Abstract: The primary level’s sharing the data of government agencies at the national, provincial, municipal and county levels for business collaboration is an important path to modernize the primary-level governance system and capacity. This paper, adopting the perspective of data right confirmation, based on the case of city B (county-level) in China’s west region, analyzes the dilemma of data empowered primary-level governance, and finds that the dilemma is told by the difficulties in data flow and business coordination, and low construction effect. The superficial reason is the weak organizational strength and insufficient overall planning of platform construction, and the fundamental reason the lack of data right confirmation. The key to resolve the dilemma is to make it clear the data belongs to the governments, it is managed by the competent departments, and it can be shared by all departments concerned; on the basis of data right confirmation, organizational guarantee and platform construction should be strengthened, and the accurately sensing needs, science-assisted decision-making, efficient integration of resources and dynamic feedback adjustment should be enhanced so as to modernize the primary-level governance system and ability.

Key words: data right confirmation, business collaboration, department data, data-empowered, primary-level governance