BEIJING — Chinese authorities will strengthen the design of big data standards to better use such data.

Big data can help develop the new economy and foster growth, but it is hard to fully use the data due to the low-level sharing of resources, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The key to solving the problem is to establish industry standards and specifications, according to the ministry.

The ministry will speed up the creation of a Chinese standard system and actively cooperate with international standards organizations to promote standardization, said Li Guanyu, an official with the ministry.

China is aiming to more than triple the scale of its big data industry by 2020 to foster new economic drivers, according to a plan released by the MIIT this year.

The country's big data industry should increase its annual sales to 1 trillion yuan (about $145 billion) by 2020 from an estimated 280 billion yuan in 2015, according to the plan.

China's information industry saw sales reach 17.1 trillion yuan in 2015, double 2010 levels.