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“One City, Two Networks”: Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Smart Public Governance in Shanghai

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Quo Vadis, Sovereignty?

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 154))

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Abstract

In the past 10 years, China has increasingly sought to use digital technologies to improve public service provision and public sector operations in various policy areas. In this context, Shanghai has launched two major policy initiatives that leverage Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the delivery of administrative services and urban management services: the Government Online-Offline Shanghai and the Single Platform for Urban Management, respectively. These are two municipal digital platforms that process huge amounts of data. Such data are gathered from government agencies at the municipal, district and subdistrict levels via an extensive technological infrastructure designed and controlled by the municipal government. Based on these data, several AI applications – from the automatic pre-approval of administrative documents to real-time management of traffic conditions – are deployed through the Government Online-Offline Shanghai and the Single Platform for Urban Management, integrating AI technologies into the activities of government agencies at each administrative level. The Government Online-Offline Shanghai and the Single Platform for Urban Management show that digital data are an essential asset for public governance in China. These real-world applications highlight that “digital sovereignty” is no longer an abstract concept. As digitalization starts having tangible impacts on the lives of millions of citizens, the experience of Shanghai brings into focus some of the practical implications of pursuing leadership and strategic autonomy in the digital field, and it suggests that China will continue to actively promote its ability to assert control over digital resources in the country and abroad.

This chapter is based on a section from: Todaro, Diego. 2022. “Ambition, Capacity and Reality: the Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector in Shanghai”. PhD diss., forthcoming, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Heidelberg University.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For instance: Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and State Council. 2014. National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020) [国家新型城镇化规划 (2014–2020年)], 16 March 2014. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2014-03/16/content_2640075.htm; National Development and Reform Commission et al. 2014. Guiding opinions on promoting the healthy development of smart cities [关于促进智慧城市健康发展的指导意见], 发改高技 (2014) 1770, 27 August 2014. http://www.mgov.cn/complexity/info140827.htm; National Development and Reform Commission, Cyberspace Administration of China and National Standards Committee Office. 2016. New smart city evaluation index (2016) [新型智慧城市评价指标 (2016年)], 发改办高技 (2016) 2476, 22 November 2016. https://www.ndrc.gov.cn/xxgk/zcfb/tz/201611/t20161128_962791.html?code=&state=123

  2. 2.

    National Development and Reform Commission et al. 2016. Implementation plan for the promotion of the “Internet Plus Government Services” through pilot projects of citizen information services [推进 “互联网 + 政务服务” 开展信息惠民试点实施方案]. 国办发 (2016) 23, 14 April 2016. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2016-04/26/content_5068058.htm

  3. 3.

    State Council. 2015. “Internet Plus” action plan [“互联网+” 行动]. 国发 (2015) 40, 4 July 2015. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2015-07/04/content_10002.htm

  4. 4.

    Shanghai is administratively organized into 16 districts. Below the districts there are 215 township-level divisions (乡级行政区) that include 107 subdistricts (街道), 106 towns (镇) and two townships (乡). Township-level divisions are collectively called here “subdistricts”. Below township-level divisions there are 4563 residential communities (社区) and 1562 administrative villages (行政村). These are often indicated by referring to their governing bodies: the neighborhood committees (社区居民委员会) and the villagers’ committees (村民委员会).

  5. 5.

    Government Online-Offline Shanghai Internet portal: https://zwdt.sh.gov.cn/govPortals/index.do

  6. 6.

    The number of subdistrict service acceptance centers is higher than the number of subdistricts (215) because in some districts there is more than one service acceptance center for each subdistrict (e.g., Fengxian District has 3 subdistricts and 8 towns, but 13 service acceptance centers).

  7. 7.

    Called in Chinese “统分方式”, it is one of the three methods indicated by the State Council for the construction of e-government platforms at the provincial level. The other two methods are: the construction of separate provincial and city platforms linked only through their data exchange centers (called 分建方式); or the construction of a unified e-government platform with one single data exchange center for the whole province (called 统建方式). State Council. 2017. Guidelines for the construction of the technical system of “Internet Plus Government Services” [互联网 + 政务服务” 技术体系建设指南], 国办函 (2016) 108, 12 January 2017. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2017-01/12/content_5159174.htm

  8. 8.

    A data lake is a centralized repository for collecting and analyzing extremely large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data in their native format. Unlike traditional data warehouses, data lakes can process video, audio, logs, sensor data and documents to support analytics, AI, etc. IBM. N.d. “Data lake solutions”. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/data-lake#:~:text=A%20data%20lake%20is%20a,better%20predictions%2C%20and%20improved%20optimization.

  9. 9.

    The National Government Affairs Network (国家政务业务专网) is part of the National E-Government Extranet (国家电子政务外网), built in the early 2000s under the supervision of the National Informatization Leading Group (国家信息化领导小组). The National E-Government Extranet is the national extranet platform for Party committees, People’s Congresses, government agencies, courts, procuratorates and other government departments at all administrative levels. Within this framework, the National Government Affairs Network is mainly used for the transmission of non-confidential documents and information between government agencies in China.

  10. 10.

    The IPv is a communication protocol that assigns a unique IP address for the identification and location of devices connected to the Internet, which is necessary for the device to communicate with the network. The protocol specifies how communications take place between one device and another through an addressing system. Compared to its predecessor IPv4 that works on 32 bits, IPv6 works on 128 bits. Thus, it allows far more IP addresses (2128 against 232) to connect devices to the Internet, including smart sensors and various other IoT devices.

  11. 11.

