The Realization Path of Big Data Application Promoting Party School Cadre Education

With the integrated development of computer Internet, mobile Internet, 5G technology and digital terminal technology, information applications such as e-government, digital economy, smart society, online education and all-media communication are profoundly changing all aspects of national politics, economy, society, education and culture. In essence, big data technology is aimed at various industries, using Internet technology to collect the whole original data of business processes and results, define and classify them as needed, and form big data based on database after all digitization. Through filtering, calculation, analysis and mining, with the help of information technologies such as Internet of Things, blockchain, artificial intelligence and edge computing, it will contribute to the development of digital China, the construction of smart cities, the management innovation of government agencies, the upgrading of scientific research and training of party schools, and so on.

The outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 has accelerated the popularization and development of new online formats, new scenes and new models such as online education, video conferencing, online medical care, e-commerce and new media in China and around the world. Network applications led by big data analysis, digital economy and technological innovation have played an important role in ensuring China’s education and conferences, ensuring consumption and employment, promoting the resumption of work and production, and preventing and controlling the spread of the epidemic, showing strong growth potential. The massive data generated and stored in the process of comprehensive digitalization in all fields of society, including the party school system, supports and promotes the application efficiency of big data and cloud computing. The deep mining and analysis function of related big data is becoming more and more important in society, and it has been and is playing an increasingly important role.

First, the development history and present situation of Party school system information data

From a global perspective, it is currently in the stage of online, digital, cloud-based and intelligent popularization. Global digital technology, network technology, blockchain and artificial intelligence are developing together, forming a development trend based on information network, with big data as the key resource, cloud computing as the application means and intelligence as the leading direction.

From the perspective of the country, China attaches great importance to the development of big data applications from the central to the local, from government agencies to enterprises and institutions, and big data applications have risen to the national strategic level. All regions and departments have carried out the construction of digital China in an all-round way in accordance with the established national policies, explored the transformation path of digital China, and constantly innovated the new mode of digital governance. The huge online activities have created a new format and new mode of digital application in all walks of life in China, laying a solid user and data foundation for the construction of digital China.

From the perspective of Party school construction and development, as the main channel for training leading cadres at all levels of the Party and an important position for the Party’s ideological and theoretical construction, Party schools have always attached importance to the important role of information construction in the education and training of Party school cadres in order to better play the role of Party school cadres in training, ideological guidance, theoretical construction and decision-making consultation and realize the development goal of "four constructions". The training of party school cadres and the construction of digital application of teaching and scientific research are accompanied by the whole process of informationization, digitization and intelligent construction of party school system.

From the perspective of the development of information data storage and application, the development of digital data in party school has probably gone through four stages: the first stage is that each unit uses a stand-alone office, and the data is stored in the hard disk and floppy disk of each computer, and there is no network or network database; In the second stage, a few departments, such as teaching, scientific research, finance department, library, publishing house, etc., established the unit LAN according to the business needs, and the computer data was stored on the LAN server in the form of database, and the unit made statistical analysis on the data as needed; In the third stage, the party school has built a computer party school network and a unified server room. All departments in the school have their own departmental websites, and the data is stored in the server of the school room. The party school has a unified database, and data analysis provides support for the management and service of the party school. In the fourth stage, with the popularization of mobile Internet and WiFi, the gradual maturity of cloud computing and cloud hosting technology, and the development of Weibo WeChat and client applications, party schools began to pay attention to the digitalization of network office and online systems in various party schools, and began to digitally manage teaching, scientific research, libraries, school media, logistics management and finance. Almost all party schools have built portals and mobile website platforms, and developed party school information management systems. Digital libraries and media-integrated platforms have been built, and more and more huge network data are stored not only in the party school’s own network servers, but also in third-party cloud servers, laying a digital resource foundation for developing big data applications.

