1001 Smart Cities
🇨🇳 Shanghai

Shanghai Public Data Open Platform & SODA Contest

🤖 AI-generated summary · ◆ 10 sourced claims · 🔎 Last verified

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

10 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.

How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page

Widely reported as mainland China's first municipal open-data portal, it publishes in tiers: sets anyone can download, sets released only on application, and sets that stay closed.

Outcome🔄 Ongoing
Evidence🏛️ Official
what does this mean?The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →
Run byShanghai Municipal Data Bureau; platform built and run by the Shanghai Municipal Big Data Center
Scale🏙️ City-wide

Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 11 more in Shanghai · 📊 Open data guide · 🏛️ Governance projects

Shanghai put a municipal open-data portal online in 2012 — widely reported as mainland China's first — and relaunched it as data.sh.gov.cn in November 2019, backed by the country's first local open-data regulation. Data is published in tiers: unconditionally open sets with downloads and interfaces, conditionally open sets released only on application, and closed sets. Since 2015 the city has run SODA, an annual open-data contest hosted on the same platform; its eleventh edition ran in 2026.

Live 📅 since 2012

📊 Impact

The last full official count, published by the national planning commission in July 2020, gave 3,653 datasets from 98 municipal bodies, 1,686 of them with data interfaces. Independent assessment is less flattering than the city's own framing: Fudan's 2024 China Open Data Index put Shanghai first among the four directly-administered municipalities but seventh among cities overall. The clearest documented output is the contest that runs on the platform — a weak 2014 pilot drew 17 teams, the first SODA in 2015 drew more than 800, and CSIRO's team took an Excellence Prize that November for a bicycle-infrastructure plan built from GPS and smart-card data.

🎓 Lesson

Publishing in tiers is an honest design and a quiet limit. Shanghai's rules name three of them — unconditionally open, conditionally open on application, closed — so the size of the catalogue says nothing about how much of it anyone can actually download, and the city's own 2025 work plan treats increasing the unconditional share as a target rather than a fact. That is why the platform's most legible product is not a dataset count but a competition: the year the contest went from seventeen teams to more than eight hundred is better evidence that the data had become usable than any total published since.

🏛️ GovernanceOpen dataDigital governmentCitizen participation

Sources

↗ NDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study)Published 13 July 2020National planning commission case page: the platform online in the first half of 2012, a redesigned version live in November 2019, and as of 15 June 2020 98 departments, 3,653 datasets and 1,686 with data interfaces. Names SODA as running annually since 2015.
↗ Shanghai Municipality — Implementation Rules on Open Public Data (English bulletin)Published 25 June 2023English bulletin dated 25 June 2023 for rules issued 31 December 2022 and in force to 30 December 2027: the three tiers (non-open, conditionally open, unconditionally open) and the assignment of the platform to the Municipal Big Data Center.
↗ SODA — official competition siteCurrency check: the eleventh edition, 2026, hosted by the Shanghai Data Bureau, with registration closed on 5 July 2026. Runs on the open-data platform's own subdomain. A living site with no publication date.
↗ Shanghai Data Bureau — 2025 Public Data Opening Work PlanPublished 12 June 2025Issued 6 June 2025 and published 12 June 2025 (沪数〔2025〕12号). Targets 100% update timeliness and an explicit push to increase the share of unconditionally open data; conditional-access requests answered within five working days.
↗ Open Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data developmentPublished 5 March 2021Civil-society co-organiser of SODA. Dates the portal to June 2012 and records a weak 2014 pilot contest of 17 teams before the first SODA in 2015 drew more than 800.
Show 2 more sourcesShow fewer
↗ Fudan University FDDI — 2024 China Open Data IndexPublished 26 September 2024Independent ranking released 26 September 2024: Shanghai first among the four directly-administered municipalities but seventh among cities overall.
↗ CSIRO Urban Science — Shanghai Open Data AppsPublished 27 August 2016Independent confirmation of a documented SODA outcome: CSIRO's team won an Excellence Prize in November 2015 for a bicycle-infrastructure plan built from GPS and smart-card data.

📅 How old is the evidence?

Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2012. 6 of 7 sources carry a publication date, from 27 August 2016 to 12 June 2025.

When the sources were published

  1. CSIRO · researchCSIRO Urban Science — Shanghai Open Data Apps
  2. National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) · national governmentNDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study)
  3. Open Data China (开放数据中国) · ngoOpen Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data development
  4. Shanghai Municipal Government · city governmentShanghai Municipality — Implementation Rules on Open Public Data (English bulletin)
  5. Fudan Development Institute, Fudan University · researchFudan University FDDI — 2024 China Open Data Index
  6. Shanghai Municipal People's Government · city governmentShanghai Data Bureau — 2025 Public Data Opening Work Plan

Every source, with links ↑

What happened to this record

  1. Sources last read
  2. Entered the record

Every revision, permanent →

Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 10 claims with their sources · the forensic record

Evidence Passport · public beta 10 addressable claims, 7 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.

Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 10

The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.

