Background
At the time when global cloud computing technology and the development of its application and service were rising successively, the Executive Yuan passed “Cloud Computing Industrial Development Program” on April 29th, 2010 in order to extend the advantage of hardware manufacturing from our existing Information and Communication Industry and to obtain the early opportunity of global cloud computing market.
Later, in order to bring cloud computing into the government application and to assist the government on administration, the Executive Yuan amended the program again in November, 2012 to expand the appeal to be “Promote the government cloud application people need, Drive the development of domestic cloud industries” and to adjust the original name to be” Cloud Computing Application and Industrial Development Program”, focusing on both “application value” and “output of industry and economy.”，
Promoting Strategies
There are five major developing strategies in this Program. They are promoting the application people need, constructing the developing energy of innovative application, setting the basis of system software, implementing the basic construction for cloud, and improving the efficiency of green energy saving. The contents of all the developing strategies are as follows:
Strategies of Cloud Computing Application and Industrial Development
1. Promoting the application people need
We will focus on the issues people pay attention to, applying cloud computing technology, to develop valuable government cloud applications and put the effective administration of the government into practice. In addition, this strategy adopts the method of building government cloud services to drive the development of Taiwan Information and Communication industry and to cultivate the industry with deep-rooted momentum for cloud innovation.
2. Constructing the developing energy of innovative application
We will provide consulting measures for all kinds of industries, encourage the whole industry to invest in the development of innovative application, supplemented with the introduction and cooperation of international resources, and invest in the testing platform for the development jointly in order to construct an open testing environment for software and hardware to provide the development, testing, and other empirical usage at the early stage of innovative cloud application and to support the government institutions and the industry to develop the innovative application and services people need.
3. Setting the basis of system software
We will develop a green and inexpensive cloud computing system and an open and secure large-scale cloud system software. On one hand, these can support companies of server and storage hardware equipment in our country to get into themarket of large-scale data center. On the other hand, these can assist the value-added software vendors of cloud application in our country to develop the small and medium business application market and to expand the sales opportunities of domestic and foreign software.
4. Implementing the basic construction for cloud
We will use policy instruments to encourage the server companies in our country to research and develop cloud products and techniques and support the whole industry to invest in researching and developing the technique to combine renewable energy and the value-added service of software system. A complete solution will be developed based on our country’s existing hardware manufacturing foundation and we can accumulate our proficiency to enter global data center and other cloud computing markets, by participating in the development of government cloud application services.
5. Improving the efficiency of green energy saving
We will improve the energy efficiency of our data center to facilitate the consolidation, virtualization, and collocation. Examining the energy consumption efficiency of the government institutions and school computer rooms to set the the energy efficiency objectives and improvement measures, in order to promote the energy-saving design specification of the newly-built green data center.
Current promotion status of government cloud
The promotion is mainly for the government cloud applications closely related to the daily life of the public, and the focused development and applications are as follows:
1. Application on food and health
(1) More than 363 hospitals and 3,200 clinics joining the exchanging operation of cross-hospital electric medical records (including medical imaging, clinic medical records, medicine in clinic, blood tests, and discharge summary). There are additional 1,500 clinics and 100 health centers expected to join in 2015.
(2) The service “My Health Bank” for the public was planned in 2014 and promoted comprehensively in 2015, integrating health insurance, medical treatment, and other related information to provide all citizenswith the instant medical treatment information, medicine usage safety service, and self-health care .
(3) We will hold the list of more than 190 thousand national food companies and those with registered food products, more than 2.1 million food import companies with customs declaration information, and 525 cooking oil companies in the food supply chain with upstream and downstream relationship,. Food safety tracking mechanism and function will be achieved through check and examination on the food flow of upstream and downstream.
2. Application on police and public security
The surveillance system at the road intersections of Taipei City, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Changhua, and Nantou will be integrated to provide remote examining function in order to enhance the ability of handling and investigating cases across cities and counties. Currently, total 36,178 cameras have been integrated. There will be surveillance systems in other cities/counties integrated gradually later, and the remote examining function across cities/counties of the entire Taiwan is expected to be completed within the next few years.
3. Application on environmental information and disaster prevention
(1) We will build national geographic information to provide locating service for all the addresses in Taiwan, which is used more than 180 million times, and internet map component service is used more than 255 million times.
(2) We will build a platform of environmental information service, and undertake open data approach, which generates 14 million times of data quote or download.
4. Application on education and culture
We will build the service platform of digital teaching and learning information to provide online learning, education study, remote lesson consultation, teaching resources, and other application. Up until the end of 2014, there have been more than 410 thousand teachers and students in 3rd to 9th grade registering and using the email cloud service. The service includes more than 180 thousand resources, more than 3 thousand education videos, and more than 260 thousand entries in education encyclopedia.
5. Collocation of basic construction
We will promote the integrating operation of the information computer rooms in Executive Yuan and subsidiary institutions, and implement the policies of upward consolidation of the information resources. The first domestic government data center also obtained ISO 20000 and ISO27001 certifications in 2015. Moreover, the procedure of the energy efficiency measuring operation is established to promote the information computer room of the government to meet the energy-saving standards gradually.
Following promotion
At the time when every institution of the government is actively promoting all kinds of cloud services, data science has taken off quietly and has the opportunity to be a great help on developing innovative application and the transformation of industries. Executive Yuan will further amend the content of the program, which not only reviews the executing results of the existing plans but also creates innovative application service by using data science and other emerging technologies. The cloud computing results existing at the previous phase will be basis for using big data analysis technology and open data to facilitate cooperation between the government and the public, to cultivate talents jointly, and to develop innovative service models in order to improve the competitiveness of the industry and make effective international influences.