2011 Intelligent City Forum of New Taipei City Creates New Milestone for Intelligent City Development

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Intelligent City Forum of New Taipei City took place today. John G. Jung, Chairman and co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), Brenda Halloran, Mayor of the City of Waterloo, and Steve Reneker, Chief Information Officer of the City of Riverside met with New Taipei City Mayor Eric Liluan Chu to share their experience in intelligent and future city development. Waterloo is a city in Ontario, Canada, and was named to the world's top intelligent community for 2007.  Riverside is in California and has been named to the ICF's Top Seven Intelligent Communities for three consecutive years. The forum gathers more than 200 local and overseas participants to help develop New Taipei City into a more intelligent city.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20111115/HK06893 )

"Close collaboration among academia, the business community and the government is required to drive diverse industry development, rapid academic advancement as well as better and more government services in order to deliver high quality of life to residents. High quality of life exemplifies urban innovation and is a must for any intelligent city," said New Taipei City Mayor Eric Liluan Chu. "Therefore, New Taipei City not only focuses on industry development, but also stresses close collaboration among different sectors in order to create a happy environment for our residents. We have been making good use of information technology to improve the quality of life, create competitiveness for businesses in our city, and strengthen our administration efficiency. Our ongoing program of Open Government will further enhance government transparency, and our 3i initiative, including i-Gov, i-Biz, and i-Citizen for i-City development features the newest cloud technologies to deliver readily available and very convenient services for residents and to really enjoy continuous improvement of the quality of life."

This year, New Taipei City took part in the ICF intelligent community nomination for the first time and was nominated from more than 400 entries into the Smart 21 list, creating international awareness of the city's focus on technology innovation, industry development, and high quality of life.

Cities awarded with the International Smart 21, Top 7 or the Intelligent City of the Year will be eligible to join the Intelligent Communities Forum Foundation (ICFF). New Taipei City, which is awarded as Smart 21, was invited by John G. Jung, ICFF President, and Brenda Halloran, ICFF Chairman to join in. During the forum, John, Brenda and Mayor Chu jointly signed a MOU to promote global intelligent city research and development. Mayor Chu remarked: "New Taipei City is honored to be invited to become an official ICFF member. New Taipei City will adhere to ICFF principles of establishment, and to collaborate with other members by sharing of intelligent cities development experiences, to promote and contribute efforts together for international economic growth and social progress, as well as cultural development."

New Taipei City is the municipality in Taiwan that makes best use of information technology. In terms of e-government, an Intelligence Integrated Center, Android-based government services, and e-kiosk services have been established. Intelligent lifestyle-wise, there is an intelligent residential complex, free wireless internet access in public areas, location-based tour guide service in three scenic towns, Android-based borough services, free computer training and mobile learning, and intelligent traffic control. New Taipei City has also been strengthening its information technology industry competitiveness by hi-tech industry, and trade zone development which fully incorporating wideband infrastructure and the most advanced cloud technologies in order to bring in new business opportunities to the city and further develop a broadband-based economy for Taiwan.

Intelligent City Forum of New Taipei City is the first step for the city to develop itself into an international metropolis. New Taipei City is also leading Taiwan in intelligent environment development by transforming the city into a collective wisdom-based platform for innovation.

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SOURCE The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF)