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
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
RSS