Disabled people benefit from ‘one click’
Disabled people who had to submit documents at service windows when applying for government subsidies can now upload them online, with the money later transferred to their accounts.
Jianggan District initiated its “one click to benefit disabled people” platform last week, in cooperation with Hangzhou’s City Brain system.
Part of the subsidies are automatically generated by the system without uploading applications.
Millions of pieces of data from government departments have been pooled onto the City Brain system which identifies disabled people, calculates their subsidies and orders banks to transfer money to their accounts.
“I received a voice message saying that my subsidies had been in my account. At first I thought it was a fraud,” said Cheng Wei, who is blind and lives in Jianggan’s Caihe Subdistrict.
“A community worker told me about the new platform and how to use it. I was so happy as it helps me save time and cuts down procedures in applications.”
Previously, around 160 community workers had been helping 11,407 disabled people deal with their affairs at government service windows. The new platform has removed the pressure from their daily work.
“What we should do is to check names on the auto-generated list. Accurate big data computing helps us get rid of accidental omissions,” said Chen Yaping, a Caihe community worker.
The platform makes it possible for most handicapped people to handle their own affairs.
“It is a trial to further reform the ‘onetime visit’ service,” said Zou Qian, Party secretary of the Jianggan Disabled Persons’ Federation.
Zhejiang Province started the “onetime visit” initiative in 2016 to optimize the process of solving people’s major problems. Hangzhou has been at the forefront of the reform and has figured out various ways to resolve grassroots affairs.
“We believe the new platform can sweeten the deal by designing a platform to bring government departments and handicapped people closer through a channel linking them directly,” said Zou. “One-time visit could be upgraded to zero time through it.”
The new platform pools data from seven official departments. Information can be shared between different departments, making daily work more effective.
In the past, due to a failure to bridge information among different departments, people were required to get a permit from each department to get anything done, leading to headaches for disabled people and community workers.
“It took me about two months to receive all my subsidies before. Now, I can immediately get them right after applying via the platform,” said Cheng.
The government subsidizes companies to encourage them to employ disabled people, so the new platform is also accessible to about 600 companies applying for subsidies in the district.
“We received part of the subsidies without uploading documents. The government puts its trust on us, which stimulates us to employ more handicapped people,” said Han Qiu, president of Hangzhou Yuexiu Tech Co.
The platform is expected to gather more information from more organizations and departments, making the data pool even more versatile for disabled people and their companies.
“In the coming months, we will integrate offline and online activities via the platform, hosting training and job-hunting fairs in a bid to boost the employment rate of disabled people,” Zou said.
This platform is not the only initiative in Hangzhou to improve the wellbeing of handicapped people and raise their living standards.
Last week, local government said it was building more disabled people’s homes across the city. So far, the city has erected 168 homes, benefiting more than 4,400 people with disabilities.
By 2022, it plans to establish homes in every subdistrict with the cooperation of enterprises, social organizations and government departments.
These homes will be developed into a center for disabled people in the fields of physical recovery, health care, cultural activities and vocational training.