China Unicom s big data practice and data asset valuation into the table exploration

Mondo Technology Updated on 2024-01-28

Based on the practice of massive data governance, China Unicom adheres to independent innovation, carries out the integration of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies and services, and contributes to the national strategies such as serving digital China and building a cyber power.

China Unicom actively implements the national big data strategy proposed by China Unicom, and unswervingly implements the instructions and requirements of the general secretary of the country, such as "promoting the implementation of the national big data strategy, accelerating the improvement of digital infrastructure, promoting the integration and open sharing of data resources, ensuring data security, accelerating the construction of digital China, and better serving China's economic and social development and improving people's lives". China Unicom has contributed to the promotion of digital construction and the development of the digital economy, especially in recent years, in terms of better coordination of epidemic prevention and control, economic and social development, and better coordination of development and security.

The overall situation of China Unicom's big data practice

In October 2015, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) put forward the "implementation of the national big data strategy" for the first time. Since 2016, China Unicom has taken the lead in carrying out intensive IT construction, realizing the concentration of data in 31 provinces, setting up an independent research and development team of more than 2,000 people, and actively exploring the use of data to serve its own digital operations. Based on China Unicom's massive data governance practice, it has carried out the integration of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies and services, precipitated a mature technical system and operation system, and has now built four product lines of data governance, data services, data applications and data security, and cultivated and formed a capability and product system represented by the "information governance" government affairs big data platform. On this basis, China Unicom's data engineering party is summarized and widely used in digital, digital finance, smart cultural tourism, industrial Internet and other industries to support customers' digital transformation. At present, it has served more than 30 national ministries and commissions, participated in the construction of 15 ministries and commission-level big data platforms, 14 provincial-level government affairs big data platforms, and created benchmark projects such as the National Development and Reform Commission's special platform for economic operation, digital Guangdong, digital Zhejiang, digital Chongqing, and digital ShaanxiServing 8 provincial-level and 73 prefecture-level platforms, deeply participating in the construction of government affairs in Beijing, Chongqing, Liaoning and other provinces, and contributing to the realization of local government affairs that are handled immediately after receiving complaints, handled before litigation, and quickly solving people's consultation and complaintsEnsure the data security of 6 provincial, more than 30 prefecture-level and district-level cities, and do a good job as the "gatekeeper" of government affairs data with the security concept of "can't enter, can't take away, can't understand, can't change, and can't be relied on". Up to now, the big data market share among operators has reached 53%.

China Unicom's big data serves the high-quality development of the country's economy and society

China Unicom actively implements the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the relevant deployment and requirements of the first economic work conference and the first work report, and develops various big data platforms that serve the monitoring and supervision, early warning, auxiliary decision-making and precise policy implementation of the economic operation, employment, consumption and other fields at all levels, so as to help the high-quality development of the economy.

(1) Integrate and analyze multi-source economic data to serve macroeconomic adjustment

1.National Development and Reform Commission's National Digital Economy Special Platform.

The National Development and Reform Commission's national digital economy special platform positioning service is mainly to "strengthen the monitoring and analysis of big data on economic operation and improve the ability of economic regulation". The main functions of the platform include: the integration of government data, electricity, tax data, enterprise data, consumption data, signaling data and other multi-source big data, the construction of comprehensive index, travel topic, consumption topic, employment topic, ** topic, industry topic and other eight functional modules. The platform uses multi-source macroeconomic big data monitoring and analysis to overcome the problem that traditional economic statistics cannot fully and real-time reflect the real operation status of the macroeconomy, and realizes a comprehensive assessment of the activity of economic activities from the perspective of big data and monitors the development of the digital economy.

2.Guangdong Province "Guangdong Economy" platform.

In order to implement the requirements of the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on basically realizing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity by 2035, the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of Digital Governance" on "innovating the concept and method of governance, forming a new pattern of digital governance, and promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity" and "strengthening the monitoring and analysis of big data in economic operation and improving the ability of economic adjustment" The relevant requirements of China Unicom helped Guangdong Province to build a "Guangdong Economy" platform. The platform comprehensively opens up the relevant data of the economic operation of more than 30 horizontal departments and bureaus and 21 vertical cities in Guangdong Province, realizes the best analysis of the province's economic development, realizes the three-dimensional, global and dynamic large-screen display of the main economic indicators, and analyzes the "shape" and "potential" of economic operation in real time. The platform will realize the interconnection and integration of economic operation data between different departments and bureaus of the province and cities, so as to improve the timeliness and accuracy of the analysis of the economic operation situation. The platform helps Guangdong Province to implement the "1+1+9" work deployment, do a good job in the "six stability" and "six guarantees", and win the double victory of epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development of Guangdong Province to provide an effective platform and statistical support, and has been continuously used at the economic situation analysis meeting held by Guangdong Province on April 23 and July 18, 2023.

