Shenzhen has been tasked to play an exemplary and leading role in digital government construction, according to Guangdong Province’s first five-year plan on the reform and construction of e-government.

Released Wednesday, the five-year plan aims to provide support for the province’s high-quality economic and social development in the era of digital economy.

The plan encourages Shenzhen to pilot digital construction in institutional mechanism, government services, business environment, urban administration, data development and utilization, as well as data transaction and circulation. It states that Shenzhen can provide Guangdong Province with advanced experience and development ideas for digital construction and reform, play a leading role in the construction of a world-class smart city cluster in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA), and create a national and even global benchmark for digital government construction.

Specifically, the provincial government will support Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan and Zhongshan cities in carrying out a comprehensive reform in smart city construction, support Shenzhen in data legislation, data equity assetization and supervision, as well as construction of a data platform for the benefit of the whole GBA area.

Under the five-year plan, a data center jointly established by Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao is expected to integrate administrative data, public data and social data in the GBA and other regions in the country to serve economic development, social governance and residents’ well-being, among others.

Infrastructure is crucial for the construction of e-government, the plan emphasizes, adding that the applications of new types of information infrastructures should be expanded.

In exploring the application of wireless government network, Shenzhen and Guangzhou should exert their respective advantages and work out plans related to 5G, narrow-band wireless private network and spillover applications in major vertical industries that are related to urban lifelines, national economy and people’s livelihood, the plan specifies.

By 2025, Guangdong will complete Digital Guangdong 2.0 and achieve the goals of taking the lead in China in e-government service, regional e-governance, government efficiency, public data utilization and basic support abilities of an e-government, according to the plan.