Xinghua – the county-level city in East China's Jiangsu province – has accelerated reforms to improve governance efficiency through what it calls the "single matter" initiative.
The name of the initiative refers to the local government's efforts to offer a one-stop service for every single matter frequently encountered by an individual resident or enterprise. Such matters used to require multiple approvals from various government departments, which also entailed repetitive submissions of application materials and multiple errands.
Based on big data and the province's e-governance platform, Xinghua has integrated its services from various government departments and streamlined its processing procedures for project construction applications. While it used to take a business representative to nine trips and five departments to complete an application, it now only takes one trip to one window for the purpose.
Moving forward, Xinghua is set to continue the deep integration of online and offline government services – sharing information, materials and results of cross-departmental approvals to improve the city's governance efficiency.