Integrated digital service platform benefits residents in Guizhou

People who decide to settle in Southwest China's Guizhou province can download an application on their mobile phones called Gogpay to make living in the city easier and more convenient. 

Gogpay is a digital platform that provides a wide range of information and services, especially for local residents. With the app, people can pay their electric bills, file taxes, buy local agricultural products and order housekeeping services, among other tasks.

Since the local government launched the app in 2015, more than 14.6 million real-name users have registered.

Concentrating on the governance and operation of the city on a cloud service, Gogpay integrates 1,467 government services in Guizhou and provides services in those fields. 

Zeng, native of Guiyang, the provincial capital, who prefers to be referred by her surname only, said she uses the app to pay water, electricity, gas and other fees for her parents.

"I used to worry about my elderly parents going to different service halls to pay various fees, but now this problem has been solved via the application," she said. 

Gogpay has also contributed to the digital transformation of the real economy. Last year, the Guizhou provincial government sent consumer coupons through the app to promote consumption. 

Promotion participants included some 190,000 catering stores, 480,000 retail stores, 561 online automobile retail companies and several key cultural tourism industries and agricultural products sales companies from Guizhou. It not only boosted local consumption, but also attracted customers from other provinces, especially those seeking local specialties. 

Li Hang, a Beijing resident who recently visited Guizhou, tried the app and said it was very convenient. When she used it to look for local agricultural products, she was surprised to find that Lao Gan Ma chili sauce was being sold. 

The development of Gogpay is based on "Guizhou-Cloud", China's first provincial-level government data exchange and sharing platform.

Developed in 2014 by the provincial government, the platform integrates information from 736 government applications, 17,204 metadata catalogs and 108 provincial government portal websites.

As the "big data valley of China", Guizhou is accelerating the in-depth integration of big data and various industries. Digital service platforms like Gogpay that cover urban and rural areas across the province have further deepened the application of big data in public service.

"I used Gogpay a lot last year," said Mei Qian, a graduate student at Guizhou Minzu University in Guiyang. "It is good for us local residents to be able to meet our needs online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The innovative application of big data has reduced many inconveniences in daily life, and I look forward to its further development."

Huang Sinan from Tsinghua University contributed to the story.