(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. 

My audit of New Taipei City for its Intelligent Community Certification wrapped up with insight into how cities can get the most out of the digital transformation. We visited the Sanchong Education and Activity Center, one of four locations where people of all ages (but mostly seniors) come to learn how to use digital tech. My takeaway: if you are doing digital inclusion, cover the basics– but change things based on what’s popular. The popularity list at Sanchong starts with podcasting and live streaming, followed (of course) by AI. The Center updates its courses and workshops every year to stay current. That’s how they have trained hundreds of thousands of New Taipei citizens.

I just finished my first day of auditing New Taipei City in Taiwan for renewal of its Intelligent Community Certification. Along the way, we had lunch, as the picture shows. But in between the glasses of iced tea, I picked up noteworthy, new ways that local governments can help their existing and new companies succeed: 

#1 Improving the Odds of Startup Success with Crowdfunding

New Taipei selects startups each year – including indigenous and new residents – to benefit from crowdfunding campaigns. In six years, the city has helped nearly 80 startups each crowdsource an average of US$120,000. The money isn’t really the point. It is to help startups identify their value and road-test their messaging early in their development, based on feedback from the crowd. The city team provides a professional-grade crowdfunding campaign and supplements it with product and target market analysis, media exposure, industry and government connections and access to grants. It’s an imaginative way to support the early development of new companies.

In this episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Lou Zacharilla speaks with Jim Shea, Founder and CEO of Deepsig.

The Taiwanese government spares no effort to promote new tech trends in sports to help people live a longer and healthier life.

Taoyuan has kicked off an exciting initiative “She smart Taoyuan”, further in collaborating with gender perspective into city and policy design and celebrating what women have accomplished in this field.

On behalf of ICF, Chairman and Co-Founder John G. Jung recently made a presentation as part of the 2021 NTPC International Smart City Forum, hosted by New Taipei City, Taiwan.

The Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs directs the project, “Smart City Taiwan,” as part of Taiwanese government’s goal to promote industrial upgrading and transformation and digital technologies. The central and local governments and industries work together to introduce smart, innovative applications covering “health,” “governance/safety,” “traffic,” “agriculture,” “education,” and “tourism/retail” to 22 cities and counties across Taiwan. So far, the project has yield remarkable results. About 300 companies have released more than 220 smart services accessible to 8.54 million people. These smart services are designed to address local issues and are also being exported to foreign countries. 

Environmental sustainability and energy transition: Taiwan steps up battle to cut carbon emissions and achieve Net-Zero by 2050

While the world is experiencing the Covid-19 outbreak since 2020, the most searched keyword in 2021 is net zero emissions. This implies that climate change is going to be another battlefield, because no one is immune to its effects. For this reason, U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to invest US$2 trillion in the next four years to build a green energy economy and promote the development of clean energy in the United States. Governments around the world have also actively promoted net-zero emissions to stop climate change from getting worse.

In April 2021, 131 countries including the European Union, the United States, South Korea, and Japan made more active emission reduction commitments at the Leaders Summit on Climate. The United Kingdom and the European Union both updated their mid-term (2035) carbon reduction targets to reduce carbon emissions by 78% and 55%, respectively, and reach a net-zero carbon emission target by 2050. As a member of the global village, Taiwan jumps on the bandwagon to get to zero carbon by 2050.