IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

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.