Criticizing the cost and delays in releasing the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) upgraded ticketing app, two Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday asked the agency to release all the procurement contracts related to the app.
The upgraded app was released on Sunday, but on Tuesday some people complained about being disconnected as they tried to purchase tickets.
The TRA spent about NT$1 billion (US$32.4 million) to develop the new app, which was an extraordinary amount, Legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) told a news conference he held with colleague Alex Fai (費鴻泰).
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
He had followed the app-development project for a long time, and its budget was apparently increased by NT$850 million after it was incorporated into the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Project, Hsu said.
Prior to that, the TRA had spent NT$200 million to create the app, he said.
“I am very curious about the technology used to develop this app,” Hsu said.
The TRA said it had developed the app itself, and it is equipped with “top-notch” functions, but it cannot guarantee that people can always book the tickets they want, Hsu said.
The agency repeatedly delayed the app’s release, Hsu said, adding that it had not been launched before the Lunar New Year holiday last year because the TRA feared it would not be able to pass a stress test.
The TRA and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications should release all the contracts involved in the creation of the app so the public can know where the money went, the lawmaker said.
It would already be a lot if someone spent NT$10 million to develop an app, yet the TRA’s upgrade cost NT$1 billion, Fai said as he also called on the agency and the ministry to tell the public what exactly they did with taxpayers’ money.
Franklin Wong (翁佳驥), a member of the Software Liberty Association of Taiwan’s board, told the news conference that the app’s program code would show whether it was worth NT$1 billion.
TRA Information Center Deputy Director Liao Wan-hui (廖萬輝) said the app has two parts: One for the public to use, which can be used on both IOS and Android systems, and another is for the palm pilots used by train conductors when they are working aboard a train.
Developing the two parts cost NT$10.8 million, Liao said.
Asked about complaints about users being automatically disconnected when trying to book tickets, Liao said that he was not sure what caused the problem.
Meanwhile, the TRA said that in July 2015 the National Development Council approved the allocation of NT$1.07 billion to improve the TRA’s ticketing system, which covered the establishment of the system’s core network, printing magnetic tickets, a ticketing app and a back-up network.
Then in April 2017, the Executive Yuan said that NT$850 million of the budget would come from funds designated for the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Development Project, it said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods