On September 21, 2024, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Development and Utilization of Public Data Resources. The policy aims to remove institutional obstacles and systemic barriers to the circulation and use of public data, promoting its compliant and efficient use to strengthen, optimize and expand the digital economy, thereby building new national competitive advantages.
The document states that public data generated in the lawful performance of duties or provision of public services by party and government agencies, as well as by enterprises and institutions at all levels, are important fundamental strategic resources. It sets a target to establish basic rules and systems for developing and utilizing these public data resources by 2025 and to build a comprehensive public data system by 2030.
To achieve this goal, the document outlines 17 specific tasks, some of which may affect overseas stakeholders accessing public data resources, including:
Promoting Public Data Accessibility: Promote the openness of public data in a lawfully and in an orderly manner, and under the premise of maintaining national data security and safeguarding personal information and commercial secrets. Improve public data platforms, dynamically publish and update open directories, and enhance the completeness, accuracy, timeliness, and machine-readability of open data.
Establishing a Price Mechanism: Develop a price formation mechanism aligned with the characteristics of public data. Encourage free or conditionally free use of public data products and services for public welfare and governance. Apply government-guided pricing for essential public data products and services necessary for industrial and sectoral development.
Encouraging Public Data Utilization: Expand application scenarios to encourage businesses to develop products and provide services using public data, particularly in industries and sectors with high market demand and abundant data resources. Support enterprises and social organizations in using public data for developing public welfare products free of charge.
Fostering a Thriving Data Industry Ecosystem: Include the data industry in the Industry Structure Adjustment Guidance Catalog as a category for encouraged development. Support technical innovation and application in data collection, labeling, analysis, mining, circulation, usage, and security. Promote the development of diverse data products such as data models, verification, and evaluation indices.
Strengthening Security Management: Enhance data security and personal information protection by enhancing supervision and management throughout the entire process of data production, processing, usage, and product operations. Establish and improve systems for classification, risk assessment, monitoring, warning, and emergency response. Conduct security risk assessments and compliance reviews for public data utilization.
In addition to the above tasks, the document proposes measures such as exploring public data authorization mechanisms, improving resource management systems, creating a public data resource registration system, implementing an authorization disclosure mechanism, promoting regional data collaboration, researching and developing data infrastructure standards, increasing innovation incentives, encouraging pilot trials, and advancing government data sharing.
With the rapid growth of the digital economy, harnessing data’s full value is critical for business growth and expansion. This policy is expected to improve access to and use of public data, thereby injecting new momentum into industrial development. However, the document does not clearly define the boundaries of public data; its future implementation will rely on further detailing in secondary regulations and standards. Additionally, the document requires security risk assessments and business compliance reviews for public data usage, introducing thresholds that may impact the actual use of data enterprises.
The National Data Administration has reportedly completed the drafting of two supporting policies, namely the Interim Measures for Public Data Resource Registration Management and the Implementation Guidelines for Public Data Resource Authorization Operations, which will soon be open for public consultation.
