The surge in big data and digitalization has accelerated digital government projects nationwide, with many cities racing to build "urban brains" or "smart city" platforms to enhance administrative efficiency and public services. However, some local governments have invested tens of millions of yuan into digital initiatives that ended up "completed but idle" or "operating but empty." A recent case in Qujing, Yunnan Province, exposed digital projects that were abandoned or shut down, raising the question of why these costly systems fail to be used and what led to their downfall.

Reporters visited the "Digital Qujing Operations Center" in a local industrial park, which once housed the "Urban Brain" and the Qujing Tong app. The offices now sit empty, and the app has vanished from use. A street survey in Qujing revealed that most residents knew little about Qujing Tong, and those who had used it said it was only useful for primary school enrollment, serving no other purpose in daily life.

Wang Kun, Director of the Qujing Data Bureau, revealed that as of the end of 2025, the app's daily active users numbered only around 60, despite the city's population exceeding 5.5 million. Launched in 2021, the app offered over 70 services, but only six were self-developed; the rest were just links to other applications, duplicating functions already available on Yunnan Province's "One Phone for Everything" platform, which had been operating since 2019 and had about 1.9 million registered users in Qujing with over 21.54 million transactions processed.

The provincial platform was earlier, more comprehensive, and more popular, making the local app redundant from the start. So why did Qujing pursue this duplication? The Qujing Tong app was just one part of a larger "Urban Brain" project initiated in 2021 under the direction of the then-city party secretary. The city brought in an external company through bidding to restructure the Qujing Digital Economy Company, with the government purchasing services to build the system.

Wu Yihua, Deputy Mayor of Qujing, admitted that the city was inspired by Hangzhou's successful "Urban Brain" but overlooked its own capability gaps. "We saw the benefits but not our own shortcomings. Without internal expertise, we relied on external parties, which exposed weaknesses in scientific decision-making," he said. The external company proposed a massive, all-encompassing plan that included a database, a data capability center, a "Digital Cockpit" display hall, and two platforms: Qujing Tong and a "Unified Network Management" system.

The "Digital Cockpit," a massive display screen over ten meters long, became the most visible output. However, the local government had no clear blueprint for the "Urban Brain," and the service contract vaguely specified only "operation management, data governance, and system maintenance." After completion, both the Qujing Tong app and the "Unified Network Management" platform failed to gain traction. The latter was intended to handle cross-departmental and cross-level issues across sectors like urban management, environmental protection, and emergency response, but most functions remained superficial demonstrations.

Despite the poor performance, the contract allowed for annual operation fees of up to 10 million yuan, subject to yearly assessments. Qujing paid 9.9 million yuan each year from 2022 to 2024, totaling nearly 30 million yuan over three years. How did the project pass acceptance checks to justify these payments? The acceptance materials for each year exceeded a thousand pages. In 2024, an expert panel was formed at 3:20 PM and completed the review by 5:20 PM—just 120 minutes—meaning each expert had to review over ten pages of highly technical material per minute.

The review panel included professionals from unrelated fields like a drug rehabilitation center, a district court, an agricultural school, and a hospital—none of whom were data experts. Zhao Guoliang, head of the Digital Government Division at the Qujing Data Bureau, explained that the review simply checked whether the proposed components were built, not whether they were actually used. In 2024, a new "Data Element Operation Platform" was added and passed inspection, but Zhao admitted that no data transactions had occurred, and the project had failed to achieve its intended goals in data value demonstration.

In 2025, a city inspection found that the "Urban Brain" project risked wasting fiscal funds. Attempts to negotiate improvements with the operating company failed, as the partner claimed the payments were insufficient to fund further fixes. To conserve fiscal resources, the city decided to shut the project down. The digital company's leadership noted that software requires continuous updates and optimization, but without adequate funding, they could not sustain operations and had to withdraw.

From 2025, Qujing stopped paying operation fees and terminated the contract. By March 2026, the Qujing Tong app was removed from all app stores, permanently ending its services. Meng Qingguo, Executive Dean of Tsinghua University's National Governance Research Institute, criticized such projects: "Some localities blindly chase new concepts and grand projects that are disconnected from reality and public needs. These appear impressive but are difficult to build and even harder to make functional."

The losses extended beyond fiscal waste. To facilitate the project, 11 state-owned platform companies invested 17 million yuan in 2021, holding nearly 40% equity in the Qujing Digital Economy Company. The failure left these companies with sustained losses. In total, the project consumed 29.7 million yuan from the city's fiscal budget and 17 million yuan from state-owned enterprises, summing to 46.7 million yuan, none of which yielded meaningful returns.

Local officials and company leaders reflected on the impulsive investment. Xie Xianzhi, a project manager at Qujing Industrial Investment Company, said, "For companies in prefecture-level cities like Qujing, we lack professional talent in data. In the future, we will exit projects where we lack expertise or that are outside our core business." Wang Kun added, "This case is a cautionary tale. We cannot prioritize construction over real user needs. We should focus on high-demand projects that serve both people's livelihoods and market realities, avoiding reckless actions."

Since 2022, the State Council has issued guidelines for integrated e-government data systems and regulations on government data sharing. In January 2026, new rules required closing or deregistering low-frequency, impractical government apps and prohibited development of such apps below the county level. These measures aim to standardize data and promote shared systems to prevent duplication. Qujing's "Urban Brain" is a costly lesson: digitalization is a means, not an end. Only when citizens find these tools useful and effective can digital government fulfill its purpose. A pragmatic approach based on actual needs and capabilities is essential to avoid repeating the cycle of "built but unused, used but ineffective," ensuring every fiscal yuan is spent wisely and digitalization becomes a true tool for governance and public service rather than a decorative "digital bonsai."