(2) Monitor and analyze multi-source consumption data to enhance the basic role of consumption in economic development

1.Big data platform for consumer industry of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

In order to implement the first work report on "focus on expanding domestic demand." Priority should be given to the recovery and expansion of consumption. promote the recovery of consumption of catering, culture, tourism, sports and other life services". China Unicom and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism jointly build a big data platform for the consumer industry, which is based on China Unicom's 400 million+ user data, uses technical capabilities such as machine learning Xi and model algorithms, combined with UnionPay offline consumption data, to carry out passenger flow and consumption monitoring in 243 agglomeration areas across the country, provide passenger flow characteristics and consumption characteristics data in agglomeration areas, and realize the national overview, regional overview, provincial and municipal overview of agglomeration areas, Individual monitoring and analysis have solved the problems of monitoring the consumption of tourism agglomeration areas in various places, and assisted the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to monitor the passenger flow and consumption of national agglomeration areas and grasp the development trend. At the same time, the development of agglomeration areas in different regions, provinces and cities can be compared, and the operation of local agglomeration areas can be provided as a reference basis.

2.The Ministry of Commerce's big data monitoring platform for consumer business circles.

Based on the data of China Unicom's 400 million+ users, using data mining, machine Xi, model algorithms and other technical capabilities, China Unicom and the Ministry of Commerce jointly build a big data detection platform for consumer business districts, analyze the characteristics of key business districts in 43 large and medium-sized cities across the country through population big data, and dynamically monitor various phenomena in the commercial development of cities across the country, including global passenger flow, real-time passenger flow, passenger flow portrait, consumption amount, number of consumption, etc., and analyze whether the business district is prosperous. whether consumption spills over, etc., and conducts a survey on the city's business activity and consumption trends. Through consumption big data, the platform grasps the consumption situation of residents in different regions and cities, helps to grasp the local online and offline consumption situation and market recovery in a timely manner, helps the issuance of regional consumption vouchers, and realizes the recovery and expansion of consumption.

(3) Build a digital and intelligent industry and finance platform to help enterprises solve financing problems

In order to implement the "Notice on Further Increasing the Relief and Assistance for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises", "flexibly and accurately use a variety of financial policy tools, strengthen the re-lending and re-discounting policy tools, accurately 'drip irrigation' small and medium-sized enterprises, increase the provision of credit loans, and implement inclusive credit loan support policies for small and micro enterprises in accordance with regulations" In 2019, China Unicom built an industrial financial service sharing platform in Henan Province, which summarizes all policy-based financing loans and policy support projects, and enterprises report various data on time in accordance with the requirements of the platform for intelligent matching and declaration policy review. The platform has accumulated more than 230,000 enterprises in the warehouse, and has matched financing of more than 169 billion yuan. Based on the basic evaluation system of enterprises, the platform takes enterprise financial credit as the core, outputs financing credit products for enterprises to apply for policy loans and commercial loans, and at the same time cleans, sorts out and analyzes the aggregate data of enterprises, and establishes a basic evaluation system for enterprise growth based on big data analysis. The platform provides banks with full-process intelligent loan approval capabilities through the main functions such as financing supermarket, big data credit and policy supermarket, and at the same time establishes a full-online financing application process to make it more convenient for enterprises to apply, help solve the financing difficulties and expensive financing problems of small and medium-sized enterprises, and boost the confidence of small, medium and micro enterprises in development. Relying on the experience of Henan Province, rapid iteration of product technical capabilities, integration of data resources, and the implementation of the industrial financial sharing service platform in 21 cities in 4 provinces. According to incomplete statistics, the platform has accumulated 10.38 million small, medium and micro enterprises, matching financing of more than 747 billion yuan, which has strongly supported the financing relief of small and medium-sized enterprises.

