Data sharing and digital co-governance should be the foundation to support the accelerated transformation and upgrading of government functions and promote digital government construction in the era of the digital economy. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has attached great value to the development of the digital economy and has entered a phase of fast development of digital government, with central and local government departments vigorously exploring ways of building digital governance. Overall, China’s e-government construction at present has made preliminary achievements, which lays a solid foundation for further enhancing the digital government governance capacity during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. In my humble opinion, as an integral part of the digitization and intellectualization of the entire economy and society, digital government is not only the basic demand for building a digital economy governance system and promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the digital economy in China but also an important impelling force for modernizing China’s governance system and governance capacity. With digital government as the core, digital government construction should be jointly promoted by making full use of the public data resources of government departments, coordinating security and development to promote data sharing, fully mobilizing various complementary parties in the digital economy, and assembling social forces at different levels to do a good job in digital co-governance.

The economic base determines the superstructure, and the superstructure reacts on the economic base. In the era of the digital economy, digital technology is deeply integrated with the real economy, and data factors empower various application scenarios of digital industrialization and industrial digitization. Only by building a digital government in line with the law of digital economy development can the governance of the digital economy be safely and efficiently enhanced, so as to regulate and guide the healthy and sustainable development of the digital economy.

A categorized and classified data authorization mechanism should be built to promote the secure and efficient sharing of public data across sectors, regions, and industries. Data factors are the core engine for deepening the development of the digital economy. During the conduct of integrated government services, governments at all levels have obtained massive public data, however, there are phenomena such as data silos and data closed loops. A categorized and classified data authorization mechanism can, on the premise of ensuring the security of public data, promote the flow of public data in different government departments and administrative regions and empower the “digital governance” and “digital-intelligent” capabilities of digital government, on the one hand; share public data with digital economy entities and promote public data, as data factors, to enter the production activities of various industries in the digital economy, on the other hand.

The level of digital technology should be improved and data value should be focused on instead of the sharing of data itself. Among the public data possessed by government departments, individual and small amounts of public data are not valuable for big data analysis, while collective and massive public data is an important strategic resource of the country. Data sharing based on digital technology can revitalize the government’s ability to govern based on data and give play to the role of public data that is no longer limited to the integrated government services in the past but connected to the development context of the entire digital economy to not only conveniently serve the people but also efficiently contribute to social wealth creation.

Government as a platform (GaaP) should be built to join the forces of all levels of society through digital platforms to do a good job in digital co-governance. The development of the digital economy has given rise to a large number of digital platforms. Digital government can open official government accounts on digital platforms to increase the coverage of government affairs, on the one hand; GaaP can also be built to have a closer network connection with parties that access digital platforms, on the other hand. GaaP can transmit information faster and realize higher information transparency and stronger information interaction between the government and the public. Therefore, GaaP with governments at all levels as the core can give play to collective wisdom and join the forces of all levels of society to do a good job in public governance.

The transformation of functions and roles should be accelerated and various complementary parties in the digital economy should be united to do a good job in digital co-governance that regulates digital economy development. The government plays the role of both the regulator and the participant in the digital economy. While empowering the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and giving rise to new industries, new business forms, and new models, digital technology and data factors have also caused problems such as digital platform monopoly, improper data privacy protection, and disorderly expansion of Internet capital. Therefore, digital government construction also requires the government to deeply understand the development logic of digital industries, keep abreast of the developments of the digital economy, and timely and effectively introduce policies and regulations to regulate irrational phenomena in digital economy development. In the process of drafting, amending, and introducing these policies and regulations, the social wisdom of various complementary parties in the digital economy including university scholars and industry practitioners can also be pooled. In conclusion, digital government construction should take governments at all levels as the core and various entities of the digital economy as important complementary parties to jointly address real-world issues in terms of digital industry ecology development and data factor market construction and safeguard the healthy and sustainable development of the digital economy.