Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our lives and works in ways beyond imagination. By featuring innovative technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data, the coming intelligent era will bring everyone personalised, convenient services and a higher quality of life. It will also bring optimised production processes and higher operational efficiency to businesses, as well as smarter and more sustainable development of cities.

At one of the world's most significant technology events, GITEX GLOBAL 2024 (44th), the Global Smart City Innovation Roundtable was held based on the theme of "Building City Intelligent Twins to Accelerate City Intelligence". Experts from the public services sector worldwide gathered to discuss industry development trends and practical experience and draw a blueprint for the development of global smart cities.

This created a sharing space for global smart city leaders to understand the current situation of smart city development in different countries worldwide. It also highlighted the best practices of smart cities in China and discussed the future digital and intelligent development of cities with city leaders around the world.

We had the opportunity to interview two leading figures in this space – Mr Wang Bin, CTO of Government Public Services Digitalisation BU at Huawei, and Mr Jia Xibei, chairman of Shenzhen Audaque Data Technology Co Ltd, to share best practices and successful stories from the Chinese market and to discuss the future digitalization and intelligent development of cities.

Huawei jointly released its National One-Stop Public Services Solution and National Smart City solution with partners in overseas markets. Huawei's partner, Shenzhen Audaque Data Technology, introduced successful case studies for Data Resource Platform in the overseas market. The company has developed a set of data-intelligent products and in-depth business industry solutions, covering the complete data lifecycle, widely used in government, transportation, energy, finance and other industries.

When asked what solutions Huawei had launched for the public services sector at GITEX Global 2024, Mr Wang mentioned the City Intelligent Twins Architecture of Smart Cities used to build cities that are more intelligent, more efficient, more liveable, and more caring. He also highlighted the jointly released One-Stop Public Service Solution and Overseas Smart City Solution developed with partners.

"These days, with urbanisation rates getting higher, cities are becoming more complex. Therefore, we need a unified digital management platform to improve comprehensive city management performance," Wang said.

"Huawei's city Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) solution contains three major capabilities to help cities. Firstly, it provides a city's real-time status. Decision-makers can use it to make quick, informed decisions.

“Secondly, the IOC supports voice and video conferences for emergencies and major events. With this capability, city officials can dispatch resources effectively to deal with city problems as quickly as possible.

“Thirdly, the IOC uses AI-assisted data analysis to accurately identify city risks, such as fire hazards. This function can help city officials make decisions quickly and efficiently.”

As an important partner of the Huawei Government Public Services Digitalization BU, Mr Jia said that Audaque was leveraging its experience from dozens of successful projects in China. "We have co-developed a national data solution tailored for overseas government data resource systems called 'N-4-2'. This solution consists of several data-driven applications (with Government Public Services Digitalization BU being the flagship), four supporting systems, like data exchange, data catalogue, data standards, and data security, and two foundational capabilities, such as digital infrastructure and data resource systems."

When asked about the key advantages of Huawei's City Governance Solution, Mr Wang stated, "To build a liveable, efficient, and safe city, we need to establish a full-cycle city management workflow, including event discovery, analysis, handling and assessment. Huawei offers the city governance solution for this with four key functions."

"First comes intelligent discovery, where we use AI to discover city events and improve work efficiency automatically.

“Second is automatic event dispatching, where city events are aggregated from all channels, domains, and scenarios. More than 80% of events can be automatically dispatched, which can improve efficiency by fivefold.

“Third is collaborative handling, where the Coordinated Command Platform ensures efficient collaboration across departments, platforms, and government levels, implementing closure of urgent events in less than 24 hours.

“The last one is efficiency analysis where we have nine warning models as well as intelligent reports, which can help warn decision-makers in advance."

Mr Jia was asked about the successful cases Audaque has achieved in the Middle East and other overseas markets based on Huawei's City Intelligent Twins solution. He replied, "To date, in collaboration with Huawei, Audaque has successfully implemented this solution in an African country and Kenya's Konza Technopolis. We have streamlined the national data resource catalogue for the clients and built a structured data sharing and exchange channel. This has significantly improved data quality through data governance efforts, supporting the implementation of key applications like Government Public Services Digitalization and the City IOC.

"In one African Government Public Services Digitalization project," said Jia, "we conducted thorough research across relevant ministries, organising a national data resource catalogue. We achieved structured data flow between ministries by building a data-sharing platform and defining relevant standards. Data consumers, via the sharing platform, can now search and subscribe to the required data from data providers.

"Take the example of applying for a national ID. Previously, citizens had to visit multiple departments to collect various documents, with the process taking up to 17 working days. With the data exchange system and national population database we built, inter-ministry data sharing is now streamlined. Service departments can subscribe to data in advance, reducing the need for citizens to provide numerous documents. With data verification based on the population database, the entire approval process was optimised, reducing it to just 4 working days.”

When asked if any success cases could be used as benchmarks for other regions and countries, Mr Wang replied, "In China, Huawei has supported the digital transformation of government services in over a hundred cities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Xi'an, achieving one-stop services for public affairs.

"In Shenzhen's Futian District, each public demand is addressed with a "10-30-24" mechanism, meaning contact and response are guaranteed within 10 minutes, and an initial solution is provided within 30 minutes. For urgent cases, they are resolved within 24 hours. The average processing time has been reduced from more than 20 business days to just 10. Additionally, the resolution rate for such cases has reached 100%, with a 99.4% citizen satisfaction rate."

"In a country in Africa, a one-stop government service project is being implemented, introducing a full-stack solution provided by Huawei and partners, covering the cloud infrastructure, national database, middleware, applications, and access portal."