In 2019, the Work Regulations of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Party School (School of Administration) issued by the central government emphasized that Party schools (School of Administration) at all levels should give full play to the important role of informationization in teaching, scientific research and daily management, attach importance to the use of modern information technology, actively promote the integration of cadre education and training with the Internet, and accelerate the construction of "smart campus". At present, party schools at all levels in China are vigorously building digital party schools, creating smart campuses, smart party building, smart logistics, cloud classrooms, online training platforms, digital libraries, professional databases, big data centers, etc., and actively promoting the integration and development of the Internet and party schools. The level of informatization construction in various schools has been continuously improved, and their own portals have been gradually built, and some important departments have also built independent characteristic websites. Teaching, scientific research and think tank construction have basically realized the digitization of articles, libraries at all levels have a high degree of digitization, and various media have integrated and developed, all of which have achieved digital publishing, and most of them can be distributed online. Information applications in teaching, scientific research, think tanks, management, libraries, media, etc. are the basic conditions for the gathering and research of big data.

Training cadres is an important duty of party schools. Whether the innovation of training methods keeps pace with the times is related to the scientific development of party schools. An important content of a smart campus is the scientific use of big data that is compatible with the development of cloud technology. Vigorously carrying out online education and learning for cadres is an important supplement to the training, teaching improvement, scientific research innovation and think tank construction of party schools. At present, while the network training of various party schools is making continuous progress, we should also see some key problems that need to be solved in the development. For example, in real teaching, there are still some obvious shortcomings in the diversity and accuracy of online and offline training methods, the diversity of high-quality resources and the interaction of learning; In the current research of think tanks, the unique advantages of big data have not been brought into play.

First, in the diversity of online training, the application of mobile Internet terminals, such as mobile phones, has become very popular. Software based on mobile terminals, such as WeChat, Tik Tok, App, and applets, involves all aspects of the work and life of cadres in party member. Online training using big data platforms is becoming more and more mature, and many party schools are actively innovating training methods. However, in some party schools, especially grass-roots party schools, although various online trainings have been opened, the training methods are relatively simple and the training lacks certain pertinence and accuracy.

Second, in the aspect of learning resource sharing, in the process of party school informatization construction, the phenomenon of "data island" has existed for a long time. The data of more than 3,000 party schools are independent, and the sharing degree in schools is low. There is basically no sharing between schools, and there is a lack of resource sharing and exchange. Central party schools have high-end and high-quality resources, while local party schools have high-quality resources with local characteristics. The degree of complementary advantages of high-quality resources for systematic training of party schools directly affects the scientific nature of cadre education and training.

Third, in terms of strengthening interactive communication, most of the "online party schools" of party schools only put online courseware for local party schools to learn and watch online. The learning process lacks interaction, and students rarely do online assessment, analysis, evaluation and research.

Fourth, in terms of innovative research methods of think tanks, think tank research has always followed the traditional methods of investigation, consulting, statistics, analysis, discussion, etc., lacking innovation and not making full use of the advantages of convenience, speed, comprehensiveness and accuracy of big data application in the party school system.

Second, the practical significance of the application of big data to promote the education and training of party school cadres

It is an important development direction of party school teaching activities to realize the integrated development of cadre education and training and the Internet, combining online and offline. Informatization operation and big data application have played a great role in promoting the construction of party school think tanks, teaching, scientific research, management and party building. However, the application of big data is not simply to digitize paper resources and simply superimpose the databases of various party schools and professional databases. Instead, it is demand-oriented, uniformly defining and integrating all kinds of database resources, reasonably excavating and sharing them, and effectively serving the teaching, scientific research and consulting management of party schools. Big data has many advantages, such as large amount of basic data, many reference samples, efficient statistical analysis, and unlimited time and space areas. It can provide some new ideas and new shortcuts in the innovation of cadre education and training, the improvement of party member cadres’ ability, the research of new methods in scientific research think tanks, the data sharing of party schools and the management of students’ schools, and play its unique role.

(A) the application of big data helps the education and learning of party school cadres.

