(New York City – October 9, 2025) The Intelligent Community Forum today announced the renewal of New Taipei City’s Full Certification as an Intelligent Community, based on an audit of the programs, policies and achievements that make New Taipei City a highly desirable place to live, work and innovate in Taiwan.
Meeting ICF’s Certification standard provides objective validation that a community has high-quality connectivity, effective workforce development, a business innovation ecosystem and meaningful community engagement, digital inclusion and sustainability programs in place. These qualities combine to support the growth of innovative businesses, meet their talent needs and provide inclusive prosperity and a high quality of life.
New Taipei City is the first city in Taiwan to achieve and renew Certification and the first to achieve Full Certification. It was a four-time Top7 Intelligent Community of the Year, culminating in its recognition as the 2022 Intelligent Community of the Year.
New Taipei City Government stated, "New Taipei City's successful renewal of Full Certification from the Intelligent Community Forum represents not only recognition of our three years of continuous advancement in smart city development, but also international validation of our efforts across digital transformation, workforce development, innovation and entrepreneurship, and citizen services. As Taiwan's first city to achieve ICF Full Certification, we feel the weight of this responsibility.
This certification renewal bears witness to New Taipei City's continued progress in smart governance, industrial innovation, and digital inclusion. We believe this international recognition is not an endpoint, but rather a significant milestone as New Taipei City advances toward a smarter and more sustainable future.
Moving forward, we will continue to uphold 'citizens first' as our core principle, leveraging digital technology to innovate municipal services and create a more livable and business-friendly urban environment."
“The many ways in which New Taipei City aligns and interconnects its workforce development, innovation, engagement and inclusion programs gives a competitive advantage to the city’s companies, universities, business and technology parks,” said ICF co-founder Robert Bell, who performed New Taipei City’s renewal Certification audit. “They will continue to support its leading position among the world’s Intelligent Communities.”
About New Taipei City
New Taipei City (NTPC) was created in 2010 from the county surrounding Taiwan’s capital city of Taipei. Massive investment has gone into high-speed roads and rails to unite the city, which also applies digital technology to re-imagine the delivery of services to citizens. While a Knowledge-Bridge project has driven industry-university collaboration projects and provided talent and job matchmaking, just three of NTPC’s business parks, each focused on a different industry cluster, have attracted US$1.5 billion in investment and created 22,400 jobs.
To further its delivery of services to citizens, New Taipei City has created centers like the EZ-Learn Network, which provides thousands of residents – especially seniors – with training in digital skills ranging from basic technology use to podcasting, live streaming and AI, with courses refreshed annually to match popular demand. The New Taipei City Youth Department supports 10 Youth Start-up Hubs. One of them, Digibase, has supported 91 start-up teams since its opening in 2022, while a crowdfunding campaign has guided 78 teams since its launch. Complementing these efforts, New Taipei City’s long-running workforce education programs combine competency-based training with instruction in labor rights and communication, fostering more harmonious, adaptable and productive companies. Read more about the city’s recent achievements in an ICF co-founder blog. Or learn more from the ICF profile of New Taipei City.
About Intelligent Community Certification
Intelligent Community Certification is an economic development credential based on ICF’s Community Accelerator Strategy and analytic methods developed over two decades of work with more than 200 communities around the world. The evaluation is based in part on written information submitted by the community on connectivity, workforce development, public and private-sector innovation, digital inclusion, public engagement and sustainability and resilience. To validate this information, ICF conducts a 2-day onsite audit that also explores how well the community integrates its programs in these areas to multiply their impact and increase their value. Following the audit, the auditor prepares a report detailing results and finalizes the scoring on which Certification is based. Once issued, the Certification remains effective for three years and must be renewed through updating of written information and another audit.
Intelligent Community Certification is based on a set of standards described in detail on the ICF website.
About the Intelligent Community Forum
Starting in 2000 with a research project comparing cities in various nations, the Intelligent Community Forum (www.intelligentcommunity.org) created a unique, data-driven approach to development that puts citizens first while tapping the enormous economic and social potential of technology. In a world dominated by digital, ICF’s mission is to help communities create innovative, sustainable and growing economies, inclusive societies and affirming cultures open to the world. We do it for communities large and small – in urban clusters, outlying suburbs and rural places – through training, consulting, assessment, certification and award programs. ICF believes that digital connectivity and technology create the opportunity for almost every community to develop a dynamic local economy and the social and cultural strengths that go with it – giving them all a chance to be great places to live, work, learn, grow, raise a family and prepare a sustainable path for the next generation.
The Forum sponsors Institutes in North America and Taiwan dedicated to the study of the movement, and national organizations in Canada and Taiwan, both home to many Intelligent Communities. In 2012 ICF was invited to participate at the Nobel Peace Prize conference in Oslo and in 2014, its model and work were recognized by the U.S. Department of Commerce under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which, according to the American government, was “aimed at creating a more flexible and responsive system of workforce development to meet the needs of employers looking to fill 21st century jobs.”
For more details on the Intelligent Community Forum’s programs and publications, go to www.intelligentcommunity.org.
Contacts:
Matthew Owen, Executive Director
Intelligent Community Forum
[email protected]