Claim 1 clm-475694a7e68c19d8 quantitative
Shanghai put a municipal open-data portal online in 2012 — widely reported as mainland China's first — and relaunched it as data.sh.gov.cn in November 2019, backed by the country's first local open-data regulation
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The national planning commission's case page dates the platform to the first half of 2012 and the redesigned version to November 2019; Open Data China dates the portal to June 2012.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. NDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study)
  2. Open Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data development
Claim 2 clm-6618ae8e9d2993fa descriptive
Data is published in tiers: unconditionally open sets with downloads and interfaces, conditionally open sets released only on application, and closed sets
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The Implementation Rules on Open Public Data set the three tiers — non-open, conditionally open and unconditionally open — and assign the platform to the Municipal Big Data Center.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Shanghai Municipality — Implementation Rules on Open Public Data (English bulletin)
Claim 3 clm-bc13a7f61fd97609 quantitative
Since 2015 the city has run SODA, an annual open-data contest hosted on the same platform; its eleventh edition ran in 2026
Published field
snippet · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The NDRC case page names SODA as annual since 2015; the competition site shows the eleventh edition in 2026, hosted by the Shanghai Data Bureau on the platform's own subdomain.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. NDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study)
  2. SODA — official competition site
Claim 4 clm-2cc01bdacced79d8 quantitative
published by the national planning commission in July 2020, gave 3,653 datasets from 98 municipal bodies, 1,686 of them with data interfaces
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The NDRC case page states that as of 15 June 2020 the platform carried 3,653 datasets from 98 departments, of which 1,686 had data interfaces.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. NDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study)
Claim 5 clm-162cec35e800bb23 quantitative
Fudan's 2024 China Open Data Index put Shanghai first among the four directly-administered municipalities but seventh among cities overall
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Fudan University's development institute released the 2024 China Open Data Index on 26 September 2024 with exactly that placement.
Caveat
The index's placements are published in the report itself; the institute's announcement page carries the release and the platform census rather than the city-by-city ranking.

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Fudan University FDDI — 2024 China Open Data Index
Claim 6 clm-5c4e0803fec2853d quantitative
a weak 2014 pilot drew 17 teams, the first SODA in 2015 drew more than 800
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Open Data China, co-organiser of the contest, records a 2014 pilot contest of 17 teams before the first SODA in 2015 drew more than 800 teams.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data development
Claim 7 clm-a37781c627682ab0 descriptive
CSIRO's team took an Excellence Prize that November for a bicycle-infrastructure plan built from GPS and smart-card data
Published field
impact · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
CSIRO Urban Science records its team winning an Excellence Prize in November 2015 for a bicycle-infrastructure plan built from GPS and smart-card data.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. CSIRO Urban Science — Shanghai Open Data Apps
Claim 8 clm-86ddbc3caf294817 descriptive
Shanghai's rules name three of them — unconditionally open, conditionally open on application, closed — so the size of the catalogue says nothing about how much of it anyone can actually download
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The Implementation Rules define the three tiers, with conditionally open data released only on application.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Shanghai Municipality — Implementation Rules on Open Public Data (English bulletin)
Claim 9 clm-b6911dd5c534e546 quantitative
the city's own 2025 work plan treats increasing the unconditional share as a target rather than a fact
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
The Shanghai Data Bureau's 2025 Public Data Opening Work Plan sets increasing the share of unconditionally open data as an objective, alongside 100% update timeliness and five working days for conditional-access requests.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Shanghai Data Bureau — 2025 Public Data Opening Work Plan
Claim 10 clm-e298b819aa8c31d9 descriptive
the year the contest went from seventeen teams to more than eight hundred is better evidence that the data had become usable than any total published since
Published field
lesson · verbatim
Mapping
mapped · no interpretation or interpolation added by this passport
What the mapping says
Open Data China records the jump from a 17-team pilot in 2014 to more than 800 teams at the first SODA in 2015.
Caveat
No claim-specific caveat recorded

Sources carrying this claim

  1. Open Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data development
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders

This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.

unreviewed Revision 2026-08-27-p1-quality-uplift effective 2026-07-26 · created 2026-08-27

Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.

Erratum on this revision's envelope. The snapshot, its hash and its permanent link are untouched.

  • createdAt previously read 2026-08-28T00:10:00Z. The batching script that produced this revision advanced createdAt into the future to satisfy the strictly-increasing order the validator requires per entity. The value never recorded a real event; the corrected value is the moment the revision provably existed in the repository. Corrected to 2026-08-27T00:03:04Z on 2026-08-27; evidence: first appears in commit 6fdf7cb641, committed 2026-08-27T00:03:04Z.
sha256:13e92504eddeacf058d8273938b2b97396e887bac3716fae15dccad9bb9f1dec
Revision history → Permanent version link → Machine-readable record → Evidence Constitution →
10
of 10 claims mapped
7
source dossiers
6
publication dates recorded
0
archives linked
0
exact locators
0
content captures hashed

Governance facts carried by the record

Operator
Shanghai Municipal Data Bureau; platform built and run by the Shanghai Municipal Big Data Center
Actor types
city-government
Funding model
public
Funding description
Not recorded
Cost
Not recorded
Ownership
Not recorded
Decision rights
Not recorded
Exit conditions
Not recorded

