IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Vending machines that scan student ID cards might be aimed at collecting data, a councilor said, but the city said they only scan card numbers

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that he would ask the Taipei Department of Information Technology to draft a special regulation to protect personal information, after smart vending machines placed on school campuses in the city sparked privacy concerns.

Taipei was rated “Best” in the awards category of services, while New Taipei was listed as “Best” in the category of digital divide, the organization said in a statement released Wednesday.

The system provides a user-friendly interface which integrates spatial information crucial for the city’s Emergency Dispatch Centre to manage and mobilise rescue operations. This includes information derived from digital maps, building and block maps, aerial photographs and water resource maps among others.

The City Government has been building mobile Apps for residents and visitors since last year, covering areas such as city administration, transportation and tourism. And now the portal becomes the unified access point for the public to use government open data.

The data sets will be made available in batches. Chang Chia-sheng, Commissioner for IT of Taipei City Government, explains to FutureGov that the selection criteria for the first bath include:

1. focus mainly on data which city residents could use
2. mainly information that has already been open for citizens to enquire free of charge
3. focus on the data sets which have been formatted for easy export.

Taipei is the eighth smartest city in the world, according to an index published by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) on Thursday.

Taipei, Taiwan's capital, saw its ranking fall by one notch from last year in the IMD index, which is in its second year.

In Taipei, though, an app uses the government’s real-time transport data to notify people when they are approaching their destination. It is just one of the many ways that government data has been used since the city started releasing data four years ago - making it the leader in the Asia Pacific.

In this post, we will share some insights from an interview with Charles Lin, the Deputy Mayor of Kaohsiung City Government, who shared his vision and strategy of making Kaohsiung a smart city. Charles Lin was the Deputy Mayor of Taipei City as well, known for his vision with smart cities and is also the person who makes Smart City Summit & Expo (SCSE) possible.

Kaohsiung is the second-largest city in Taiwan and a major hub for heavy industry and now is also a city that is embracing the smart city concept and transforming itself into a more livable, sustainable and innovative place.

Last week, I spent a good part of Monday and Tuesday at a training workshop on the vTaiwan public engagement process and Taiwan’s Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS), the innovation lab inside the central Taiwanese government. It was organized by the New York City node of the g0v (pronounced “gov zero”) community of civic hackers that started in Taiwan. It was the first time that members of g0v and PDIS had done a training in English on this innovative approach to digital democracy, but hopefully there will be more opportunities to attend one soon. That’s because this scrappy open source community of coders, organizers and govies has figured out something really exciting: it’s possible to radically transform how government listens to the public and how members of the public listen to each other as they go about making their concerns known to government.

DIGITIMES Research report shows that Taiwan 's ICT industry development has shifted from focusing on hardware to hardware/software integration models. The industry is combining big data analysis and AI applications in public IoT to facilitate the development of smart city management. Tools such as IoT, AI, cloud computing, and communications technologies are efficiently integrated with urban infrastructure to ultimately produce economic benefits and improve quality of life.

It is estimated that the business opportunities of smart cities will reach $2.6 trillion in 2025, mainly in the Asia Pacific region. This includes sectors such as smart poles, building, parking, monitor, government, transportation, fire protection, water conservancy and WITMED. Smart cities, with a massive business potential, will become the future momentum!

This is the first reason. The second reason is the constant updates done on these web sites - they offer very current information. The third reason is speed of email response. Online inquiries are answered within three days.