▲ At the Beijing 12345 Citizen Hotline Service Center, operators are busy at their workstations. Photo by Wang Zicheng/New Beijing News.
On December 28, 2025, the "Intelligent Public Voice, Digital Governance Future—2025 New Beijing News Digital Government Forum," hosted by New Beijing News, was held in Beijing. The forum aimed to delve into the pathways for government service hotlines to achieve high-quality development at the outset of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, providing intellectual support for building a smarter, more agile, and warmer digital government.
After 30 years of development, the 12345 Government Service Convenience Hotline (hereinafter referred to as the "12345 hotline") across China is no longer just a tool for optimizing the business environment. It now faces a historic strategic transformation: shifting from "addressing complaints upon receipt" to "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise," and from "passive response" to "active governance." How to empower the hotline with digital technology to enhance the precision of public services has become a core challenge for the 15th Five-Year Plan period.
The forum invited experts from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University, Beijing Normal University, the University of International Business and Economics, and the Guoyan New Economy Research Institute for in-depth discussions.
If "addressing complaints upon receipt" solves the problem of "getting things done," then "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise" tests a city's ability to identify and handle issues in advance, thereby upgrading the 12345 hotline from a service channel to a front-end gateway of the governance system.
Li Yongjian, Vice President of the China Marketing Association and a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' National Academy of Economic Strategy, stated that the 12345 hotline has established an efficient and convenient communication mechanism. It has become a vital channel for the government to listen to public opinion, gather public wisdom, and address public concerns, effectively bridging the gap between citizens and the government and demonstrating the government's commitment to serving the people.
Huang Jianqing, a professor at the School of Information, University of International Business and Economics, explained that the 12345 hotline integrates previously dispersed public service hotlines, creating a unified entry point for public appeals. This addresses the public's difficulty in "finding the right department and reporting issues to multiple entities," allowing public concerns to go directly to the responsible bodies. Through a closed-loop handling mechanism, it pressures responsible departments to perform their duties efficiently, leading to swift resolutions for everyday issues like alley parking and noise disturbances. It can be said that "the 12345 hotline effectively bridges the 'last mile' of social governance, becoming a 'heart-to-heart bridge' between the public and the government."
Li Yongjian noted that data shows the national 12345 hotline now receives over 4.37 million calls per day, making it a primary channel for gathering social conditions and public opinion, covering all aspects of daily life and business operations. For instance, the hotline serves as a convenient entry point for businesses to inquire about policies and procedures, as well as a channel for help when facing policy implementation issues. Its institutionalized coordination and handling mechanisms help better protect corporate rights and continuously optimize the business environment.
The 12345 hotline is evolving from a "public service window" into a central hub for government governance. As further illustrated by Tang Renwu, a professor at the School of Government, Beijing Normal University, it acts as a "barometer" for sensing public sentiment, a "pressure relief valve" for resolving conflicts and risks, and a "booster" for optimizing the business environment, highlighting its pivotal role in the governance system.
Simultaneously, local 12345 hotlines have established two-way transfer and collaborative linkage mechanisms with emergency service lines like 110 and 119, achieving "single-number access with categorized handling," where emergency appeals are transferred immediately. Furthermore, the introduction of third-party oversight prohibits the outsourcing of core services, while auxiliary services require qualification reviews and routine inspections. "The operational mechanisms are continuously upgraded and optimized, generating a synergistic linkage effect," said Tang Renwu.
From the perspective of implementing "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise," organizational mechanisms and performance evaluations can be adjusted accordingly. However, the key to initiating and forming a closed loop often lies in whether data can be understood, utilized, and transformed into actionable governance directives.
Currently, the 12345 hotline is gradually advancing in some regions, moving from "addressing complaints upon receipt" towards "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise." Li Yongjian stated that "proactive problem-solving" essentially emphasizes source governance and active governance; the core is to identify the source and address issues there, thereby achieving proactive resolution. From the perspective of incentivizing responsible departments, the motivation to promote "proactive problem-solving" is not low: under the performance pressure of "addressing complaints upon receipt," departments are more willing to engage in preemptive governance to reduce backend complaints. Therefore, from the angles of organizational mobilization and performance-driven guidance, promoting "proactive problem-solving" has a certain institutional foundation. The real challenge lies in prioritizing the improvement of data capabilities and enabling cross-departmental data sharing.
Zhu Keli, Founding Dean of the Guoyan New Economy Research Institute, also stated that, in essence, the premise of "proactive problem-solving" is the accurate identification of problems that have not yet occurred but are likely to happen. This must be based on the deep mining of vast amounts of work order data. Without the analytical capability to understand data on appeal types, frequency, and regional distribution, it is impossible to extract high-frequency pain points and potential risks. Consequently, organizational coordination lacks targeted direction, and performance evaluation struggles to find a scientific basis. "Data capability is a prerequisite for the transformation," Zhu Keli said. Only through data integration and modeling can governance weaknesses in specific areas and regions be clearly identified, providing concrete direction for subsequent optimization of organizational mechanisms and adjustment of performance indicators. Adjustments to organizational mechanisms and performance orientation can then follow, forming a progressive relationship of "data empowerment—mechanism adaptation—evaluation safeguard," avoiding a transformation that lacks focus.
Ma Liang, a professor at the School of Government, Peking University, believes that the core of "proactive problem-solving" lies in the government's ability to actively identify needs and discover problems. This requires the government to genuinely adopt a people-centered service mindset, proactively discovering issues based on citizen needs. It's not that only problems reported by citizens count; problems identified proactively by the government are equally important. This is not passive response waiting for public appeals but agile governance through active discovery.
