Mayor’s remarks:
1. General budget passes: Building a pleasant city for city residents
a. The 4th session of the 2nd Tainan City Council Conference has already come to an end, and a total of 6 bills passed the third reading during that session. The city government has allocated a general budget of NT$ 79.85 billion, which had NT$ 754,000 trimmed off of it. I would like to express my gratitude to city councilors for their support as well as senior officials and teams for their hard work and the effort they’ve put into communicating with the city council. I expect that in the coming year we’ll be able to follow our plans and make great use of our budget while we build a very livable city.
b. Our government administration is now in its 7th year, so despite having less than two years remaining in our term I still want to encourage all of our senior officials to give their absolute best, doing their job as well as they can each and every day. I also ask that we keep in mind that the hopes and dreams of 1.9 million city residents rest in our hands. No matter how turbulent the outside world is, I hope that everyone stays true to the reasons why they went into government, and I also ask that you think of city residents at all times and set an example for others. I want these concepts to be cultivated in every colleague’s mind so that we continue to be a high-quality government administration that never rests on our laurels.
c. As for next year’s outlook, there are important construction projects that, one-after-another, will be beginning all over the city. I would like to once again remind everybody, as the city government seeks to take itself to the next level, to give even more emphasis on having good fundamentals and promoting our construction efforts step-by-step. By doing this, we’ll honor our commitment to city residents.
2. Promoting the “New Southbound” policy: Building a friendly environment
a. The New Southbound Policy is a major diplomatic and economic policy that was launched after President Tsai took office. The policy seeks to integrate the resources and capabilities of different ministries, local governments, and private corporations and organizations. The policy’s foundation has four facets, which are economic cooperation, talent exchange, resource sharing, and regional links. Taiwan expects that it’ll be able to create a new cooperative model with countries in the ASEAN and South Asia as well as New Zealand and Australia that’s mutually beneficial and profitable for all parties involved. Furthermore, a shared sense of being part of an economic community will be established amongst the involved countries.
b. The government’s New Southbound Policy basically seeks to have ASEAN as an extension of Taiwan’s domestic demand market. By engaging in business in the South Asian market, bidirectional industries, investments, tourism, and other types of exchange will be facilitated. Furthermore, focusing on industrial composition will create external economies of scale for Taiwan.
c. In the last few years, Tainan City has engaged in a significant amount of exchange with non-government groups from Southeast Asia. After a great deal of effort, in June of this year, we earned the right to have a regular flight from Tainan City to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. Different levels of Taiwan society responded, saying that it’ll prove beneficial for the development of bilateral trade and tourism. In order to work with the government on this important policy, I need to trouble Secretary-general Lee with forming a task force comprised of organizations involved with the policy. I want these invited organizations to come up with by-laws for the New Southbound Policy Promotion Committee within two weeks. We must take advantage of our high-quality facilities and infrastructure, and also our diverse environment, which includes both nature and culture, to create a friendly environment that’ll allow us to compete for students and tourists from other countries.
3. As we adapt to “one day of weekly holiday and one day of leave per week”, every government organization is asked to spread information concerning the ways to adapt in an appropriate manner and helping create a labor environment that benefits all.
a. In order to raise the quality of our labor inspections, the city will establish a Labor Inspection Center by early next year. Therefore, I ask that the city’s Labor Affairs Bureau speeds up as much as it can and notifies the Ministry of Civil Service and Examination Yuan so that it can get their approval and then put people in their positions. I also urge the bureau to continue seeking to obtain authorization rights from the central government so that our city can provide occupational safety services. Doing so will ensure that this city’s laborers enjoy labor rights and occupational safety.
b. Revisions for laborers’ “one day of weekly holiday with the second day of leave per week” measure and the ways overtime pay are calculated were announced last week, and they’ll go into effect on January 1, 2017. The seven national holidays are removed, and the threshold for how special leave is calculated is being adjusted. Because relevant laws and regulations are both numerous and complicated, in order to avoid commotion at the onset, providing guidance will first take precedence over directly penalizing violators, which will prevent business owners that don’t know the new laws and regulations very well from being punished. I ask the Labor Affairs Bureau to take initiative with their actions and to do a good job of bringing publicity to the new labor measures so that a labor environment that benefits laborers, industries, and the society can be created.
c. The policies being promoted need to earn the support of all the people, so involved organizations must clearly explain the policies to the public by providing public advisory and consultation channels in addition to being active in providing guidance. I ask the Labor Affairs Bureau to organize and then host a large-scale event that’ll bring exposure to the labor policy measures by providing complete and correct information for city residents as well as the city’s company and corporation owners. Overall, Tainan City having a sound labor environment will help companies and corporations be better able to conform to the new revisions of labor law.
Reports
1. Report by the city government’s Information Center: “Case Sharing of Smart City Promotion in the USA” (please see written report for more information)
Resolution: Approved for reference filing
Mayor’s comments:
a. Technology provides a more convenient and efficient lifestyle for human beings. Therefore, in order to usher in the worldwide trend of smart cities, ever since Tainan City and Tainan County merged, we’ve promoted The Flagship Program for Building a New Tainan with 10 Major Construction Projects. A Smart Greater Tainan Area, as one of the major projects, aims to implement innovative smart lifestyle technology applications in public service systems so that the city’s vision of becoming a new tech-savvy city can be realized. Boasting the island’s most diverse cultural and historical heritage, the ancient capital of Tainan is poised to create a new culture.