Big data technology and application is a powerful means to innovate the education and training of party school cadres. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Decision on Several Major Issues Concerning Upholding and Perfecting the Socialism with Chinese characteristics System and Promoting the Modernization of the National Governance System and Governance Capacity, adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee in October 2019, proposed to give full play to the advantages of online education and artificial intelligence, innovate education and learning methods, accelerate the development of a more open and flexible education system for everyone, and build a learning society. Party schools all over the country are actively developing online training and adopting a mixed teaching mode combining online and offline.

The advantage of big data technology is that it can improve the immediacy and pertinence of cadre education and training, optimize the teaching methods of cadre education and training, and improve the information level of teaching management. Through sorting, analyzing, mining and aggregating the existing teaching big data, and accurately analyzing the related databases such as teachers’ teaching data, students’ learning data and organizers’ management data, it can provide decision-making suggestions for improving teaching methods, improving teaching quality and strengthening teaching management, and realize the accurate matching of cadres’ education and training needs, post needs and organizational needs. Relying on the data of cadre education and training in Party school system to infer probability and analyze trend, we can make more reasonable and scientific decision on cadre education and training, thus improving cadres’ quality and ability and optimizing cadres’ knowledge structure.

(B) the application of big data to enhance the informatization ability and level of cadres in party member.

In the process of building a digital China, it is increasingly important to improve the informatization ability of party member cadres focusing on big data. As far as the implementation of the national big data strategy is concerned, the General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out that being good at obtaining data, analyzing data and using data is the basic skill for leading cadres to do a good job. Leading cadres at all levels should strengthen their study, understand big data, make good use of big data, enhance their ability to use data to promote various tasks, and constantly improve their ability to grasp the development law of big data, so that big data can play a greater role in all work.

With the help of big data technology, we can analyze the knowledge reserve structure and training needs of each leading cadre by filtering and screening the existing massive raw data in the party school system, so as to teach students in accordance with their aptitude and improve the ability of party member cadres to apply big data. Party school cadre training starts with attaching importance to the fusion analysis of big data, cloud computing and 5G technologies, effectively incorporating big data and intelligent information courses into the regular course training plan of party member cadres, learning emerging businesses such as big data, 5G, cloud computing, smart city, Internet of Things, network security, blockchain and artificial intelligence, mastering emerging technologies such as big data, 5G, Internet of Things and cloud computing, and enriching the education and training contents of party school cadres. We should apply big data information to normal classroom teaching, cultivate party member cadres to form the habit of "speaking with data, managing with data, making decisions with data, and innovating with data" in the information environment, improve the digital literacy of leading cadres, empower the cadre education in party member, promote the informationization, intelligence and integration development of party schools, and promote the construction of national learning-oriented political parties.

(C) The application of big data provides new ideas and methods for the research and analysis of teaching and research think tanks of Party schools.

The Party School is a research institution and an important think tank for the philosophy and social sciences of the Party and the country. The cadre training, teaching and scientific research, administrative management and thinking methods of think tank research in the Party School are mainly in the traditional way, and it is still weak in using big data for analysis and assisting in providing research management results. With the development of information technology, there are some changes in presentation forms and media, such as databases, data clouds, mobile screens, PPT speeches, multimedia books, WeChat applets, APP applications, clients, etc. Compared with traditional cadre education and training, big data analysis can make full use of various databases and media information, take massive information as the reference object, establish analysis models, adopt new ideas, new methods and new models, and dig out the results, problems, analysis and suggestions needed for analysis.

Gather national strategic deployment and policy research suggestions, and use big data technology to conduct breadth scanning analysis and deep semantic analysis, so as to provide scientific basis and intellectual support for macro-decision-making of national innovation strategies and policies. At the same time, with the help of artificial intelligence technology, corresponding special research results are automatically generated from different dimensions and perspectives, and new methods of national policy and strategy research and analysis are explored. For the behavior path and thinking mode of policy analysis, the policy research analysis model is established, the policy research thinking is digitized and modeled, and the model is constantly trained through a lot of practice to ensure the timeliness and continuity of policy research.

