In the digital economy era, the market-oriented allocation of data elements continues to advance, and the role of government in data resource supply and allocation is becoming increasingly prominent. In particular, institutional supply represented by government public data openness is gradually emerging as an important channel influencing enterprise development. As pillars of the national economy, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are central to deepening SOE reform and promoting overall high-quality economic development. However, existing studies have paid insufficient attention to how this universally accessible government behavior of public data openness affects the high-quality development of SOEs, and the underlying mechanisms and heterogeneous boundary conditions remain to be systematically investigated.Taking the launch of government public data open platforms in various regions as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper selects A-share listed SOEs from 2010 to 2024 as the research sample and employs a staggered difference-in-differences (DID) approach to empirically examine the impact of government public data openness on the high-quality development of SOEs. To measure the high-quality development level of SOEs, this paper innovatively constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system. The system is grounded in the special attributes of SOEs and consists of three dimensions: economic performance, social responsibility, and strategic mission. The findings reveal that government public data openness significantly promotes the high-quality development of SOEs, and this conclusion remains robust after a series of robustness checks. Mechanism analysis indicates that government public data openness drives the high-quality development of SOEs through a dual pathway of “external coordination and internal capability enhancement”: externally, it improves supply chain efficiency and promotes supply chain configuration diversification; internally, it strengthens the dynamic capabilities of SOEs. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect is more pronounced when the quality of regional government public data openness is higher, when SOEs have stronger social responsibility and strategic mission orientation, and when enterprises are located in eastern regions, operate in more competitive markets, or are at a relatively lower level of digital transformation.Compared with existing studies, the marginal contributions of this paper are reflected in the following aspects. First, it expands the research scope of the economic consequences of government public data openness by systematically examining its impact on the high-quality development of SOEs. Second, based on the special attributes of SOEs, it constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system integrating economic performance, social responsibility, and strategic mission, enriching the measurement methodology for SOE high-quality development. Third, it establishes an analytical framework of “external coordination and internal capability”, systematically identifying the action pathways and heterogeneous boundary conditions through which government public data openness affects SOE high-quality development, thereby providing a new theoretical perspective for related research.To some extent, this paper reveals the intrinsic logic through which government public data openness affects the high-quality development of state-owned enterprises. On the one hand, it provides theoretical support for government departments to optimize public data openness policies and deepen the market-oriented reform of data elements. On the other hand, it offers practical guidance for state-owned enterprises on how to leverage public data, optimize their operational and development models, enhance core competitiveness, and ultimately achieve high-quality and sustainable development.