PhD student Danqi Guo examines government big data administration at the local level: The Big Data revolution has advanced beyond industry and business into public administration and policy over the past years in China. As a response to this latest development, a wave of organizational reform has been underway across the country’s local government administrations. With the establishment of hundreds of local Big Data Authorities (BDAs, 大数据治理机构) and the emergence of corresponding data-driven policy innovation, the local state aims to lay the cornerstone for the future Big Data governance where local government plays a leading and integral role. As the primary objectives, this PhD project examines the origins, features, and functions of these newly emerged BDAs as well as their regional variation; based on the observation, it further explores and unravels the underlying trend which can be potentially coined as “digital technocracy”.

 

PhD student Hao Zhang studies citizens participation in city digital platforms. The PhD project Citizen Participation in China’s Digital Governance Era focuses on citizen engagement on integrated digital platforms at municipal level. It identifies the potential changes brought by the digital tools on such platforms on both citizens' stance and governments' motivcations. The findings will be generated during fieldwork and contribute to the emerging literature on government-citizen relations in digitalized China.