FALL 2024 NO.88 / THOUGHT LEADERSHIP BRIEF 2 China presently leads the global smart city movement with over 500 smart cities either launched or planned, representing over half of all smart cities worldwide. Shenzhen is among the pioneering cities in China that have ventured into the development of a smart city. With highly developed supply chains for the electronic sector, the city has formed an industry cluster capable of supplying essential components for the smart city. Compared with technical development, it is not well understood how data is actually collected, shared, and used in smart cities in China. Many questions remain unexplored concerning various aspects of data governance, including open data management and institutional arrangement. ASSESSMENT Since the late 1990s, the smart city development in Shenzhen has progressed from establishing information and communication technology infrastructure and E-government to creating a comprehensive network of data in the smart city. A key feature of Shenzhen’s smart city development is close cooperation between the government and high-tech enterprises. These companies collaborate with the Shenzhen municipal government by providing their knowledge and expertise on advanced technologies, including big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). All data are collected from three primary sources: the Supercomputing Center, the Affairs and Resources Center, and the District-level Data Center. The channels of data collection include Wi-Fi, the government internal network, the mobile network, and the narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT). The scope of data covers transportation, business, population, and education. The Urban Big Data Center processes data to build the data resources platform and generic support cloud platform, which support the operation and management of the smart city. The government is primarily responsible for managing all the data in the data platforms within the smart city. Technology businesses offer technical assistance to the government in constructing data platforms, but they do not directly participate in data collection. The gathered data are made available for utilization by different parties. The data can be accessed via data platforms and other web portals, such as i Shenzhen, Shen i Enterprises, Shen Governance Smart, and Shen Government Easy. The primary recipients of data are government departments, which rely on it to deliver a range of services to the public. Sensitive data related to privacy is primarily stored in the public sector. Government officials assert that they uphold a strict level of secrecy for personal privacy data, which is obtained from residents with their informed consent. Every agency and individual must go through rigorous approval procedures in order to gain access to the data. Upon obtaining authorization, individuals are limited to accessing datasets that do not contain sensitive personal information. Photo by lwzee on Unsplash
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