The Taipei City Government plans to publicize a list of sexual harassment “hot spots,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
“If you release the information, it will have an effect even if you do nothing else,” Ko said, comparing the measure to reducing scooter accidents by publicizing accident “hot spots” to encourage riders to avoid the areas.
Ko, an independent, made the remarks at a Smart City Forum, which also included remarks by Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), all of the Democratic Progressive Party.
Ko hailed the potential of “smart” technologies to realize his promises to make the city government more transparent and open while increasing public participation, citing a sharp increase in the number of official documents released online as well as publication of information on handicap-friendly roads and facilities.
He added that an “input database” incorporating feedback from city resident calls to city hotlines and use of city-sponsored applications would replace the previous “mayor’s mailbox” by the end of the year to help him have a better grasp of city residents’ complaints.
Following criticism by city councilors of the previous administration’s “white elephant” smartphone application, Ko said that the city’s Department of Information Technology would begin to collect data on application usage, which would be incorporated into the performance evaluations for city departments.
“Practice is the best standard to test truth — if city residents do not use your application, it was simply poorly written,” he said.
Ko also outlined plans to establish a “smart city” task force office and have city schoolchildren take classes online, while reiterating promises to establish an online “i-voting” system allowing for online referendums on city government issues by next year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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