7 source dossiers

NDRC — Shanghai accelerates public data opening (case study) ndrc.gov.cn · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-69db777eeeab8f85
Publisher
Name not classified · ndrc.gov.cn
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2020-07-13
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

National planning commission case page: the platform online in the first half of 2012, a redesigned version live in November 2019, and as of 15 June 2020 98 departments, 3,653 datasets and 1,686 with data interfaces. Names SODA as running annually since 2015.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Shanghai Municipality — Implementation Rules on Open Public Data (English bulletin) english.shanghai.gov.cn · 2 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-1dd83f0a41701da0
Publisher
Name not classified · english.shanghai.gov.cn
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2023-06-25
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

English bulletin dated 25 June 2023 for rules issued 31 December 2022 and in force to 30 December 2027: the three tiers (non-open, conditionally open, unconditionally open) and the assignment of the platform to the Municipal Big Data Center.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
SODA — official competition site soda.data.sh.gov.cn · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-12fccd8b2eeebf6c
Publisher
Name not classified · soda.data.sh.gov.cn
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
Not recorded
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Currency check: the eleventh edition, 2026, hosted by the Shanghai Data Bureau, with registration closed on 5 July 2026. Runs on the open-data platform's own subdomain. A living site with no publication date.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Shanghai Data Bureau — 2025 Public Data Opening Work Plan shanghai.gov.cn · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-42038d1097f41280
Publisher
Name not classified · shanghai.gov.cn
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2025-06-12
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Issued 6 June 2025 and published 12 June 2025 (沪数〔2025〕12号). Targets 100% update timeliness and an explicit push to increase the share of unconditionally open data; conditional-access requests answered within five working days.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Open Data China — case report on Shanghai's open-data development report.opendatachina.org · 3 linked claims

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-38e239bc2ccb98cd
Publisher
Name not classified · report.opendatachina.org
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2021-03-05
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Civil-society co-organiser of SODA. Dates the portal to June 2012 and records a weak 2014 pilot contest of 17 teams before the first SODA in 2015 drew more than 800.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Fudan University FDDI — 2024 China Open Data Index fddi.fudan.edu.cn · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-4cee29a5d74717e5
Publisher
Name not classified · fddi.fudan.edu.cn
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2024-09-26
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Independent ranking released 26 September 2024: Shanghai first among the four directly-administered municipalities but seventh among cities overall.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
CSIRO Urban Science — Shanghai Open Data Apps research.csiro.au · 1 linked claim

Open original source ↗

Stable source ID
src-34225fe4189cf9e1
Publisher
Name not classified · research.csiro.au
Type / language
web-page · language not classified
Published
2016-08-27
Updated
Not recorded
Source last checked
No source-level check date
Record last verified
2026-07-26
Dossier created
2026-08-28
Retrieved copy
No local capture recorded
Archive
No archived copy linked
Content hash
No captured content hash
Locator
Open the recorded source note

Independent confirmation of a documented SODA outcome: CSIRO's team won an Excellence Prize in November 2015 for a bicycle-infrastructure plan built from GPS and smart-card data.

Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
  • Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
  • Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
  • A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
  • The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.

Continue exploring

Compare this project

🇦🇹 Vienna Open Government Data Portal (data.wien.gv.at) · Vienna Two national firsts a year apart: Vienna opened Austria's first city portal in 2011, Shanghai mainland China's first in 2012. 🇫🇮 Helsinki Region Infoshare (HRI) Open Data Portal · Helsinki HRI's 1,000+ open datasets seeded citizen apps on their own; Shanghai instead stages an annual SODA contest to get apps built. 🇨🇳 Shanghai Data Exchange · Shanghai Public data free in tiers here; next door, the 2021 Data Exchange sells data products with registration certificates.

Who may reuse the city's data?

Four portals, four rungs of the licence ladder. The interesting differences are legal, not technical: what a re-user is actually allowed to do, and whether the permission is written down at all.

ProjectSinceStatusOutcomeEvidenceRun byCostWho may reuse the data
DataSF and San Francisco's Open Data LawSan Francisco, 🇺🇸 2009 Live Ongoing Official City government not public A recorded public-domain dedication — anyone, for anything, in writing. The most generous rung of the ladder.
Montreal Open Data Portal & Digital Data CharterMontreal, 🇨🇦 2011 Live Ongoing Official City government not public One open licence across the whole catalogue, with no unlicensed remainder — the cleanest audited count in the atlas.
Toronto Open Data: CKAN portal under a bespoke municipal licenceToronto, 🇨🇦 2009 Live Ongoing Official City government not public A bespoke attribution licence exists — but most catalogue records never name it, so the permission is real and largely undeclared.
Shanghai Public Data Open Platform & SODA ContestShanghai, 🇨🇳 2012 Live Ongoing Official City government not public Downloadable in tiers, but no open licence anywhere: reuse rights are never granted in writing.

Explore the wider context

🗺️ Your City's Problem Map Is Really a Map of Who Complains📖 Civic participation platform📖 Digital identity📖 Government super-app
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Shanghai Public Data Open Platform & SODA Contest” — Shanghai, China. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/shanghai-open-data-platform/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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