Digital infrastructure drives public services innovation

In establishing e-government services with the help of Huawei, headquartered in Shenzhen, 53 government departments in the city have been able to migrate more than 230 core services to the cloud. 

Around the world, more governments are seeing the value of digital and intelligent transformation. By strengthening their digital infrastructure, they can better deliver innovative and inclusive e-services. 

“The digital government transformation is a long-term journey requiring a systematic approach,” said Wind Li, CEO of Global Public Sector BU, Huawei.  

“As a world-leading ICT (Information and Communications Technology) infrastructure and solution provider, Huawei focuses on the 'One Cloud + One Network' strategy, to help governments build digital infrastructure for public services, and achieve excellent governance, heightened economy and better livelihood." 

Li was speaking in Barcelona, at the Mobile World Congress 2024, where Huawei launched the Public Services Intelligent Transformation White Paper, the National Cloud 2.0 Solution, the Smart Classroom 3.0 Solution, the Medical Technology Digitalization Solution and the Tax Administration Digitalisation White Paper. 

Spurring digital transformation in governments 

To date, Huawei has worked with more than 120 countries and regions and more than 700 cities around the world to help governments transform digitally, develop their digital economies, and enhance their digital value. 

The years of experience of focusing on business scenarios and customising scenario-based government solutions prompted Huawei to launch the white paper on public services intelligent transformation. 

The white paper presents the concept of intelligent architecture for government and public services, to help them align their approaches on data sharing, the adoption of technology and on exploiting AI (artificial intelligence). 

“The intelligent architecture of transformation consists of several layers, such as intelligent sensing, intelligent connectivity, intelligent foundation, intelligent platform, AI foundation model, AI large model, and intelligent application,” said Hong-Eng Koh, Global Chief Public Services Industry Scientist of Huawei. 

“It will help provide more inclusive and people-centric public services, promote collaboration and proactiveness, offer a more equitable access to smart healthcare, intelligent education, and even faster response to emergencies.” 

Applications in public healthcare and education 

Digitalisation and the adoption of AI is leading to an intelligent upgrade of education globally.  

For example, Huawei has assisted Serbia’s Ministry of Education in building smart classrooms in over 200 primary and secondary schools. This has allowed for the sharing of digital teaching resources and flexible distance learning. 

“Modern education is trending towards creating a digital and intelligent education ecosystem, enhancing the digital literacy of both teachers and students, and fostering innovative talent for the future,” said Li.  

“Huawei collaborates with industry partners to build a digital and intelligent foundation for the education industry that boasts high standards and performance, utilising cloud computing, AI, and big data. Through innovative teaching and management methods, we aim to shape the future of education,” Li added. 

Ningxia University in China has partnered with Huawei to create an intelligent teaching ecosystem that integrates teaching, learning, evaluation, and management. This includes the construction of 300 future classrooms to facilitate flexible hybrid teaching and precise teaching management. 

In the field of public healthcare, Huawei has helped the Health Bureau of Longgang District in Shenzhen build a regional medical imaging platform. This supports the interconnection and sharing of medical image data across 12 hospitals and significantly simplifies service handling for patients.  

Huawei has also helped Ruijin Hospital in Shanghai set up a digital smart pathology department, which enables concurrent access to more than 1,000 pathological sections within one second and improves retrieval speed by 80 times.  

Investing in ICT drives transformation and progress 

More than 170 countries and regions have published national digital strategies while more than 50 countries have also developed AI strategies.  

Research shows that every US dollar spent in ICT investment will yield approximately US$3.5 (S$4.73) in gross domestic product (GDP) growth. The more ICT investment, the faster the GDP growth, accelerating global digital government development. This has driven the acceleration of digital transformation around the world and has seen remarkable progress in multiple fields. 

In Ghana, Huawei’s Inclusive Connectivity solution has deployed more than 2,000 remote wireless base stations, providing network coverage for 3.5 million rural people. This has made remote learning and telemedicine possible and helped to bridge the digital divide. 

Another benefit of digitalisation is its impact on tax collection and management, where it can strengthen risk control, detect tax avoidance, and increase tax revenue. 

To enable data-driven “smart taxation”, dedicated networks, high-performance cloud infrastructure, and reliable data centres would be key.  

Just as digital transformation can improve tax administration to be more precise, intelligent, and personalised, so can public sectors bring about greater benefits to society by taking a systematic approach towards transforming into a better digital government and cultivating a thriving digital economy.