North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region reached a strategic cooperation agreement with China Telecom surrounding cloud computing on May 28.

The cooperation covers construction of e-commerce, smart city and e-government cloud. The data center of Inner Mongolia's e-government cloud was unveiled at China Telecom's cloud base on the same day. It is the first e-government cloud jointly built by a provincial government and the telecommunication operator.

This cooperation will help to integrate the government's information resources and allow government to benefit from cloud computing, refine its administration and improve its services. Moreover, big data will play a critical role in the government's decisions making and development strategy, according to Mao Zhongwei, a division head of the region's commission of economy and information technology.

As another benefit, "the government's information services will extend to more grassroots level," said Mao.

For the next step, the region will improve public services with the assistance of cloud computing, including education and medical services.