[Photo/zj.zjol.com]

Zhejiang, a province with a booming digital economy, recently launched a competition for the innovative application of open data in order to boost digital government and economic and social development.

The 2020 Zhejiang Open Data Innovation Contest was held by the provincial big data bureau, the provincial cyberspace administration, and the provincial department of the economy and information technology.

It aims to encourage enterprises, research institutes, and individuals to make better use of public data to develop useful applications for society.

The central government announced on March 30 that the nation plans to further promote data as a factor of production, share government data, and increase the value of social data resources. The government of Zhejiang also declared that it will strive to make significant progress in opening public data and developing innovative applications this year.

Authorities in Zhejiang are making policies to ensure the safety of open public data and avoid data leaks.

The competition will open access to data in finance, transportation, social services, market regulation, and healthcare.

Preliminaries will last until June 30, and the entire completion will last until the end of the year. There will be two first-place prizes, four second-place prizes, and six third-place prizes.

Many companies and organizations had already begun making preparations before the launch of the competition. Amap, a navigation company, aims to use public parking lot data to provide people with improved parking assistance, while the Agriculture Bank aims to use the open financial data of enterprises to provide people with more targeted credit services, especially small and micro-sized enterprises.