(D) The application of big data realizes the orderly sharing and application of data resources in the Party school system.

With the help of the unified platform of big data in the Party School system, Party schools in all regions and at all levels can easily realize the exchange and sharing of training experience, teaching plans, excellent courseware, high-quality resources, think tank research and scientific research innovation. Through the convenient statistical analysis function of the unified platform of big data, we can give full play to the statistical advantages of big data in analyzing cross-regional and cross-domain data, and investigate and analyze the training and learning needs of students in different regions and at different levels, which can provide reliable reference for scientifically formulating targeted training and learning plans. This not only ensures the sharing of high-quality resources in the whole system, but also optimizes scarce resources and avoids wasting unnecessary manpower and material resources.

(E) The application of big data improves the school security and student management efficiency of party schools.

Administrative management, student management, logistics service, information service and library service are the important guarantees to ensure the operation of the party school. Classify and integrate the management data, service data, student data and reading data accumulated on the basis of various existing information platforms in various departments to form a related database, for example, classroom learning data, out-of-school research data, extracurricular learning data, knowledge institution data, visit and inspection data, book reading data, leave data and canteen dining data for students. Through the correlation analysis of these big data, It can accurately find the weak links and risk loopholes in management and service, improve the shortage of logistics support and make up for the loopholes in student management, so as to improve management methods, improve management effects and realize accurate policy.

Third, the implementation path of big data application to promote the education and training of party school cadres

The application and construction of big data is a comprehensive, practical, systematic and innovative project with advanced and complex technology, wide application range and many management contents, which needs overall planning. At present, the main contents of the informationization and big data APPlication of most party schools include: the external portal of the school, the internal management service platform (including training, teaching, scientific research, think tank, management, finance, etc.), the school WeChat public platform, the school mobile app, the school party building big data platform, and the school professional database. The application scope includes leading cadres, school departments, party organizations and ordinary employees in party member, and the application media includes computers, mobile phones, readers, big screens and televisions. Collecting, analyzing and applying big data is a comprehensive system engineering. To realize the effective application of big data, it is necessary to establish big data awareness, do a top-level design, build a big data platform for party schools, formulate big data management norms, build a big data service system, share and apply big data for party schools, and serve the teaching, scientific research, think tanks, media and management of party schools. Plan requirements design, digital initialization, data structure definition and database design in advance.

Network security and informatization are complementary, security is the premise of development, development is the guarantee of security, and security and development should be promoted simultaneously. In the process of Party school big data project construction, we should always ensure data security with bottom line thinking. Controllability and security are indispensable for network security which belongs to non-traditional security category. It is necessary to formulate relevant management systems in advance, attach great importance to the security of data resources, strengthen the orderly sharing of data resources, and strictly protect the personal information of students.

(1) Do a good job in the top-level design of big data applications and formulate big data standards and specifications for party schools.

Big data application is a comprehensive system engineering with high technical content, strong foresight and involving many departments, including teaching and training, scientific research consultation, administrative management, logistics services and other work. There are many types of digital resources and the definition of technical standards is complex. In order to give full play to the advantages of Party School’s information resources, it is necessary to make a top-level design plan in advance, do a good job in the early research, architecture design, data initialization, organization and implementation of Party School, attach great importance to initialization, and have rules to follow in the implementation process. It is necessary to comprehensively consider the rational setting of departments, tasks, processes, applications, analysis, evaluation, etc. in advance, which data are common, to what extent the tasks are refined, and which fields are defined, etc., so as to make the requirements work practical and detailed. Formulate big data standards, guidelines and management systems for Party schools, and define database classification, fields and codes. The integration of big data and artificial intelligence industries is getting higher and higher, focusing on how to optimize the intelligence of big data and form an innovation-driven development pattern led by big data intelligence in party schools.

