On 23 November 2019 the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China published the Administrative Measures for the Filing of Educational Apps.(1) The administrative measures require that providers of educational apps and institutional users of educational apps must go through filing procedures.

The filing requirements for providers are as follows:

  • Providers must meet the filing requirements for internet information services (ICP) and cybersecurity-graded protection before they fulfil the filing procedures with education administrative departments. The administrative measures also establish a grace period for providers to meet ICP and cybersecurity-graded protection filing requirements. The grace period runs from 1 December 2019 to 31 January 2020, during which ICP and cybersecurity-graded protection filing requirements will not be treated as preconditions for filing with education administrative departments.
  • Providers, including education administrative departments, schools, enterprises and social organisations, must file educational apps with the provincial education administrative department where they are domiciled or registered. Educational apps developed by provincial education administrative departments must be filed with the Ministry of Education.
  • Educational apps embedded in a third-party platform (eg, mini-programs and enterprise official accounts) must submit their filing information to the platform and the platform must consolidate and share this information with the Ministry of Education.

Educational apps used by institutional users, including those that they independently develop (regardless of whether the apps are for internal use) or select and those required to be used by relevant authorities must be filed with the education administrative departments.

The administrative measures indicate that the Ministry of Education is tightening controls on educational apps in China. Other industry authorities are likely to adopt similar measures in the near future.

Endnotes

(1) For further details in Chinese please see here.

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