Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) yesterday unveiled her blueprint for transforming Taiwan into a “smart country” by increasing government investment in information and software technology and revolutionizing related infrastructure and regulations to apply smart governance to various aspects of the nation.
Hung’s campaign team called the policy proposal “Taiwan 4.0.”
“It is from Taiwan 1.0, or the post-war 1950s, during which the baby boomers were born and strived to survive, through Taiwan 2.0, the era of development from 1960 to the ’80s, to Taiwan 3.0, the period of democratization and globalization from 1990 to 2010,” the team said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
“While people can now easily get hold of information with the aid of technology, such as the ubiquitous smartphone, the government — from local to central — still operates in the 20th century,” Hung said.
Poor government efficiency can be seen in public misgivings about food safety, water quality after the recent typhoon and the rising incidence of dengue fever, she said.
“It is not the fault of the rank-and-file civil servants; the whole institution needs re-evaluation and enhancement in five aspects: regulatory revisions, such as the legislation of a basic information law that could fill information manpower in each government level; increased government investment in information and software technology; launch of 5G networks; open data; and the development of mobile payment services,” Hung said.
Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘), executive general of KMT think tank the National Policy Foundation, said that a smart government should be able to adopt big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things to provide solutions to issues such as food safety, long-distance caregiving, transportation, disease control and river revitalization.
“Hardware took up 51 percent of our investment in technology in 2013, while information and software technology made up the other 49 percent. That compares with ratios of 26:74 for Europe and North America and 41:59 for the Asia-Pacific region,” Yiin said.
“Our expenditure on information and software technology as a percentage of GDP was 0.9 percent in 2013, which pales in comparison with an average of 1.11 percent for the Asia-Pacific region and 2.47 percent for Europe and North America,” Yiin said.
Hung said that spending on information and software technology should be further increased to at least 2 percent of GDP.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS