East China's Shandong province is trying to boost digital empowerment, so as to make cities and counties in its region "smarter" and the residents' lives easier.

In the prefecture-level city of Heze, Juye county has a big ambition to boost itself: Becoming a sub-center hub in the Southern Shandong Economic Circle, by building a "smart city" in an effort to make it smarter and residents' lives better.

Since the start of this year, Juye has taken digital reform as an overall traction, focusing on optimizing the legal business environment, with the use of the "internet plus" method to independently develop a "1+2+5" app, offering a system architecture of "one database, two ports and five modules".

Liu Meng, chief of the administrative law enforcement and supervision section at Juye County Bureau of Justice, said the digital management platform integrates the intelligent management system of administrative law enforcement and inspection, as well as the filing of enterprises involved, focusing on the concerns of all parties involved.

She said the "Linzhifa" App, as a smart supervision platform for enterprise-related administrative services, has won the title of "Excellent Case of New Smart City under Heze City".

Liu added that by relying on digital empowerment, Juye has also launched a "People's Random Photography" platform, mobilizing the public to actively participate in urban management and achieving timely urban management through "mobile photography, mobile reporting, mobile inspection and mobile handling."

At the same time, the county has also explored "cloud" services for urban operation and management, using technologies such as urban monitoring, drone aerial photography and big data, in a bid to improve the level of scientific, intelligent and refined urban management, and realize the goal of "when the people have a call, I have a timely response."

With a population of 1.1 million, Juye realized a regional GDP of 44.76 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) in 2023, an annual increase of 6.9 percent, laying a solid foundation for its economic and social advancement, the county government said.

With a coal reserve of 5.57 billion metric tons, Juye also witnesses large-sized integrated coalfields with the largest reserves and the best coal quality in East China.