China Unicom's practice and thinking on the entry of data resources into the table

With the advent of the digital economy, data has become a new factor of production, and data assets have become more and more important in the digital and intelligent transformation and development of enterprises. In December 2022, the "Opinions on Building a Data Basic System to Better Play the Role of Data Elements" issued by the Communist Party of China pointed out that the value of data assets should be fully realized by promoting the compliant and efficient circulation and use of data assets and empowering the real economyOn August 21, 2023, the Ministry of Finance issued the Interim Provisions on the Accounting Treatment of Enterprise Data Resources (hereinafter referred to as the "Interim Provisions"), which provides ideas for standardizing the accounting treatment and accounting information disclosure related to enterprise data resources. China Unicom has made some explorations in the valuation of data resources, but there are still some specific difficulties to overcome in terms of specific entry issues such as data asset definition, measurement and disclosure.

(1) The practice of capitalizing the R&D costs of data resources

Taking the "integrated data asset management platform" as an example, the platform is independently developed by China Unicom, which realizes unified management and control of data through the monitoring and governance of the whole process of data from creation to extinction, adapts to the complex data governance environment, helps organizations ensure the timeliness, accuracy, consistency, effectiveness and integrity of data, improves the organization's data operation service capabilities, realizes data empowerment, and establishes a complete and effective data governance system for customers.

The costs invested in the research stage are included in the current profit or loss, and the costs invested in the development stage are accounted for in accordance with the intangible assets formed by the research and development. The Interim Provisions provide a policy basis and guidance for the asset-based measurement and information disclosure of data resources. In the future, under the premise of satisfying the capitalization conditions, the cost method will be used to calculate the cost of data collection, data integration, model construction, application development and other stages as the recorded value of self-built data assets. It can be said that the release of the policy is a major change in line with the development of digitalization and the development of accounting policies, and solves the fundamental problem of data resources in the table accounting from the policy level.

(2) Difficulties in the valuation of data resources and future prospects

At present, China Unicom has not yet carried out the valuation of data resources into the table, and the main difficulties include: First, the issue of data rights confirmation. Especially in the context of the "Three Laws and One Regulations", how does China Unicom obtain the authorization of users, and then obtain the right to use and benefit from its mobile phone signaling and other data. The second is the definition of data assets, that is, what kind of assets are defined when data assets are included in the table, whether they belong to intangible assets, inventories or should be separately set up as a new first-level account for accounting. The third is the problem of initial measurement. When using the cost method, income method, or market method for the initial measurement of data resources, you need to consider factors such as data acquisition, application scenarios, and the value fluctuation of data assets in different application scenarios. Fourth, follow-up measurement. In order to reflect changes in the value of data assets in a timely manner, it is necessary to clarify whether the data assets are subject to cost amortization or impairment testing. Data assets, like most intangible assets, do not need to be depreciated, and for data assets that are reusable and whose validity period is difficult to determine, they are not amortized on time but need to be tested for impairment at the end of the period. The value of data assets fluctuates, which determines that data assets may be depreciated in value and damaged as a whole, and it is necessary to conduct regular impairment tests and revaluate data assets. Fifth, off-balance sheet disclosure. The off-balance sheet disclosure of data assets is a way for an enterprise to transmit data asset information to external stakeholders, and the increase or decrease in the initial recorded amount and value of an enterprise's data assets obtained through the above accounting process shall be shown under the intangible assets, inventories or separate first-level accounts in the financial statements, and in the notes to the financial statements, the useful life of the data assets, the amortization method, the impairment test method and the results, the division of the use of the data assets, and the relevant information of the data resources that do not meet the conditions for asset recognition. However, due to the above-mentioned problems such as the vague definition of data asset accounts, the difficulty in obtaining valuation data, and the increased difficulty of measurement due to value volatility, the value of data assets and their changes cannot be reflected in the current general enterprise financial reports, so they cannot meet the needs of external stakeholders for data asset information.

To sum up, based on the practice of massive data governance, China Unicom adheres to independent innovation, carries out the integration of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies and services, and contributes to the national strategies such as serving digital China and building a cyber power. In the significant work of data resource valuation and entry into the table, China Unicom will also sum up experience, overcome difficulties, and actively explore effective methods in line with the practice of Chinese enterprises.

Author: Song Yulun, Liu Bingwei, Wang Xiufeng, Jiang Chengxiao |Song Yulun is a member of the Party Committee and Chief Data Scientist of China Unicom Digital TechnologyLiu Bingwei, Wang Xiufeng, and Jiang Chengxiao work for the October 2023 issue of China Unicom Digital Technology *** New Financial Management (Corporate Finance) magazine.

Editor: Qi Kun.

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