Big data in China

Chapter 12 How does China get on the big data express? (3)
The reluctance to give up what has been done in the past is the force of habit.That's the way management is, people don't always like to innovate in management.Old-fashioned or instinctive, whether it's a country, a business, or an individual.

Professor Kim Hall of Yale University said: "What is modernization? Modernization is the systematic, continuous and targeted use of various human capabilities to control the natural and social environment in order to achieve various human purposes." I The interpretation is that modernization requires continuous innovation and improvement of social governance models, which is the basis for the progress of human civilization.

To improve the level of social governance in China, the current governance model needs to be reformed and updated.Just as on the battlefield, the combat mode of the army continues to improve with the development of weapons, the development of big data technology has also ushered in the current social governance model, which may be the most fundamental change in human history.For example, big data technology can play a greater role in the scope of work such as welfare, administration, transportation, response to sudden disasters, and maintenance of stability.

If Western countries face only one or two problems due to their strong accumulation and first-mover advantages, even if the country needs to break through certain obstacles, then China today is facing several "crossroads" and will not allow it to commit Any trace of error.

Eliminate "data segregation" and "data islands"

If we compare data to a certain asset, in the state of separatism, the data market presents this form: everyone hides in their own house behind closed doors, collects and increases data (assets), keeps their pockets tight, and waits for the price And sell.It is very difficult and slow to obtain data from each other, which requires bargaining, trust building and enough time cost, and each data provider (independent home) is like an isolated island.

When we try to manage data and enter the substantive stage, we will find that there are three problems hindering our work: data fragmentation, data islands and data quality.They are both unified wholes (hazards often erupt together) and can be presented separately at certain stages.Data segregation - the phenomenon of data dispersion caused by artificial factors such as systems, departmental protectionism, or small team interests; data islands - the phenomenon of data dispersion and inability to centralize and connect due to technological gaps and legacy problems;

Data quality - mainly includes the authenticity, integrity and consistency of data.We all know that the quality of data directly affects the value of "data assets", but the solution cannot be achieved overnight, and requires comprehensive improvement in all aspects, such as efforts in multiple fields such as technology, system, and culture.

The phenomenon of data segregation exists more among various departments and localities of the country, and large enterprises will also cause data separatism.Based on its inevitable harm to efficiency, data separatism is the first undesirable phenomenon that we must eliminate. It violates the spirit of the big data era, and people are urgently needed to come up with solutions and cooperation sincerity.Specifically, the data islands caused by separatist regimes have several characteristics that modern people can no longer tolerate: [-]. The cost of data users (users) is constantly superimposed, and the cost is repeatedly paid in a service; [-]. Blocking the progress of technology , it is difficult to achieve industrial integration; third, the link of "cross-island" cooperation is cumbersome and slow, and information sharing lacks real-time performance.Therefore, although all walks of life in China are full of longing for data assets, and it is a bright prospect to turn the huge amount of data at hand into profits, but people are more worried about the reality of "data separatism", which makes this A thick shadow casts over the foreground.

For example, Taobao warned Octave that its "Super Data Platform" infringed the software copyright of Taobao's "Data Rubik's Cube".The Chinese government has no way to make a statement, because our country still lacks legislation on the ownership and use rights of data assets, and there is no definition of data on commodity prices published on the Internet. Should it only belong to Taobao, or should it open the door to others? Companies also have the right to share.Taobao and Tencent Weibo successively blocked Baidu's spider crawlers is also a proof.

Now domestic Internet giants hold a large amount of consumer data, and some of them, such as Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba Group, respectively hold search, social, and consumption data.If these three-party data can be aggregated together, a complete data association map of online information can be pieced together.But the reality is that they have no intention of cooperating with each other. On the contrary, they are building high walls to prevent data from leaking out, at least not allowing the other party to easily obtain it.

From the perspective of the nature of big data, its spirit of openness and sharing has encountered the barriers of data separatism in China.People know that only by sharing can the huge value of big data be fully developed, but this is not the case in practice. There is still an almost insurmountable gap between ideals and reality.Mr. Liang, a big data expert who works for a well-known domestic IT company, said: "China's Internet giants are still feudal in nature, and they don't realize that the flow of information is the essence of the Internet." Mr. Liang has long been concerned about big data , he believes that these Internet companies have realized that data will be a strategic asset for future development, so they will not easily hand it over to others.But it is precisely because of this that China's current big data industry lacks integrity and consistency, which greatly reduces the usable value.

Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises in the middle and lower reaches of the big data industry, compared with giants such as Taobao and Baidu, they have no technological advantages. If they lack the support of data sources, they will really be in an embarrassing situation in terms of operation and layout: Although there is a pot, there is no rice.

When conducting surveys in the industry, many managers reported that even though the giants verbally promised to open up and let other companies share data, they were actually "selling dog meat" and did not open up the data source sincerely, or They are only allowed to run on their respective platforms.

This problem also exists in government departments. For example, individual information in our society is closed in the hands of different institutions such as industrial and commercial departments, banks, insurance, public security, hospitals, social security, and operators. It is very difficult to integrate.Based on sectoral interest protectionism, they lack motivation for information sharing, which is an obstacle that China must remove as soon as possible.Only by breaking the isolated island can we see the dawn of China's big data era.

Big data does not exist in a certain department, nor can it be realized by a single department.The government needs to compare some data both horizontally and vertically to draw conclusions that are closest to the facts.Therefore, it is imperative to solve the problems of data fragmentation and information islands, and improve the ability and planning of system construction.From a technical perspective, the high flexibility of cloud computing just corresponds to the needs of the Chinese government.

My suggestion is that for the development of the big data industry, governments at all levels should take the lead in realizing the open sharing of hierarchical data.Formulate a series of targeted policies and regulations from top to bottom, guide and promote all walks of life to open data, carry out data cooperation, and melt all data into one furnace.While grasping the huge business opportunities, we must also do a good job in the distribution of benefits and pay attention to the protection of special information.

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's plan: four key technology innovation projects

Earlier, China listed cloud computing as a key area of ​​the new generation of information technology industry, and will give strong support during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period.During the investigation, Zhou Zixue, Chief Economist of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that specific measures include accelerating the industrialization of cloud computing technology research and development, organizing pilot demonstrations of cloud computing applications, and focusing on improving the industrial development environment.

China has already started to take action and has taken practical steps.During the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will focus on accelerating the cloud computing industry, promote the industrialization of its services, improve the ability of innovation and information services, and promote the research and development of core computing, and finally form a cloud computing system solution. Provide the ability to industrialize major products and form a service standard and standardized management system.

In the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology listed four key technological innovation projects related to big data.They are:

1. Data mining: solve the ability to collect data;
2. Massive data storage: solve the ability to store data;
3. Information processing technology: solve the ability to classify and analyze data;
4. Intelligent analysis of images and videos: the ability to solve advanced analysis of data.These are all important components of China's big data.In this regard, an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also said: "China will introduce more preferential policies in the future, expanding to small and medium-sized data centers, so that the policy space for big data development will be broader, and it will be conducive to the participation of enterprises."

The super-large data center planned and constructed in China has a scale of 1 standard racks and more than 10 servers.Since 2011, China has planned and constructed 20 to 30 super-large data centers, which are distributed all over the country and have also received preferential policies from the state.In the future, this preferential scope will also be extended to small and medium-sized data centers, and gradually realize the development to the grassroots.

Moreover, in order to avoid building data centers blindly, at the beginning of 2013, several departments in China jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Construction and Layout of Data Centers". The layout will allow China's big data industry to develop healthily, embark on a road with Chinese characteristics, and create a perfect policy environment for enterprises.

Build a Big Data Government

"The prospect of the government?" In an interview, a foreign expert on big data trends said to me, "For the government, big data is more like a strategic resource. The value of gas is even greater.” With the continuous development of Internet technology, data has already reflected its value, and people not only create data, but also live surrounded by data.Isn't the whole world like that?China is also on the move. Although it is a little behind, it has begun to catch up.

How to use data resources to improve government work efficiency, use data technology to promote administrative innovation and efficient management of information, and establish a real big data government has become a high-end subject that major countries are focusing on research.We not only need a high-yield big data industry, but also an efficient big data government.Moreover, as technology continues to mature, big data technology will inevitably become an important tool for national governance around the world.

☆Opportunities and challenges of data government

The Obama administration has announced the US Big Data Research and Development Initiative.In this sprawling initiative, six departments and agencies of the federal government announced more than $2 million in investments to advance tools and technologies for accessing, organizing, and gathering discovery from vast amounts of digital data.In addition to the big data transformation in the intelligence field, this is an important layout of the US government in the administrative field. Their goal is to lead the world in the wave of the big data revolution after the new technological revolution and become a model for other countries to learn from.Some related companies in the United States have also taken action. They have sponsored big data-related competitions and provided universities with research funding in this area.Ivy League universities have also launched a new research-based course to train the next generation of "data scientists" for American society.

