IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

In its drive to become ‘Intelligent fibre city’, the Taipei government in Taiwan has started its free wireless Internet services in public facilities on July 1.

City Mayor Hau Lung-bin has launched the “TPE-Free” service, which he said will be available for residents and visitors, Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

The initiative was implemented by Research, Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan, the government’s executive branch.

Any citizen who has a mobile number will be able to surf the 512K bandwidth internet for free at all government premises where an “iTaiwan” poster is displayed. In addition, those who already have Taipei City’s free WiFi accounts can access iTaiwan hotspots using the same credentials.

The app includes features such as the 110 police service line, the 113 abuse prevention line, the 165 fraud prevention line, fugitive and stolen car information, missing person reports, road traffic information, police case reports and a taxi calling.

"Since anti-terrorism has become a global trend, Taiwan will follow the lead of the United States, Japan, Canada and the European Union in imposing the biometrics requirement for foreign nationals entering the country," the ministry said.

The requirement is part of a series of new measures in a proposed revision of rules governing foreign applicants for Taiwan resident visas.

Win-win initiative leverages Taiwan's tech strengths and helps trade partners build a supply chain based on metaverse-enabled Taiwan Smart Experience Center

Taiwan is building a "smart city solution" task force for Slovakia to deploy Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for its smart city projects. It will also, in the near future, help trade partners develop industrial upgrades, said a top official of a Taipei-based trade association.

Ma brought up the idea while attending a news conference at the Taipei World Trade Center to mark the inauguration of WiMAX commercial operations earlier this week.

Known for the fast development of its computer and information industries, Taiwan now ranks third among all countries worldwide for overall networked readiness, according to the "Global Information Technology Report 2004-2005" released by the World Economic Forum.

The Switzerland-based group compiles the annual survey to measure the propensity for 142 economies around the world to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology (ICT).

Among the Asian economies studied in the WEF's Global Information Technology 2012 Report, Taiwan lags behind only second-ranked Singapore and is ahead of 12th-ranked South Korea, 13th-ranked Hong Kong and 18th-ranked Japan.

Taiwan trailed South Korea but led the other 96 countries in the study, which was conducted during June and July. A total of 1,667 government Web sites were analyzed based on many criteria, including the contents of central government Web sites, disability access, the presence of privacy policies, security policies, contact information, foreign-language options, advertisement and user fees, and the number of online services.

The KEI is an aggregate index representing a nation or region's overall preparedness to compete in the Knowledge Economy based on four pillars: the economic incentive and institutional regime (EIR), innovation and technological adoption, education and training, and information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure.

Taiwan's knowledge economy competitiveness has continuously improved over the past 12 years, with the ranking rising from 16th in 2000 to 13th this year, and the gap with other leading nations decreasing.

Citing the recently released fourth annual Global e-Government Survey conducted by researchers at Brown University in the United States, DGBAS officials said that Taiwan topped the list of 198 countries around the world surveyed with 44.3 points in overall e-government performance, followed by Singapore with 43.8 points, the United States with 41.9 points, Canada with 40.3 points and Monaco with 39 points.

“There are five key areas when we envision Taiwan’s intelligent government,” said Su. “They are citizen-centric and on-demand e-services, citizen participation through increasing transparency, mobile access to citizen services, social networking and web 2.0, and ICT-enabled green services,” said Su, who appreciated the opportunity to share Taiwan’s journey with his peers from China.

The commission is working to establish an automatic alert system to warn the public before disasters strike. Two short-term proposals have been delivered, both of which could be accomplished within three years.

The first would involve telecom operators providing a location-based service (LBS), which can disseminate disaster-prevention text messages in potential disaster zones using mobile devices.

A group of ICT experts, including those from the Institute for Information Industry (III), visited Oman to explore avenues for joint venture and other forms of cooperation. They held a "Taiwan Smart ICT to Go" workshop and a partnership or match-making event in the city recently.

Since the in-person passport application requirements was introduced on 1 July for first-time applicants, over 300,000 citizens have applied leading to the in-person passport application rate of 45.18 percent, noted Thomas Chen, Director General of the Ministry's Bureau of Consular Affairs.

"Evidence of Taiwan's strong competence in advancing e-government is not fading. There is ongoing development of online government services with enriched Web site content and the widespread promotion of usage of these Web sites, " said Sung Yu-hsieh, deputy minister of the RDEC, at the 2009 Asia-Pacific E-Governance International Conference in Taipei.

Hsiao Mei-li, director of international affairs at the institute, said Taiwan will help the Hanoi government establish a 5-10 year plan to gradually phase out the city's offline documentation system and introduce Taiwan's successful experience from the past 30 years in building an e-government system.

The lab is part of the government’s plans to enhance the use of cloud computing in Taiwan. Earlier this month, the government announced a NT$7 billion (US$237.3 million) cloud-building programme to encourage growth in Taiwan’s information and communication technology sector and improve government services and functions.