Beijing's 12345 Public Service Hotline has processed hundreds of millions of requests, reflecting the efficiency of the city's digitalized urban governance, according to an academic expert.
Launched in 2019, the hotline has handled 200 million cases from individuals and businesses over the past seven years, processing more than 70,000 complaints per day with both resolution and satisfaction rates exceeding 97 percent.
In an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), Liu Gang, a chair professor of industrial ecology at Peking University, shared his perspective on the hotline's operational statistics, which host Huang Jiyuan cited during the interview.
"We have a population of 24, 25 million in Beijing, right? So, the total number of complaints, I don't think that's a very big number. But I think the rate you mentioned, 97 percent, 98 percent, that's really amazing. That means I think the system is working. And also every case got reported, they have a follow-up system, and it was also something I learned from my own case. I understand they have been improving as well. This high rate, of responding rate, I think that's really amazing," Liu said.
For the professor, the platform's real test is the scale of the challenge it handles. He compared it with the more conventional channels that smaller cities rely on.
"When you have a small population, ordinary system can work. So, you write emails. You also report case-by-case to a customer desk. You get your answer, maybe, in two, three days by email or maybe you get a phone call back in three, four days after he reports his case. The thing that I think for a big city with a big population like Beijing, you could not imagine such ordinary system or traditional system works. That's why I think we have this 12345 and also more digitalized urban governance. I think it's working well," Liu said.
Liu said the significance of digitalized city administration extends well beyond urban governance. For researchers like him, it opens a window onto how cities actually work.
"One is, for us, all these digitalized services provide data that could not be possible if you only get data from statistics, from printed books, or from interviews with individual citizens. When you have a digitized service, then you can have also so-called point-of-interest data. When we, for example, post our activities on social media, you also have your location and also your activities, which we can extract information [from] to study how cities work and also how we can make urban development low carbon and also circular," he said.
"On the other side, I think also it gives us some sort of new challenges. If you talk about transportation research 20 years ago, then the problems, the challenges, the scales of the problems are very different. That's partly a result of the digitalization and technology development, right? There are data centers, there are also basically internet and digital infrastructure that are very important to support all these digitalized services. And these impacts of all these digital infrastructures will be also our new study subjects," Liu said.
Regarding the global applicability of this model, Liu also elaborated on the key lessons and potential challenges for other cities or countries looking to replicate Beijing's successful approach to digitalized public services.
"The digital service, also how we can enable urban governance with digital service like 12345, can be also up-scaled or extended to other cities and countries. I think the key here is you need to share your experiences. Although as we talked before, we have different populations. But I think the mechanism can be similar, right? So, the top-down initiative from different city councils, they need their motivation to decide which direction, how they also provide services, how they divide the budget, right?" he said.
Beijing's service hotline exemplifies efficient digital urban governance: expert
