TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Ranked top in international smart city competitions and earning the New York think tank title “intelligent community of the year” three years ago, Taoyuan City is delving deeper into data governance, in collaboration with international and local tech giants, to take the smart city to the next level.
The city this year clinched two awards – the Smart Cities Award and Global Innovation and Tech Excellence Award – from the World Innovation, Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), known as the “Oscars of the information industry.” One of the city’s popular smart city endeavors is its 6,000 "smart classrooms," which benefits over 200,000 students.
Known as one of the country's two main manufacturing hubs for advanced information and communication technology (ICT) and electric car components, the city is leveraging ICT to improve operational efficiency and provide a better quality of life for its residents. The city government's partnership with world tech giants in building a city-level hybrid cloud data platform has drawn positive attention from the media and other cities as well.
With support from the Cabinet-level project "Asia Silicon Valley," the city is now working with experts from Microsoft Taiwan, IBM, and the local HwaCom Systems Inc., in order to implement much-needed technology in infrastructure and to improve data leverage for smarter governance and business decisions.
Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Asia Silicon Valley project, Lee Po-jung (李博榮), said Taoyuan is playing a pivotal role in developing smart cities and leveraging data in the 5G network structure to innovate and create more value, solving the problems facing citizens.
The 2022 Taoyuan Big Data Application Exhibition began on Oct. 8, unveiling the city's ambition to drive development and improve efficiency and sustainability. This will be followed by a "Future Data" symposium scheduled for this weekend (Oct. 15-16). The event will gather representatives and data governance specialists from industry, government, and academia.
The Director of Taoyuan’s IT Department, Yu Wan-ru (余宛如), said Taoyuan City has been proactively expanding its smart city ambitions after becoming the country's sixth special municipality in 2014 and its efforts have been recognized by international organizations. She encouraged a visit to the exhibition, open until Oct. 20, which showcases the city's smart city endeavors from 2014-2022.