The White House spokesperson said: "We are also very interested in supporting the establishment of a forum related to big data, which includes the latest cooperation between public and private organizations. For example, non-profit organizations are welcome to collect, analyze and analyze public service data. Visualization."

The Chinese government is also doing something.As early as 2006, the National Bureau of Statistics established the Social Conditions and Public Opinion Survey Center, which for the first time truly invested manpower and financial resources to actively collect public opinion data for analysis, and then make feedback and improve policies.In the same year, the Ministry of Health formulated the first set of minimum standard data sets to collect relevant business data from lower-level departments and various social organizations.

By 2010, the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Communications began to apply the technology of the Internet of Things to provide corresponding environmental indicators and forecasts for ordinary people's daily life through automatic collection and collection of environmental data.This can be called a cross-age progress, and it also officially announced that China has begun the prelude to the practical application of big data technology at the grassroots level.

Over the years, China has been collecting public opinion data, business data, and environmental data, and breakthroughs have been made in both policy formulation and technical means.Our country uses real data to understand public opinion and people's living standards, which is of great significance to the establishment of an efficient service-oriented government.Because whether it is improving data collection technology, expanding more abundant means, or providing our citizens with better e-government channels, they are all playing a positive role in promoting the construction of an efficient big data government.

☆China started relatively late and urgently needs to improve the ability of system construction

We must not only see progress, but also see the reality of lagging behind others, just like an expert said to me: "China still started too late." There are also more and higher new demands for the services provided, such as remote inquiry and handling of personal business, real estate information networking, etc.These need to continue to advance and enhance the ability of related system construction.

It can be seen from the needs of the people that people increasingly hope that the government can provide corresponding services in an instant, flexible and targeted manner. For the construction of domestic e-government, it means that it can no longer be simply computerized.Major developed countries in the West began to collect corresponding data systematically as early as 20 years ago, as the basis for formulating relevant policies, and promoting and building data networking. The Chinese government started relatively slowly and reacted relatively slowly to data applications.

In the first 11 five-year plans, China's informatization construction still focused more on the infrastructure level.The Chinese are buried in the field of infrastructure and have been focusing on infrastructure for too many years. This is true even in the field of data, such as the "Golden Tax Project", which is also making up for the lack of grassroots work.On the one hand, it is laying the IT foundation for the Chinese government to provide services, and on the other hand, it is also facing the challenge of more demands from the society.

Although a certain area in a province realized the one-card function of the social security card the year before last, it has also received the expectation of the whole society for promotion.But the subsequent progress was not smooth, because the unified management of data has always been a big problem for various institutions in China.In China's overall e-government construction, there are many information islands and data fragmentation among various institutions. Only when these data are interoperable and effectively used can we better innovate some services.In the process of getting rid of these ills, China needs to improve policy formulation and guidance on the one hand, and use more technical means to make changes on the other hand. Both hands must be grasped and both hands must be tough.

☆A government that uses data to speak: from learning to use

When the IT industry emphasizes to people that the era of big data is coming, whether it is the construction of enterprise informationization or the construction of the government's big data system, it is necessary to learn and improve continuously, and it may be a long process.

Judging from China's actions in recent years, we can clearly see that the government has gradually become accustomed to using data to speak, and using data to serve the people, govern and serve the society, which has also become a key part of China's vigorous efforts to build a service government.

With the increasing amount of collected data, the government is also thinking deeply: should these data only occupy a large amount of storage devices but be worthless, or should they become the basis for the government to formulate relevant service policies and terms?Of course, you have to choose the latter. No one wants to go to great lengths to collect and save a bunch of useless data.When stakeholders in various departments understand that doing so is beneficial to them, the era of big data in the government can truly come.

In terms of the use of big data, China can learn from some advanced companies and see how they apply it.In addition, from the perspective of the amount of data, the amount of data in our government is still too small compared to traditional fields such as manufacturing, so in the process of applying big data, we should learn more about how to apply advanced experience and technical means In traditional industries, it helps the manufacturing industry to achieve breakthroughs.

Finally, in terms of system, the government should also make necessary breakthroughs.For example, you can learn from the enterprise, so that a department can take the lead to ensure the integrity of the data and its maximum authenticity.

(End of this chapter)