an important achievement of Zhejiang's digital transformation.

"Qinqing Online" couldn't have been possible without Hangzhou City Brain system, an original innovation of Hangzhou. In 2016, Hangzhou proposed the concept of City Brain for the first time, with an initial attempt to alleviate traffic congestion in the city through the use of big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. Hangzhou has continuously enriched and expanded the content of City Brain to solve difficulties in urban governance and services. In 2020, while proactively fighting COVID-19, the Hangzhou Municipal Government introduced a health code system, the first in the nation, allowing healthy people to travel freely. "Qinqing Online" is an "express" digital service platform which integrates resources and data of different government departments with the help of City Brain to support government-enterprise interaction.

Direct service delivery via process re-engineering. "Qinqing Online" is a practice of digital service-oriented government with a focus on process re-engineering. By optimizing process flows of policies and services, "Qinqing Online" provides a platform for direct interactions between government departments and enterprises with improved service delivery. Take "enterprise employee rental subsidy" during the epidemic period as an example. Thanks to process re-engineering, the complicated claiming process that used to take 1 to 2 months is now reduced to one or two seconds with "zero materials, zero approvals, and instant cash-out".

Digital empowerment for the benefit of government governance. By breaking down data barriers and improving data collaboration and data governance capacity, "Qinqing Online" has gradually explored a new path of harnessing digital technology to help with city management. With City Brain as its engine, it has established 453 data interfaces and integrated more than 300 service modules with 53 government departments including taxation, human resources, housing management, natural resources and planning, and services in 14 districts and counties (cities). Driven by data collaboration, it has established resource collaboration, business collaboration, service collaboration and supervision collaboration centered on "service scenarios", and 1.16 million funds and 3.25 million times of service have been delivered accurately, actively and safely and directly to enterprises and employees.

Approval procedure reform on the concept of direct service delivery. "Qinqing Online" has rolled out a series of flagship service programs, such as "approval of investment projects within hours", "enterprise registry within minutes", and "related businesses on a single sheet". It is reshaping the administrative examination and approval procedure by offering "one-click direct access", which enables enterprises to have direct access to related services with a single click online and without going to the government service center even once. For example, after the optimization and streamlining of administrative process, the approval of enterprise industrial projects on "Qinqing Online" was reduced from the original 10 working days for full process approval to 9 and a half hours, which has greatly benefited enterprises.

An innovative approach to adaptive governance based on credit system. By establishing a public credit information platform of Hangzhou and fully applying credit commitments and credit rewards and punishments, "Qinqing Online" has integrated the public credit records and evaluations of enterprises. For the first time, "Qinqing Online" was able to establish a dual random check mechanism based on credit classification, creating a closed-loop online management system of corporate credit. Companies are encouraged to make credit commitments beforehand. The system is able to check the company's honesty in comittment, control potential risks and punish acts of dishonesty afterwards.

Smart city, efficient governance. "Qinqing Online" is an important exploration of modern governance, it combines and makes full use of various data, streamlines procedures, integrates public credit information and provides efficient service. By examining and solving problems from a corporate perspective, "Qinqing Online" breaks through conventions to reform the government services in concepts, behaviors, systems, rules and methods in an all-round way, embarking on a new path to empower the government-business relations with digital technology.

Today, digital applications and platforms similar to "Qinqing Online" can be found everywhere in Hangzhou's urban governance. In 2021, Zhejiang Province is promoting digital reform in an all-round manner. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Zhejiang will promote the modernization of provincial governance, establish an integrated and overall smart governance platform, and push for reforms in digital Party building, digital government, digital society, digital economy and digital rule of law, producing a number of theoretical and institutional innovations.