The Taipei City Government launched two more civil service Web sites yesterday in a bid to make its services more accessible to the public.
Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that the launching of the Web sites pushed his vision of making Taipei into a cyber-city a step forward.
"When I proposed the plan after I was elected as the city mayor, I had only a simple idea in mind: to make the city government's services more accessible to the public," he said at a press conference held at the Taipei City Hall yesterday morning.
Ma has proposed building nine major Web sites. With the launching of yesterday's two networks, eight now provide different services to the public.
A transportation service network was launched in February this year, followed by the helping hand, civil welfare and health networks in May and civil safety and community service networks in June.
The two Web sites launched yesterday were one targeting the business sector (http://ibs.taipei-elife.net) and one featuring leisure and entertainment (http://letsgo.taipei-elife.net).
The business network offers such services as job opportunities, investment information, local and international business information, legal counseling, and others.
The entertainment network provides information on cultural and outdoor events, restaurants, movies, online restaurant reservations, and electronic maps.
Huang Jung-feng (黃榮峰), director of the city's Bureau of Public Works (建設局), said that the two new Web sites have three major features.
"First of all, they're 24-hour services. Second, the public gets to save time and effort visiting various places to obtain the information they need. Finally, they're in Chinese, English and Japanese," he said.
The city government claims it has made substantial progress since Ma proposed the cyber-city plan.
In March this year, more than 80 percent of the city's 890,000 families had computers, 64 percent of them had access to the Internet and 59 percent of them had e-mail accounts.
As of July, over 169,000 city residents have applied for the city's free e-mail accounts. The city hopes the number will reach 240,000 by the end of the year.
Free three-hour computer training courses have also attracted 149,000 city residents and the city hopes those attending will increase by 1,000 by the end of the year.
In addition, the city has set up 360 public information kiosks in public areas and hopes to establish a total of 800 by the end of next year.
Finally, about 57 percent of the city's 227 municipal schools currently have computers. The city hopes municipal schools will have at least one computer in every classroom by the end of the year.
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