    In the Single Platform for Urban Management, data can also be collected and shared via the network of urban operation centers, depending on the source of data. For instance, IoT-generated data are often transmitted to the relevant urban operation centers at the municipal, district or subdistrict level and can be directly shared between them, as urban operation centers are also connected via the e-government clouds. There are many possible configurations, and the situation is constantly evolving as the SPM progressively expands its sources of urban governance data. The existence of multiple channels for data sharing does not diminish the importance of the big data management centers in storing and transferring data for urban governance.

  12. 12.

    The population database contains information on natural persons, such as floating population, permanent residents, employment, and social security, among others. The legal person database contains information on enterprises, social organizations and other entities, including tax, corporate social security, electronic licenses and other data. The geospatial information database contains information on Shanghai’s administrative divisions, topography, land use, municipal facilities, among others. The macroeconomic information database contains data on economic and social development, such as fiscal revenues and expenditures, taxation, employment, industrial development, etc. The electronic certificate database contains more than 380 kinds of common certificates such as ID cards, household registration booklets (户口本), real estate property certificates, and enterprise business licenses, among others.

  13. 13.

    The full list is available on the Shanghai Municipal Big Data Center website: https://www.shdata.com/PC/App/friends

  14. 14.

    Optical character recognition (OCR) recognizes printed or handwritten text characters inside digital images of physical documents, and translates the characters into code that can be used for data processing. It is typically used to convert the information contained in physical documents into machine-readable text.

  15. 15.

    The official policy documents on the Single Platform for Urban Management consistently indicate these five areas as priorities for the use AI and other technologies to optimize urban governance. These documents also outline some types of AI applications that can be used to promote smart urban management in each of these policy areas. For instance: in public security, use new information technology for monitoring and early warning of large crowds, urban security and fighting crimes; in urban daily management, use real-time data analysis, computer vision, and other technologies in the field of intelligent transportation to improve service efficiency.

  16. 16.

    The Shanghai Urban Operation Management Center partners with Tencent and Guanyuan Technology, among others. Districts and subdistricts can partner with hundreds of qualified suppliers, which often provide technologies also to the Government Online-Offline Shanghai. For instance, some of the main suppliers of both digital platforms include: Huawei (华为), Dahua Technology (大华科技), Hikvision (海康威视), SenseTime (商汤科技), Wanda Information (万达信息), Guotai Xindian Software (国泰新点软件), Tencent (腾讯), Baidu (百度) and iFlytek (科大讯飞), among others.

  17. 17.

    The data used for the AI applications developed by the subdistrict urban operation centers are provided by district-level big data centers, since there are no big data centers in subdistricts. In addition, as noted in FN 11, some data can already be stored in the urban operation centers.

  18. 18.

    Predictive service delivery uses AI and statistical techniques to examine historical data in order to identify trends (patterns and relationships) that can be used to anticipate future needs. For an analysis of the expected benefits of predictive service delivery in the public sector, see: Trehan, Vishal. 2021. “Predictive Algorithms in the Public Sector”. Rutgers New Jersey State Policy Lab, https://policylab.rutgers.edu/predictive-algorithms-in-the-public-sector/; Local Government Association. 2020. “Using predictive analytics in local public services”. Local Government Association, https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/using-predictive-analytics-local-public-services#what-do-we-mean-by-predictive-analytics; or Smith, Randall. 2018. The Future of Government: Moving from reactive to predictive service delivery. Deloitte, https://www2.deloitte.com/nz/en/pages/technology/articles/future-of-government.html

  19. 19.

    In the period 2018–2022, the Shanghai government published six policy documents for the implementation of the Government Online-Offline Shanghai. Between 2020 and 2022, it released four policy documents for the implementation of the Single Platform for Urban Management.

  20. 20.

    State Council. 2020. Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on building a more complete system and mechanism for market-oriented allocation of factors of production [中共中央国务院关于构建更加完善的要素市场化配置体制机制的意见], 9 April 2020. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2020-04/09/content_5500622.htm

  21. 21.

    Shanghai CPC Municipal Committee and Shanghai Municipal Government. 2021. Opinions on comprehensively promoting the digital transformation of Shanghai [关于全面推进上海城市数字化转型意见]. Shanghai Digital Transformation [上海城市数字化转型], 8 January 2021. http://dt.sheitc.sh.gov.cn/szzc/573.jhtml

  22. 22.

    Shanghai Government General Office. 2021. Shanghai Municipal 14th Five-Year Plan for comprehensively promoting urban digital transformation [上海市全面推进城市数字化转型 “十四五” 规划], 沪府办发 (2021) 29, 24 October 2021. https://www.shanghai.gov.cn/nw12344/20211027/6517c7fd7b804553a37c1165f0ff6ee4.html

  23. 23.

    The three operational documents focusing on the digitalization of the public sector are: (i) Action plan for promoting the digital transformation of life in Shanghai and build a high-quality digital life (2021–2023) [推进上海生活数字化转型 构建高品质数字生活行动方案 (2021–2023年)], published in July 2021 by the Shanghai Municipal Government, http://dt.sheitc.sh.gov.cn/szzc/575.jhtml; (ii) Several policy measures of Shanghai to promote urban digital transformation [上海市促进城市数字化转型的若干政策措施], published in July 2021 by the Shanghai Development and Reform Commission, http://dt.sheitc.sh.gov.cn/szzc/1200.jhtml; and (iii) Action plan for promoting the digital transformation and realizing high-efficiency of governance (2021–2023) [推进治理数字化转型 实现高效能治理行动方案 (2021–2023)], published in December 2021 by the Shanghai Municipal Government, http://dt.sheitc.sh.gov.cn/szzc/1761.jhtml

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Todaro, D. (2023). “One City, Two Networks”: Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Smart Public Governance in Shanghai. In: Timoteo, M., Verri, B., Nanni, R. (eds) Quo Vadis, Sovereignty? . Philosophical Studies Series, vol 154. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41566-1_6

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