By XU WEI | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2022-04-20 07:20

Key meeting calls for extensive use of high tech to enhance public services

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called on Tuesday for the extensive use of digital technologies in administration and public services to further modernize the nation's governance system and capacity.

While presiding over a meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform, Xi, the head of the committee, stressed the need to promote the digital and smart operations of the government and fully carry out the strategy to build up the nation's capacity in cyberspace.

Policymakers reviewed and adopted five policy documents at the meeting, including one to reform China's fiscal system below the provincial level, a plan to enable the financial sector to better support the nation's innovation and a guideline to improve the incentive mechanism for science and technology.

In stepping up efforts to build a digital government, the policymakers pledged to uphold and strengthen the Party's leadership across the board and meet the people's aspirations for a better life.

It is important to develop a system of digitalized services that are more accessible, convenient, fair and inclusive, and to ensure the public can make fewer trips when accessing administrative services with the enhanced sharing of data between departments, they said.

Digitalization should serve as a key factor underpinning the government's functions in economic regulation, market oversight, social management, public services and the protection of the ecology and the environment, they said.

The meeting called for coordinated steps to promote integration in technology, services and data and to enable more coordinated management and services across different levels, regions, systems, departments and service providers.

It stressed unremitting efforts in guaranteeing the security of data, including the development of a system that ensures data security for digital government.

In reforming China's fiscal system below the provincial level, the policymakers highlighted the necessity to clearly define the fiscal power and responsibilities in terms of expenditures of governments below the provincial level, improve the mechanism for transfer payments and enable more standardized fiscal management.