Telecom Park

This orientation is visible, among many other places, in the massive investment going into expansion of the passenger rail system known as the MRT.  NTC is designing the new rail lines to circle Taipei rather than move people and goods into and out of the center, so that it binds together the city. But each MRT station has a different architecture to reflect its neighborhood, and local managers compete to get riders to vote their station the best. 

 

It is also visible in the Taipei Far Eastern Telecom Park, developed by the Far Eastern Group, a conglomerate of 9 listed companies in everything from ICT to hotels and retail. The Telecom Park is on the site where Far Eastern was founded.  The company decided to consolidate multiple buildings throughout Taipei into a single facility: mixed-use office, residential and healthcare with a major data center linked to the Chungwha national backbone and submarine cables. 

 

When Far Eastern began to develop the park, it approached NTC for help in assem­bling a contiguous property.  NTC agreed on the condition that Far Eastern turn it into a public “eco-park” incorporating a library and hospital to provide public benefit.  The result was a business, government and university collaboration that designed the park along environmental lines with green roofs, a big tree-planting program, storm­water management, a butterfly house and a design that creates wind corridors to reduce temperatures.  All buildings are green-certified.  In the minds of the developers, the Park represents a new standard for urban development in Taiwan: a people-centered, high-livability environment.

 

Hot Spots Analysis

One of NTC’s most revolutionary projects, with great potential to unite the city, takes place behind the scenes.  The city’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission has introduced a system called Hot Spots Analysis.  It draws on posts to the city’s Web portals, the logs of the emergency response center and traffic on social networks to identify issues that, though raised frequently by citizens, are not being properly addressed.  Monthly meetings of the heads of all city departments review known and new Hot Spots and determine what actions the city should take to solve them.  Going one step beyond, the decision-makers examine why the problem was not being addressed: whether a single agency was at fault or the issue was one that crossed over the boundaries of multiple agencies.  Each Hot Spot is developed as a case, from identification of the problem to its solution and the lessons learned, and each case becomes an online reference document accessible to both government officials and citizens.  

 

In one example, citizens repeatedly flagged a problem on express buses bringing commuters into the city: the lack of enough capacity to handle rush hour passenger traffic.  Investigating the issue, the city found that its own regulations prevented the buses from loading more passengers than they had seats for when the buses would be travel­ing on freeways at high speed.  The city was unwilling to relax this safety regula­tion, so it instead negotiated with the bus companies to offer a different service: shuttle buses operating on routes that connected outlying areas to train stations.  This encouraged more passengers to take the train, which in turn reduced rush-hour wait times on the express bus routes from an average of 20 minutes to less than 10. 

 

There is nothing sexy about this ICT application.  Quietly and consist­ently, citizens receive better services. Government addresses its real problems and avoids unnecessary investment in services or infrastructure.  From a set of disconnected districts, a unified city emerges.  

ICF Web Site