At the same time, Ma Liang indicated that achieving "proactive problem-solving" also requires the government to leverage digital technology to aggregate data and identify patterns and trends, thereby detecting "latent issues" in urban services and governance for early warning and intervention. Ultimately, this necessitates a fundamental reshaping of the government's governance philosophy and value orientation, supplemented by an upgrade in digital governance capabilities.
Therefore, Ma Liang suggested strengthening the construction of urban governance databases and the management of knowledge bases, promoting the sedimentation, accumulation, integration, and sharing of more data to enable them to play a greater role. Simultaneously, it is essential to promote the sharing and opening of appropriately desensitized data from government service hotlines, allowing other departments and society to utilize it, thereby creating greater value. This requires enhanced collaborative innovation among government, industry, and academia, leveraging their respective strengths to form a mechanism where government hotlines drive urban governance innovation.
From a technical perspective, Huang Jianqing recommended that the data from the 12345 hotline should be upgraded from discrete "work order records" to high-value "governance assets." The focus should be on building a data governance and application system driven by intelligent analysis, capable of proactively discovering and resolving risks. This involves standardizing elements, building knowledge graphs, and enabling intelligent decision-making, thereby achieving prospective identification and systematic resolution of public risks. This guides the governance model to transition from the passive response of "addressing complaints upon receipt" to the active intervention of "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise."
Tang Renwu believes that it is also necessary to construct an indicator system for "proactive problem-solving": efficacy indicators shifting from "response" to "prediction," covering metrics like work order response time and resolution rate; risk early warning indicators, which identify nascent issues by analyzing appeal types and quantities to generate预警 reports; and governance efficacy indicators, used to assess policy effectiveness and governance levels, pushing services from "convenient" to "smart."
As the 12345 hotline moves from "call handling" to "computing power," efficiency gains are just the first step. The more critical task is to institutionalize the boundaries of human-machine collaboration, the responsibility chain, and safety-net mechanisms, preventing "technology substitution" from devolving into "service degradation."
Currently, the reception methods of the 12345 hotline are gradually shifting from manual operator assistance to automated intelligent customer service. For many government hotlines, a large volume of standardized inquiries and simple appeals are handled automatically by intelligent customer service 24/7. This not only alleviates staffing pressure and improves handling efficiency but also ensures consistent responses and accumulates vast amounts of data for governance analysis.
However, for complex appeals involving strong emotions or intricate situations, intelligent customer service lacks empathy and flexible response capabilities. Insufficient dialogue or improper routing can potentially reduce service quality and undermine governance effectiveness. Regarding this, Tang Renwu stated that the trend of replacing human agents with intelligent customer service primarily yields benefits in efficiency and cost reduction, but risks manifest in the insufficient handling capacity for complex issues and lack of emotional support. This indicates that the application of intelligent technology requires a balance between efficiency and quality. Digital government construction must not only have "cold algorithms" but also "warm care."
Zhu Keli pointed out that setting the boundaries for human-machine collaboration must adhere to the principle of "categorized handling with a safety net." Any intelligent process must retain an option for "one-click transfer to a human agent" to ensure that digitally disadvantaged groups, such as the elderly, are not excluded from services.
Li Yongjian, from an institutional perspective, proposed five detailed standards for human-machine collaboration, aiming to establish a "principled" technological ethic: First, establish standards for grading and classifying work orders, clarifying which standardized tasks can be handled robotically in a closed loop. Second, grant human operators the "ultimate authority to take over," enabling them to detect emotional cues in real-time human conversations. Third, build a fully traceable mechanism to clarify accountability. Fourth, promote "experience feedback," converting effective strategies from skilled operators into AI capabilities. Fifth, enhance digital literacy across society. "The goal of technological empowerment is to enhance governance capability, not to diminish the warmth of service."
In terms of implementing cross-departmental and cross-level collaboration, Tang Renwu used the frequent and challenging issue of "parking governance" as an example to dissect a reconfigured collaborative chain. He suggested that sub-district offices should play a "leading and coordinating" role, with communities acting as the "safety-net entities," and district government service and data bureaus responsible for "coordination and supervision." Through the precise recording and full closed-loop process of the 12345 hotline, combined with real-time monitoring from intelligent parking systems, previously fragmented management can be integrated into a pattern of "one bureau leading with multi-department collaboration." This must be solidified into institutional processes through mechanisms like "first-contact responsibility" and "time-bound acceptance" to prevent buck-passing.
Establishing long-term incentive mechanisms is also an important measure for promoting cross-departmental collaboration. Li Yongjian added that, based on the current situation, relying solely on administrative orders to drive collaboration often yields limited results. Only by incorporating metrics like appeal handling efficiency and public satisfaction into departmental performance evaluation systems can endogenous motivation be formed, truly promoting collaborative cross-departmental handling.
Due to the pressure from evaluation mechanisms, some new issues have emerged in grassroots governance, such as the distortion of evaluations exemplified by "soliciting satisfaction ratings." Regarding this, Huang Jianqing suggested that the evaluation system must undergo a fundamental transformation from focusing on "response rates" to emphasizing "governance efficacy." This requires introducing diverse indicators such as "problem root-cause resolution rate," "improvement in public perception," and "positive evaluation of human-machine collaboration." This would institutionally encourage staff to conduct personalized, in-depth, and compassionate interventions, rather than merely pursuing superficially impressive KPIs.
Ultimately, the transition of the 12345 hotline from "addressing complaints upon receipt" to "proactive problem-solving before complaints arise" is not simply about making it "smarter." It is about driving a systemic change in urban governance from "post-facto handling" to "preemptive prediction." Simultaneously, while using algorithms to enhance efficiency, it is crucial to ensure, through human-machine collaborative safety-net mechanisms, that complex appeals and vulnerable groups are always "answered by someone, handled capably, and resolved satisfactorily." The ultimate goal of technological advancement must be the improvement of public experience and the enhancement of governance efficacy.