white paper on big data standards

context: CESI, an MIIT-affiliated research institute, released a white paper on big data standardisation. Standardisation and incompatible data is a bottleneck holding back China's ambitious big data plans in a range of sectors and industries. In March 2018, CAICT launched a system to evaluate government cloud platforms.


China Electronics Standardisation Institute's (CESI) white paper recommends the state

  • improve big data standardisation (BDS) system construction
  • strengthen BDS promotion
  • strengthen BDS demonstrations
  • strengthen the role of BDS in data governance
  • train BDS talent
  • speed up BDS internationalisation

The paper outlines the policy environment, including State Council-issued opinions and an outline in 2015, and an implementation plan in 2017. The white paper also lists twelve policy documents issued by ministries on big data use in environmental protection, agriculture, land resources, transportation, smart cities and other specific sectors, and 52 big data policy documents by local governments.

On institutions, the paper explains that Ministry of Industry and IT (MIIT) and National Standardisation Management Commission set up a BDS work group under National IT Standardisation Technical Commission in December 2014. Led by Chang Meihong 长梅宏 Beijing Institute of Technology vice dean, the group has issued six standards, with another 14 in the pipeline. A special work group on big data security standards was also set up under National IT Security Standardisation Commission in April 2016. It has drafted 13 standards. Industry is involved through the China Communications Standards Association and its local branches.