To promote and create an international living environment, Taichung City Government has set up an English Integrated Services Website, aiming to improve bilingual service quality. This service platform provides an English-speaking environment for all the units in the city government in the hope to better integrate government and private-sector resources and lifestyle information. It is also hoped that the Government can thus build up cornerstones for advancing towards internationalization.
According to the statistics published by Labor Affairs Bureau of Taichung City Government and the National Immigration Agency of Ministry of Ministry of the Interior, there have been about 155,000 foreigners living in Taichung City and 50,000 visits to our English website per month since the merger of Taichung County into Taichung City. To provide better contents and services, Taichung City Government has revised the website by taking into consideration the needs of foreigners, integration of marketing and management functions, and facilitation of drafting and posting the contents. The new English website, which provides much richer and more interactive information in six categories, including Living, Transportation, Tourism, Education, Business, and City Government, can be accessed anywhere in the world because of our integration of multimedia platforms, mobile devices, App store, Google Market and social network-sharing concepts.
In addition to the rich contents on the website, a foreign national traveling in Taiwan can also download anytime and anywhere the Web Apps services from our website via his or her mobile device, regardless of whether the mainstream operating system is iOS or Android and what screen size of his or her iPad. For example, a foreign friend, who wishes to visit Taichung, can use his HTC smart phone to launch the Apps of "Life @ Taichung" to browse the latest news in the past three months, check the address and route to every government agency, arrange his or her city trip, and make use of six service functions, such as “learning easy Chinese pronunciation” and so on. It is believed that such an innovation can effectively integrate all sorts of information, significantly improve the quality of website contents, and make our services more readily available. In addition, we also provide a function in which audio and video contents can be automatically converted to fit in with the specified format and bandwidth of a video streaming system. With the use of multiple marketing and government advocacy, it is hoped that readers can enjoy the creativity of the digital audio and video world.
Holding a press conference on the morning of January 19, 2012, at the Lobby of Hui-xhong Building, New Taichung City Hall, the Taichung City Government announced the launch of the English Integrated Services Website. Invited to the ceremony were Deputy Mayor Hsiao, Director Ho of Information Management Department of Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan, and agency heads of Taichung City Government. After the new English website was introduced to our foreign friends and our citizens, four actors, including teachers Jeff Parker and Heather Llewellyn, performed an interesting action drama in which they showed us how to use handheld mobile devices to conveniently access the English website. All our friends are welcomed to stroll over every concern of greater Taichung by fingertip. This shall add a new page on the service performance of Taichung City Government.