Chunghwa Post is offering NT$1 million (US$32,395) in total prize money in a competition that asks entrants to create a service people can use to access data it collects.
The company is speeding up the provision of smart logistics services, said Liu Shi-biao (劉錫標), director of Chunghwa Post’s training institute.
In addition to “iPostboxes” — its unstaffed postal service terminals — staff use personal digital assistants to collect signatures when confirming receipt of registered mail, Liu said, adding that it is also implementing a six-digit postal code system to facilitate delivery services.
Photo courtesy of Chunghwa Post
Data the company collected last year would be released for the competition, including tallies of registered mail, express mail and packages, as well as delivery routes and time required for delivery, Liu said.
Chunghwa Post vice president Chou Rei-chi (周瑞祺) said that the company has collected a massive and diverse database, which would be useful when processed.
It received and delivered more than 300 million pieces of registered mail, 12 million pieces of express mail and 25 million packages last year, Chou said.
“Mining this big data could turn out to be a gold mine,” he said.
The competition would be conducted in three stages: preliminary, semi-finals and final, the company said, adding that teams of two to four people, with at least half being undergraduate or graduate students, can enter.
The teams can have one professor as an adviser and teams must develop topics and analyze the data themselves, it said.
Microsoft Taiwan and Systex Software have provided an operating platform and would arrange experts to advise teams, it said.
The top team is to receive NT$300,000, the company said, adding that 70 teams had registered.
Chunghwa Post said it would also make data collected from savings and insurance services available next year, while e-commerce and retail service data would be made public in 2021.
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