Secretariat, Taipei City Government

In the afternoon of October 28th, the Department of Civil Servant Development of the Taipei City Government and South Korea’s Gyeonggido Talent Development Institute held an online exchange that revolved around the theme of “Change & Chance: Turning the Pandemic Crisis into Opportunity.” More than 200 people representing Gyeonggido, Taipei City, and other counties/cities of Taiwan participated in the online meeting. Because both parties were well-prepared, the meeting was successfully held, and a variety of engaging and creative topics were discussed. 

Tom Chou, the Commissioner of the Department of Civil Servant Development of the Taipei City Government, stated that although South Korea and Taiwan differ in terms of their pandemic preparedness strategies, both countries have achieved excellent results overall. The online meeting was an opportunity for brainstorming new ideas to improve the pandemic preparedness and economies of both countries. Taiwan’s corporate representative, KKday Chief Marketing Officer Yuki Huang, shared with the attendees how KKDAY quickly adapted its tourism business strategy, discovered more business opportunities during the process of innovation and transformation, and, as a result, generated benefits for the company’s business partners, which included airlines, five-star hotels, and well-known souvenir shops.

Chen Chih-Ming, Secretary-General of the Taipei City Government, is the commander-in-chief of the Taipei City Government for promoting digital transformation. He was invited to give a lecture on “The New Normal: Urban Life and Pandemic Control.” During the lecture, Secretary-General Chen emphasized that the second wave of the pandemic outbreak that occurred in May 2021 was quickly suppressed, which strengthened Taipei City’s industrial competitiveness and accelerated the city government’s implementation of industry digitization policies. However, he also expressed his concern for the post-pandemic challenges faced by the city government in 2022, which included inflation and the rich–poor gap.

During the online meeting, Lin Cheng-Kuan, Director of the Anseong Branch of the Gyeonggido Talent Development Institute, shared how Gyeonggido Province improved its pandemic management capabilities through the combined use of medical hardware facilities and operational systems. Associate Professor Lee Seung-Yun from Konkuk University in Gyeonggido stressed that the outbreak of the pandemic shut down approximately half of the world’s top 500 companies for the year of 2000. The five most valuable companies in the world today are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. Accordingly, the digital transformation of industries is a global trend, and companies that refuse to digitize will not survive. Roblox is currently the most popular online game among teenagers, and Roblox users spend approximately 2.5 hours a day on the platform, which far exceeds the time they spend on YouTube or Instagram. This phenomenon proves that virtualization and digitization are the global trends of the future. 

Commissioner Chou stressed the crucial role of promoting the digital transformation of industries in the post-pandemic era. In the future, the Department of Civil Servant Development will comply with Taipei City Government’s digital transformation policy to provide high-quality digital courses, thereby improving the digital capacity of city government employees and overcoming various post-pandemic challenges in the corporate world.