Has Informatization Improved the Efficiency of Public Policies? An Empirical Analysis Based on the Quasi-natural Experiment of COVID-19

Abstract

As a public health emergency, Novel Coronavirus Disease（COVID-19）has a major and far-reaching impact on China and the world, whilst testing the public policies and governance capacities of each country.The medical research and vaccine development cycle of COVID-19 is relatively long. Therefore, timely and effective identification and separation of COVID-19 cases through information technology has become a key task for epidemic prevention and control. The informatization of government affairs（that is, e-government）has always been an important tool for the Chinese government to improve its governance capacity, which has laid a solid foundation for the response to the epidemic. Through the government information system, cases and close contacts can be detected, tracked and isolated in a timely manner, and transmission routes can be blocked, which provides strong support for the control of the disorderly spread of the epidemic and the timely treatment of patients.Meanwhile, the implementation effect of e-government is also affected by social credit. Although local governments have set up elaborate government information systems based on big data, it is still difficult to accurately cover everyone. Therefore, the control of people can only be based on abstract information, but the accuracy of information and the execution of policies all depend on people’s credit level.Based on this quasi-natural experiment, the e-government level of 286 cities on pandemic prevention and control is tested. In addition, the fulfillment rate of Ctrip’s room reservation in December 2019 is used to represent the social credit level of each city, and the interaction effect of social credit on e-government is tested. The findings are as follows: （1）In general, e-government can improve the public policy efficiency of pandemic prevention and control. For every 0.1 increase in the e-government level, the number of confirmed cases will be reduced by 65.6, and the number of deaths per 10, 000 people will be reduced by 0.008.（2）The role of e-government in pandemic prevention and control depends on the local social credit level to a certain extent.（3）Registration of population information at the community level plays a prominent role during the control of pandemic. Using the number of post offices in each city and the revenue from telecommunication services as the instrument variables of e-government, using the digital index compiled by Tencent as an alternative variable, and controlling the personal characteristics of the Party secretary, the number of public sector employees and city rank, the basic conclusion remains stable. The findings provide some policy enlightenment to strengthen governance and improve the efficiency of regular epidemic prevention and control.