On the “Teacher” board of Professional Technology Temple (PTT), the nation’s largest online bulletin board system, the director of Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School’s library recently complained that the school had been trying since June to recruit two “supply teachers” to supplement its information technology (IT) department.
To qualify for the job, the teacher-cum-IT-professional would only be required to have a college degree, and would not even need any relevant experience.
There was the added provision that “supply teachers” often become “regular teachers” after two years. Regardless, it took 13 recruiting sessions for the school to find the teachers it needed.
Another comment on the PTT board concerned civil service examinations, asking why there are always so many vacancies every year for the Information Management Center at the New Taipei City Government’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission. Insiders have said that the problem lies in IT civil servants being caught up chasing their tails.
Since the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs in August, public and media discussion have focused on the so-called “Internet army.”
However, they might not know that the problems in recruiting staff experienced by the high school have long existed in most government agencies.
For the most basic information network operations, most government units outsource their networks to private companies.
If a computer software or hardware problem occurs, civil servants are hard-pressed to solve the problem by themselves, and have to turn to the contractor.
However, before they do so, they have to jump through all kinds of loops, gaining a supervisor’s approval, making sure there is sufficient budget to commission the work, and filling out forms as part of a verification process.
The New Taipei City Library network — including the book borrow and return system for its main library and all of its branches — has been the responsibility of a single civil servant over the past few years.
Although each township office has multiple divisions, they can only have one contract-based IT worker per office, whose salary is only slightly higher than minimum wage.
This is why it is difficult for the public sector to recruit IT talent, and why many of the recruits are either incompetent or look for a new job after working there for a while.
In the case of elementary and high schools, teachers can familiarize themselves with their school’s computer systems themselves, but whenever they encounter a major difficulty or a revision of the administrative system, they have no choice but to rely on external help to handle it, or they need to bring in a contractor to provide computer classes.
As government agencies tout their promotion of “digitization,” their administrative concepts and systems are, in reality, outdated.
They are still unwilling to allocate sufficient funds to cultivate their own hardware and software talent. All they want is to get the best service at the lowest cost.
Such IT and information security problems are well known to those who work within the government. With the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, is the battle between human and computers coming to an end? I am not so optimistic.
Chang Hsun-ching is a former librarian.
Translated by Eddy Chang
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
RSS