Sidebar: Workshops in China: Health, Tobacco and Digital Preservation

This spring, the United States and China held workshops in Beijing on public health informatics and digital preservation.

· The U.S.-China Workshop on Infectious Disease Informatics and Biosurveillance examined a wide range of health and surveillance-related issues, including large events such as the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing or disease outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome. The workshop was jointly organized by Dr. Daniel Zeng of the University of Arizona and Fei-Yue Wang, vice president of the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

· Designing Cyber-infrastructure to Enable U.S.-China Collaboration in Tobacco Research, focused on the development of cyber-infrastructure to support the tobacco research community, including smoking prevention and cessation, tobacco surveillance and epidemiology, and policy and evaluation. The workshop explored the use of emerging cyber-infrastructure tools to enable high-performance computing, data integration and more effective collaborations. Noshir Contractor of Northwestern University and Xiao Ma of the West China School of Public Health organized the workshop.

· Another digital preservation workshop included presentations on government digital information management in both countries, as well as cutting-edge digital preservation research. This workshop was jointly organized by Margaret Hedstrom of the University of Michigan and Liu Jiazhen of Wuhan University.

China Facts:
Population: 1.3 billion
Gross Domestic Product: $2.77 trillion

E-Government in China:
China spent $5 billion on e-government products and services in 2007, according to market research firm IDC, and is expected to spend approximately $7 billion by 2011.
China's government is transforming from an administrative role to one that is more service-oriented, according to IDC, driving demand for e-government technology. Five factors are steering China's digital government strategy:

1. In 2006, the Chinese government released a standards document that set the foundation for government IT interoperability and business collaboration.
2. Most e-government systems have progressed to the stage of system optimization and integration, such as insurance and tax programs.
3. E-government hot spots are emerging in mobile government, community information and disaster recovery.
4. E-government IT in China is dominated by "incumbent" vendors who are in a strong position to meet the specialized needs of China's public sector.
5. Government investments in e-government software have increased the demand for services and support, as well as custom development of new IT services.