Guiyang maximizes government data

As one of China's first national big data comprehensive pilot areas, Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province and also known as China's Data Valley, launched an open platform that allows citizens to query government data online.

About 2,974 data sets, 481 application programming interface (API) resources, and 11 million data records covering 51 municipal departments and 13 districts and counties are available on the platform for free.

Since being launched in January 2017, the platform has achieved more than 2.4 million visits and 600,000 downloads, and has become the first municipal and district level open platform for government data in the country.

The platform not only enables citizens to search for data involving transportation, tourism, weather, trade, medicine, and education, but also allows companies to examine the values behind the data.

Guizhou Guangyike Technology Co is a Guiyang based technology company that provides solutions involving the bidding industry. With commerce information provided by the government, the company successfully developed an app for bidders to search for credit information of the tendering main body.

Compared to web searches or purchasing information from third-party companies, the data provided by the government is complete, accurate, less time consuming, and reduces costs.

To further the opening of government data, the platform will improve data quality by establishing a data standard and quality control system to clean up low value and invalid data.

The platform will also enhance cooperation with companies, universities, and institutions to support the application of government data.