Guangdong city’s digital system outsources certain services
Click a button and wait for 30 seconds, the computer will randomly pick the company to provide services for a government project. Then the computer operator will type the company’s name on a bid-winning notice, which will pop up on the cellphone of the company’s staff in a minute.
The whole process is displayed on a big screen in the municipal administrative services center of Huizhou in South China’s Guangdong province, ensuring the transparency and fairness of government procurement of intermediary services for administrative approval.
Huizhou was the first location in the province to set up an online “intermediary supermarket” in 2014, in which the city government offers projects and the prices for intermediary services. Service providers can browse online and select projects when they accept the price. Then the computer will draw lots to choose the bid winner.
A fixed assets investment project, whether it is invested by the government or by companies, must go through a vetting process from project initiation to construction completion. As a result, the project needs to hire thirdparty organizations that can provide services such as land valuation and cost consulting to get approval from administrative organs.
In the past, some administrative organs would assign one or several agencies over a long period of time to provide services, which created a monopoly harmful to the market development, said Hu Jianbin, a standing committee member of Huizhou Municipal Party Committee.
“The online intermediary supermarket has cut off the guanxi (connections) between administrative organs and agencies, which effectively prevents corruption,” Hu said.
Zhu Shushen is the business manager of the Huizhou office of the Beijing-headquartered China Urban Construction Consulting Co Ltd. He said he used to spend a lot of time and energy seeking government projects with guanxi and running between different government departments to hand in application documents.
“Now I just need to get registered at the online interme-