Beijing Moves Forward On Digital City Initiatives

The Beijing City Government's Information Office and EMC Corp. today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on the city government's "Digital Beijing" initiatives. Over the next few years, the city of Beijing will collaborate with EMC to build a state-of-the-art information infrastructure that will ultimately house the city's digital assets. Joseph M. Tucci, chairman, president and CEO of EMC, and Zhao Fengtong, vice mayor of the City of Beijing, hosted today's signing ceremony.

Zhao Fengtong said, "The Beijing City Government is committed to the development of a comprehensive and advanced information infrastructure. We are pleased that EMC is investing its technology and expertise in support of the city of Beijing's digital initiatives. Through the adoption of innovative information technologies, we expect to improve the city's efficiency and quality of service for our citizens."

The alliance between EMC and Beijing will help change the way the city government interacts with its citizens. Specifically, the alliance will include:

• eGovernment Architecture -- developing and defining information infrastructure and information security standards for the government, and it will improve the eGovernment's information lifecycle management architecture as necessary.
• Business Continuity Plan -- developing a data recovery information infrastructure and setting up a business continuity/backup center and information security lab to ensure business continuity and information availability.
• Citizen Center -- develop the information infrastructure for the Citizen Experience Center, which will provide powerful online interfaces to enable faster responses and new levels of service.
• Digital Data Archives -- explore information management and archiving solutions for Beijing's digital data.

In support of these digital initiatives, EMC will work closely with Beijing's IT specialists to build an information infrastructure based on EMC's portfolio of tiered storage systems and information management software to digitize, index, archive and repurpose the city's information. In addition, EMC will leverage its existing EMC China Solution Center network and remote-networking capabilities to educate the city's IT employees about EMC's information management and storage capabilities. By the summer of 2008, EMC plans to train 200 senior city information technology professionals to provide support for Beijing's new information infrastructure.

About Digital Beijing
In 1999, Beijing Municipality launched the drive of "Digital Beijing," with the final target of shaping the sophisticated city-level digital capacity. This digital capacity is based on the completion of broadband and multimedia information networks and GIS, the integration of the city's information resources, and the buildup of information systems for eGovernment, eCommerce, online education, remote medical treatment, labor and social insurance, and more.

By the end of China's "Tenth Five-Year Plan," the framework of "Digital Beijing" has been achieved, according to an EMC release. As a leader of this kind of project within China, Beijing has completed building the infrastructure and is now moving to the next phase of online services. Information communications technology (ICT) is playing a more and more important role in the city's economic and social development.

The vision of Digital Beijing is set to be preliminarily realized in "The Eleventh Five-Year Plan," when 100 percent of key government services are supported by ICT, over 80 percent of business for approval can be transacted online, and each task within the Special Program for Construction of Digital Olympics is fulfilled. This will establish a comprehensive information service system, which is based on individuality and human-orientation, consistent with international norms, and demonstrates Chinese characteristics. All of this will make a sound groundwork for moving Beijing into the information society.