Digital government serves as a key pillar of the Digital China initiative, while enterprises constitute the core actors in digital technology innovation. Against the backdrop of the Digital China initiative and the rapid development of the digital economy, how to effectively leverage digital government construction to guide and drive enterprise digital technology innovation has transcended the narrow scope of policy support or technology supply. It is instead a systematic issue concerning the optimization of institutional environments, the improvement of resource allocation efficiency, and the construction of incentivecompatible innovation mechanisms. This is not merely a one-directional empowerment or promotion from government to enterprises, but rather a concentrated manifestation of the organic combination and synergistic interaction between an efficient market and a proactive government.Using a sample of A-share listed companies in China from 2010 to 2024, this paper treats the big data management agency reforms across regions as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) method to systematically evaluate the policy effects of digital government construction on enterprise digital technology innovation. The data are primarily sourced from the Wind database and Tonghuashun. The findings reveal that digital government construction significantly promotes enterprise digital technology innovation, primarily through three transmission mechanisms, namely clarifying data property rights, reducing institutional transaction costs, and improving digital infrastructure. Heterogeneity analysis further indicates that the promoting effect of digital government construction on enterprise digital technology innovation is more pronounced in the eastern and central regions, among large enterprises and technology-intensive firms, and in regions with higher industry competition and better legal environments.Compared with existing studies, the marginal contributions of this paper are mainly reflected in the following two aspects. First, it expands the analytical perspective on the relationship between digital government and corporate digital technology innovation. This paper conceptualizes digital government as the institutional form of a proactive government in the digital era, revealing its dual role on both the demand side and the supply side.On the demand side, digital government, through the construction of application scenarios such as digital public services, creates actual demand for digital technologies within the public sector, thereby guiding firms to adjust their R&D directions and innovation portfolios. On the supply side, digital government, through institutional provisions including public data opening, the coordination of computing infrastructure, and the establishment of data property rights rules, effectively reduces firms’ factor acquisition costs and institutional transaction costs for innovation. This integrated analytical framework transcends previous research approaches that focused exclusively on either the demand side or the supply side. Second, from the theoretical perspective of the synergy between a proactive government and an efficient market, this paper reveals the transmission mechanisms through which digital government drives enterprise digital technology innovation. It breaks through the traditional binary analytical paradigm of “government versus market” and establishes a clear logical chain of “digital government construction→improving market efficiency→driving enterprise digital technology innovation.” Specifically, by clarifying data property rights, reducing transaction costs, and building digital infrastructure, digital government provides micro-level empirical evidence and targeted policy guidance for the development of a precision-oriented digital governance system. In doing so, this study addresses the core question of how digital government effectively influences enterprise innovation behavior.