Futian District Government (Shenzhen)
Shenzhen's Futian District puts 70 DeepSeek-R1 'AI employees' to work on government paperwork
Futian District in Shenzhen launched 70 AI 'employees' built on DeepSeek-R1 in February 2025 for document drafting, review, request handling and investment promotion. District officials say a government circular now takes minutes instead of five days. Each system has a designated human supervisor.
Key figures
Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.
Minutes instead of five days
Time to prepare a customised official document, per district reports1
Surpassed 95%
Accuracy rate for document format corrections, per district reports1
90%
Reduction in auditing time, per district reports1
From 70% to 95%
Request categorisation accuracy, change reported by the district1
What it took
Cost, team size and timeline were not disclosed in the sources.
The problem
Local governments handle large volumes of routine paperwork: official circulars, document reviews, requests from residents and companies, and screening of investment projects. Staff time goes into drafting, formatting and sorting. Futian District, in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, wanted to speed this up without handing decisions to software.
What they built
On 16 February 2025 the district launched 70 AI "public servants", described by officials as AI "employees". They run on DeepSeek-R1, a reasoning model from DeepSeek. Sixth Tone describes the DeepSeek platform as open source. Each one is trained for specific tasks and tailored to a department. Sixth Tone reports they cover 240 administrative processes, including document processing, civil services, emergency response and investment promotion.
How they did it
Every AI system has a designated human supervisor, called a guardian, who oversees its operation and is held accountable if something goes wrong. Officials say the systems are there to assist civil servants and reduce workload at the grassroots level, not to replace them. A district official also said the work combines a decade of data, about 120 million data points, with the district's computing platform.
Results
District reports relayed by Sixth Tone say customised document preparation now takes minutes instead of five days, format correction accuracy has passed 95% and auditing time is down 90%. Request categorisation accuracy is reported to have risen from 70% to 95%, and the investment assistant is said to have raised company selection efficiency by 30%. A district spokeswoman told China Daily Hong Kong that error rates are below 5 percent. These are the district's own claims.
All reported figures
| Measure | Figure | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Time to prepare a customised official document, per district reports | Minutes instead of five days1 | |
| Accuracy rate for document format corrections, per district reports | Surpassed 95%1 | |
| Reduction in auditing time, per district reports | 90%1 | |
| Request categorisation accuracy, change reported by the district | From 70% to 95%1 | |
| Gain in company selection efficiency from the investment assistant | 30%1 | |
| Error rate, as stated by a district spokeswoman | Below 5 percent2 |
Lessons for your project
Give every AI system a named human owner. Futian requires a designated supervisor for each one, who is held accountable if problems arise.
Pick narrow, repetitive paperwork first. The reported gains come from drafting, format checking, review and sorting requests, not from open-ended decisions.
Position the tools as assistants. Officials stressed support for staff rather than replacement, which also eases worker anxiety seen in public reaction.
Ask for the baseline behind every speed claim. A drop from five days to minutes only means something if you know what the five days included.
Caveats
- All figures are statements by Futian District officials as relayed by two news outlets. No independent measurement is reported, and the sources give no sample sizes or measurement periods.
- Sixth Tone refers to DeepSeek without a version. The model name DeepSeek-R1 comes from China Daily Hong Kong.
- Sixth Tone describes 11 major administrative categories and 240 processes. The sources do not say how many were live at launch. The deployed date is the launch date reported by Sixth Tone (16 February 2025).
- The sources report no cost, team size or timeline, and no results after the first weeks.
Sources
- As DeepSeek Expands, China's Cities Roll Out 'AI Public Servants'
Sixth Tone · 2025-02-18 · News · sixthtone.com
- AI 'employees' help streamline city services
China Daily Hong Kong · 2025-02-26 · News · chinadailyhk.com
Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.