Sanmenxia praised for highly efficient government services

The government hotline 12345 in Sanmenxia, Central China's Henan province has recently received positive feedback for offering quality public services.

Since it began operation in July 2017, the hotline service has accepted 8,506 cases, with 91.8 percent of them being solved in a timely manner. The service has received a 90.1 percent satisfaction rate.

"Big data that concentrates different government departments onto one platform is a big help in successfully completing the tasks", a director of the hotline center said.

12345 has become one of the most frequently mentioned strings of numbers among residents of Sanmenxia.

"I have long been bothered by the noise coming from the air-conditioner in the cinema next door, but nothing was done regardless of how many times I called them and complained" Kang Li, a resident of Hubin district, said with excitement, "this time I tried calling 12345, things were solved in two days."

Increasing government work efficiency was a hard nut to crack due to overlaps in government functions, causing departments to pass the buck to one another. The new service platform has clearly divided responsibilities, acting as an "invisible hand" and incentivizing government sectors with a quarterly assessment, according to an official in the hotline service center.

Thanks to the hotline, which directly links citizens with the government via a telephone wire, people's daily issues, from power outages to environmental pollution, have been efficiently solved.

By gathering 112 administrative approval items from 27 government departments and putting them under one roof of an administrative service center, Sanmenxia has taken a huge step in improving government services.

The amount of time required to get a real estate certificate processed in the city has now been halved to five days.

The hotline and administrative services are just a small part of Sanmenxia's plan, formulated in early 2017, to build itself into a smart city. According to the three-year scheme, the city will make use of IoT (Internet of Things) and big data to put services into a network, bringing various applications online.