Taipei was ranked 13th out of 40 cities globally in this year’s Networked Society City Index, which rates cities’ information and communications technology maturity and sustainable urban development.
Taipei moved up one notch from 14th last year and ranked fifth-best in Asia behind Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul. The five top-ranked cities overall were Stockholm, London, Paris, Singapore and Copenhagen.
The report issued by Ericsson said Taipei performed well in terms of ICT maturity, though there was still room for improvement, and it also did well in the economic, social and environmental categories, with its score in the social category one of the highest among the cities examined.
The Taipei City Government has created services through e-Government, e-Community and e-Life, with “Intelligent City and Quality Life” as its motto, and at the end of last year, its mobile services contained 37 apps, the report said.
It praised the high life expectancy and low infant-mortality rates of the city’s population and Taipei’s high educational attainment, high social inclusion, a low unemployment rate and relatively high gender equality in governance and higher education.
However, the report described Taipei’s economic performance as average. Taipei’s economic productivity, measured by GDP per capita, has room to improve and its competitiveness, reflected by the city’s patents, knowledge-intensive employment and business start-ups, could be higher, the report said.
Taiwan’s capital performed well in the environmental dimension with low energy consumption and waste per capita, and a relatively high rate of recycling, but its carbon footprint and carbon dioxide emissions are average among the other cities in the index.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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