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Local Government

Chinese city builds public cloud to aid innovation

By Robin Hicks | 29 September 2009

The northern Chinese city of Dongying is building a public cloud computing platform that it hopes will aid its transformation from an oil-rich manufacturing hub into a high-tech service-based economy.

The Yellow River Delta Cloud Computing Center will be used as a common platform to promote e-government services. It will also be used to develop applications to boost the efficiency of the petroleum industry and the use of green technologies.

Li Jinkun, Vice Mayor of Dongying Municipal Government, said that he wants Dongying to become a “city of digital innovation” by using the platform, which is being developed by IBM.

The second phase of the project will see software added that will enable ‘smart roads’ and a ‘smart airport’ to be built with the help of data analytics. Phase three will see healthcare services added to the cloud, part of a long-term plan to centralise patients’ records so that doctors can access them online.

IBM’s ‘three-layered separation technology’ is being put in place to ensure that data from vendors and government agencies housed in the cloud is kept separate and secure.

This Yellow River project is one of a number of cloud-as-infrastructure and cloud-as-a-platform experiments IBM is running in China, Jinzy Zhu, Executive, IBM Cloud Labs & HiPODS, Greater China Group, told FutureGov.

On the lessons learned from other cloud projects she has worked on in China, Zhu said: “Governments need to be able to articulate the business value of project before they start it. And, crucially, they need to know how it will affect their organisation’s culture.”

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