AI assists smart governance in Futian

In the wake of open-source AI agent OpenClaw going viral around the country recently, a localized version launched over the weekend by the Futian district government in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, is already showing impressive efficiency when applied to governance.

Futian launched the original version of AI Digital Employee based on DeepSeek in 2025. Since then, its "smart employees" have been steadily evolving. At the core of the latest version is DinTal Claw, a localized version of OpenClaw dubbed "Lobster" because of its distinctive red lobster logo.

Capable of unpacking complex tasks, process scheduling and autonomous decision-making beyond simple command execution, the new 2.0 version has garnered widespread attention as a driver of smart governance.

"As far as I know, this is the first batch of agents equipped with Open-Claw used for governance in China," said Xiao Yanghua, a professor at Fudan University and the chief scientist of Shenzhen Aquaintelling Technology. The company has been commissioned to develop digital employees.

Xiao said the core architecture of the digital employees based on the DinTal Claw framework was open-sourced in mid-January on GitHub, a web platform widely used in the global open-source community.

"The agents equipped with DinTal Claw are much smarter than before," Xiao said. "They're good at self-learning to achieve exponential growth in capability, including self-correction and long-term memory. And it's deployable with a single click."

He added that through continued use, the technology becomes more intuitive and adaptable to new business scenarios. This eliminates the need for repeated development upgrades.

In practice, the efficiency of AI Digital Employee 2.0 has improved remarkably.

For instance, applicants changing health permits previously had to wait for a manual pre-review process by government personnel after submitting their documents online, which could take a full working day. The more powerful system can automatically download and review seven types of documents, which can provide audit opinions for personnel reference within minutes.

The system also helps the district's center deal with public comments that demand a more rapid response.

In the past, employees at the center used to take up to a month to manually sort through countless work orders to categorize requests, perform data analysis, trace problems and identify causes. Now, with a single command, the AI system can complete the process and suggest actionable improvements by comparing practices across major cities.

"Our main purpose in creating the digital employees is to help front-line staff reduce their workload and increase efficiency, freeing them from long, tedious tasks and allowing them to deliver higher-quality service," said Li Xiaoming, a Futian data management official.

The deployment of "Government Lobster" — as AI Digital Employee 2.0 is informally known — is securely integrated within the government's external network, leveraging existing cloud security, said Xiao.

He noted that government departments nationwide are currently seeking the company's AI solutions for digital employees, and many are expected to adopt them in the future.

To support the development of OpenClaw and one-person companies, Shenzhen's Longgang district recently announced measures, including the establishment of Lobster service zones for free OpenClaw deployment services and subsidies for OPC communities.

In Jiangsu province, the Wuxi National Hi-tech District released a policy draft on Monday, outlining 12 measures designed to drive growth, from foundational support to industrial application, and from talent cultivation to compliance, with individual support reaching up to 5 million yuan ($727,171).

Duan Jinxian contributed to this story.

chenhong@chinadaily.com.cn