Children watch a robot in action at the expo.
Driving force
With the support of the National Information Center, Youedata is responsible for the operation of six State-owned big data centers across the country, including one in Guiyang, and more than 100 big data companies have started operations in them.
Since its establishment in December last year, Guiyang Youedata has become a driving force in the city's big data sector, cooperating with local public sector companies to explore and use data resources. At present, the company is mainly focused on data-cleaning work.
"It's a process of desensitization; cleaning sensitive, security - and privacy-related items from the original data to produce information that can be further used for behavioral analysis or risk prediction," said Huang Xiaoyin, director of the company's integrated management office.
For example, phone companies have the names, ID numbers and phone numbers of all their customers, along with logs of their calls and text messages. Some of the information, such as consumption preferences or the frequency of phone use can be analyzed via big data to develop business strategies. However, the information must first be "desensitized" - which means all the names, ID numbers and addresses must be erased to protect customers' privacy.
According to Huang, 80 percent of the company's employees are experts in big data research and development, and they are young, mainly ages 22 to 40.
"Big data is bringing opportunities and vitality to this mountainous city, which is attracting more young talent from the province and neighboring cities seeking to further their careers," she said.
Dong Chuanye, deputy director of Guiyang Youedata, said the provincial and municipal governments have played leading roles in big data development, compared with authorities in many other cities.
In addition to special funding support, tax breaks and other policies, and free use of office space for five years, the government helps to promote business opportunities between the park's big data companies and potential customers through expos and conferences. In August, Guiyang will host the China International Big Data Industry Expo, which will be attended by several leading global businesses, including Microsoft, Intel, Dell, Oracle SAP and Tesla, he said.
The local government also provides strong support for the exchange and use of data, authorizing big data companies to access information collected by the government and other public sector bodies in the city. To date, 15,033 data dictionaries and 243 data sets from 51 sectors have been made available to authorized companies.
"This is crucial to the development of the big data industry. Data is the industry's blood. Without it, we couldn't survive, not to mention develop. In many other cities, data barriers still exist between different public sector bodies, but Guiyang has been a pioneer in breaking down those walls," Dong said.