(B) the integration of Party school system big data, build an integrated big data resource pool

Data consistency is very important in the process of data linkage. If the data that should be the same between systems are inconsistent, it will easily cause the system to report errors and stop running. Therefore, it is necessary to collect data sources according to the established consistency specifications, integrate big data from different party schools and different systems, integrate information system data from important fields, grab data from the Internet, etc., and build an integrated big data resource pool to reserve data resources for big data. At the same time, it is necessary to uniformly clean data, tap the beneficial value of silent data, distribute data and control permissions according to different scenarios and application requirements, and finally realize data visualization. Focus on building intelligent integrated learning resources of thought, theory and practice, and establish a system of policy documents and ideological knowledge, so as to provide intelligent knowledge services for comprehensively grasping the internal relationship between theory and grassroots practice.

(3) Building a big data platform for the Party School system to realize the sharing of resources in the whole Party School system.

With the advent of the Internet of Everything in the 5G era, it is becoming more and more important to innovate teaching methods, strengthen the construction of online learning platform, actively develop online training, and implement a mixed teaching mode combining online and offline. The purpose of building a big data platform for party school system is to serve the functions of party school cadres’ training, teaching, research and management, and its function is an information support platform integrating cadre training, discipline construction, theoretical research, policy implementation and grassroots case analysis. The focus of network training is to integrate all the training resources of the party school system, realize the sharing of training resources such as training teachers, training materials, digital books and digital media in party schools at all levels, and create a big data platform integrating data collection, data processing, monitoring management and visualization, so that the original individual, scattered, independent and dormant high-quality training resources of various party schools can be quickly shared across time and space, thus improving the efficiency of training and learning.

(D) the use of quantitative data analysis to support the decision-making consultation and think tank research of Party schools.

The larger the effective data of the platform and the more related databases, the more effective, authoritative and accurate the result analysis will be. Big data makes the quantified data as close to the target reality as possible through the collection of multidimensional data and dynamic adjustment. The correlation analysis and mining between the cross-disciplinary and cross-regional cross-platform massive data of different provincial party schools and different professional network contents can provide researchers with a scientific grasp of the real-time dynamic laws of society, accurately put forward targeted decision-making advice and provide new methods. An important advantage of big data is to make trend prediction and intelligently analyze a large number of interrelated and interactive decision variables, which makes the basic work related to policy research more efficient, accurate and timely, and helps to find more detailed policy trends. Massive data in many fields and effective algorithms in different ways will help to improve macro and micro decision-making ability, improve the pertinence of research objectives and results, and provide important reference for promoting the modernization of national governance capacity.

(V) Cooperate with foreign countries on big data resources and share the research results of big data.

Based on data and oriented by business, we will carry out all-round cooperation in emerging technologies and data resources. Docking information resource groups such as national data sharing and exchange platform, national data open platform and various social data platforms, and collecting data on policies of national ministries and commissions, policies of provinces and cities, and people’s livelihood in various places. Access to the national e-government integration platform, collect and sort out government and social related information and data. Combining the basic database of policy research with the basic database of theoretical research, using big data and artificial intelligence technology to process, catalog, process and analyze, and form the data service infrastructure such as policy information base, theoretical information base, information knowledge base, algorithm model base and auxiliary decision base. Relying on the big data of the party school system and the big database of other important think tanks, we will launch the achievements of big data application construction, form special research and analysis reports and think tank products, and provide technical, data and content support for central units, party schools at all levels, provincial and municipal big data centers, etc.

The application of big data can speed up the informationization and intelligentization of Party schools, improve the data management and service capabilities of Party schools, and better assist Party schools to carry out information-based teaching, scientific research, consultation and management. Through the mining and analysis of big data, it will actively promote the research of theories and policies of various departments in various fields of society, and the relevant research results of big data can more effectively help improve the research of related research think tank projects. Promote the coordinated development of teaching and training, scientific research, decision-making consultation and management services of party schools, efficiently serve the work of scientific research think tanks of party schools at all levels in the country, and provide high-quality consulting reference for the research and decision-making of major issues of the party and the state.

[The author is the deputy director and editor of the E-government Research Center of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee (National School of Administration)]