To save time and transportation costs for the people, Taichung City Government introduced 45 "one-stop cross-district service" items in 4 major categories, including social affairs, civil affairs, conscription affairs, and indigenous peoples. Services have been offered to more than 4000 cases in the past 3 months, of which applications or replacements of senior citizen cards were the most popular.

Civil affairs cover household registration, military service, religion, funeral, and so on and so forth, and the Civil Affairs Bureau is a governmental unit most frequented by people. In the past, people often complained that a visit to the Civil Affairs Bureau was like getting into a jungle because of the complex procedures to go over and so many documents to fill out.

To make it easy for people to get things done, the Civil Affairs Bureau has streamlined the procedures and promoted "cross-district services" since July this year. Now, people can choose any district office most convenient to them to get serviced. This new measure should help people save time and effort in going back and forth between the district office where they have registered their own households and their residence and workplaces.

Tsai Shi-yin (蔡世寅), Director-general of Civil Affairs Bureau said, “The one-stop, inter-bureau and back-to-back services cover 45 service items in four major categories, including social affairs, civil affairs, conscription affairs, and indigenous peoples. People can now apply for senior citizen cards, emergency relief grants, conscript accreditation data, burial permit, aboriginal student’s living allowance, and so forth at a single window of any district office.”

According to the statistics of Civil Affairs Bureau, there have been 4382 applications since the introduction of “cross-district services”, or over 1,400 cases very month on the average. Replacements for senior citizen cards have ranked 1st in the cross-district service cases. In the past, if a senior citizen lost his or her card, he or she must go back to the district office where his or her household has been registered to apply for a replacement. Now, he or she can do the same at any district office.

For example, Mr. Yang is now living in South District but has registered his household in Longjing District. As he has turned a senior citizen now, he is not required to go back to the Longjing District Office to apply for his senior citizen card but make it at the South District Office, instead. “This measure is really convenient, thanks to the city government,” said Mr. Yang, raising his thumb up.

Tsai Shi-yin, Director-general of Civil Affairs Bureau, stressed, “We will review this cross-district service program after it has been implemented for six months. It is always our aim to provide more convenient and thoughtful services to the public.”