Taiwan’s relatively small size and the strength of its IT sector make it an ideal place for pilot “smart” city projects, Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency official Tsai Zse-hong (蔡志宏) told US Web site MeriTalk in a report published on Thursday.
“It’s not a very big island, and that helps,” said Tsai, the agency’s human resources officer. “Taiwan used to be a major IT power exporting country. They know and they understand the trick to do fast prototyping.”
“Every major city in Taiwan has significant results, has already achieved certain results,” Tsai said. “We see all six major cities in Taiwan, either on their own or working together, they built and made themselves an open platform for new smart city innovations.”
Tsai cited Tainan’s “smart” roadside parking and billing program and Taoyuan’s mobile citizen card, which can be used to pay bus fares, borrow books from libraries and access credit card accounts, as examples of Taiwan’s experiences in smart city development.
“All of them are very open, actually, they are competing with each other,” Tsai said. “Certainly every city will claim they have their own features, and they are solving different problems, but you’ll see that they are very competitive.”
Tsai said the competition between the cities has also helped pave the way for innovation.
The agency assembled a delegation of representatives from Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung to attend the Global City Teams Challenge Expo in Washington.
By attending events such as the expo, “we have the chance to not only learn from the experiences of others, but also an opportunity to start collaborating with other cities, industries and companies,” Tsai said.
“Our experience should be sufficient to share with others and we have certainly learned lessons, for example in terms of security and that’s really exciting to share,” he told MeriTalk.
The agency was established by the Cabinet late last year and tasked with turning Taiwan into an “Asian Silicon Valley.” The goal is part of the government’s efforts to promote technology innovations.
The expo, organized last month by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, welcomed representatives from more than 100 cities and communities from around the world to share their smart city projects.
MeriTalk, headquartered in Virginia, is a public-private venture.
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