b. Before this meeting, the city government’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission went to the United States of America to see how local governments there are promoting smart cities. The commission’s presentation shows us that these governments are providing opportunities for business startups to have a dialogue with the government and citizens. In addition, by using different mechanisms, startup companies can become more familiar with the government’s workings, and in turn, the government can provide resources like open data and public authority, which will help meet the needs of business startups. Smart city infrastructure will assist local business startups, and this infrastructure can help upgrade a city that has existed and been developing for centuries. These improvements will also increase city residents’ care of the city they live in, and together we can improve the city’s quality of life. The commission’s presentation also mentioned the business startup methods employed by different city government agencies, which should be shared with other relevant bureaus, departments, offices, and commissions for reference purposes.
c. I would like to express my gratitude to both the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission and the Information Center for their tireless effort in promoting the smart city movement, which spans from the 2011 Global Smart City Summit in Tainan and signing letters of intent for cooperation with large smart cities around the globe to being one of the world’s 16 cities that earned a grant from the 2014 IBM Smarter Cities Challenge. In 2015, the city worked with the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Industrial Development Bureau on its 4G Smart Broadband Application City Subsidy Program, and it also collaborated with the business world in the launching of the Tainan 4G Smart City Flagship Program. Furthermore, in 2016, Tainan was one of the cities officially recommended by GSMA (a trade body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide) as smart cities, making us the nation’s only city to earn this distinction and we’re now a model of internationalism for Taiwan. All these accomplishments prove just how much we’ve put into becoming a smart city in the past six years, showing that our achievements really do speak for themselves.
d. Taiwan has already developed and initiated a public-private partnership (PPP or P3) that integrates the resources of both the central government and local governments. That being said, there still is a lack of mechanisms for having a dialogue with the people. In recent times, the smart city movement has been a worldwide development in which the major trend is the capabilities of non-government entities and city residents being integrated according to a bottom-up style 4P (public-private-people-partnership) cooperative model. I expect that every government organization in our city can give more time to pondering about this new technology reality, have the courage to pursue innovation and make effective use of resources provided by different central government policies. I also want the central government and our local government to work together as well as seeing a platform established that collaborates with Tainan’s local innovative startups, as this will spur on industrial upgrading and bring about sustainable development. Overall, this will take us increasingly closer to reaching the goal we’ve endorsed of being a next-generation city that’s sustainable and IoT-friendly (Internet of Things).
e. Tainan City’s Deputy Secretary-general Liu and Deputy Mayor Wu just suggested that we strengthen our organization so that we can better promote the smart city movement. So, I ask that Secretary-general Lee first comes up with a plan, and then we can discuss it in detail later.
2. Report by the city government’s Department of Health: “2016 Dengue Fever: Tainan City’s Prevention and Treatment Strategies and Actions” (please see written report for more information)
Resolution: Approved for reference filing
Mayor’s remarks:
a. dengue fever epidemic in 2015 was Tainan’s worst in many years. But, a crisis can be turned into an opportunity; the city government team, city residents, and a team from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) all helped out, working hard to analyze big data. This year, there were 16 cases of dengue fever in Tainan (which includes 2 domestic cases from the summer), and these figures are considerably lower than 2015’s numbers. Our work brought the epidemic to an end ahead of schedule, and Tainan City Government’s exceptional performance earned the unanimous approval of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Center for Disease Control as well as international scholars and experts. I now would like to express my gratitude to everybody for their hard work.
b. By remembering lessons learned in the past, our city government will be able to more effectively prevent and treat dengue fever in the future. On April 20 of this year (2016), we established the nation’s first Dengue Fever Prevention and Treatment Center, which shares the same building with the Centers for Disease Control Southern Regional Center. In addition to resource integration, this arrangement allows for prevention and treatment efforts for dengue fever to be as efficient and effective as possible. As of right now, the city’s Dengue Fever Prevention and Treatment Center already has 58 staff members. The center is indefatigable in contacting other organizations and sharing information so that it can completely control the epidemic and effectively prevent and treat dengue fever.
c. From March to May of this year, I went to the city’s districts to hold forums with director-generals of our city’s Public Health Bureau and Environmental Protection Bureau, and each forum devoted at least one hour to dengue fever prevention and treatment. A total of 18 forums were held in our city’s 37 districts and 752 villages. 3,593 people attended these events, including district chiefs, village chiefs, and the board directors of communities. In order to make sure people are thoroughly knowledgeable about disease prevention measures, Deputy Mayor Yen went to 37 different districts, speaking about dengue fever at over 100 events to a total of 40,000 to 50,000 people. With the aim of protecting the health of all city residents, in 2016 our city government issued 501 citations during its effort to inform the public about prevention and treatment for the contagious disease. We had no choice but to carry out this action, so I ask city residents to cooperate with us.
d. I would like to express my gratitude to the team from NCKU and MediaTek Inc. for helping with the development of information technology that has been used to prevent and treat dengue fever. Last year, we relied on big data analysis done by Professor Chuang Kun-ta and Professor Ko Nai-ying from NCKU. Their analysis made our prevention and treatment strategies more precise and effective. We’ve also continued to develop the app The Mosquito Man this year, which has helped citizens prevent disease on their own accord as well as increasing the communication between the government and citizens. In addition to this, NCKU and MediaTek co-founded the City Network for the Disease Prevention Calculation Joint Laboratory on top of launching the Smart Mosquito Trap Light, a device that’s the first of its kind in Taiwan, as it combines IoT technology, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence technology. The light will help combat dengue fever and protect the health of all residents. I believe this technology will benefit Tainan City and all of Taiwan in the future and can even be promoted in cities and countries around the world that struggle with dengue fever outbreaks.
e. The presentation mentioned methods involving genetically modifying mosquitoes or solving issues with mosquito breeding and releasing. Please keep abreast of follow-up work and results and implement these methods in Tainan City when the situation presents itself so that the city can utilize a diversity of channels to control a potential dengue fever epidemic.