The open decision-making policy has marched a step forward. A new civic center will be gathering public opinions to achieve “Teenagers’ participation” and “Preliminary participation in decision-making”. Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission(RDEC), Bureau of Education(BoE), Bureau of Urban Development(BUD) of Tainan city government had reached an agreement with Tainan First Senior High School(TNFSH), that is, to empower civil ethics teachers and senior high school students and hold some city development related competitions. Tainan City will be the first city which combines democracy participation and case studies of citizen engagement with citizenship courses. Besides, RDEC has asked the 7 community colleges in Tainan to help citizens to participate in the open decision-making process, which is supposed to have various viewpoints.
Chairperson Chao stated that since the mayor announced his policies, open government, in 2015, the city government has three principles: transparency, participation, and cooperation, which also has three phases: open data, open decision-making process, and open services. The city government has engaged in enlarging the citizen’s participation and realizing the new type democracy. The core spirit is to deepen the citizenship of every voter. It is only a mature environment can we reach a completed democratic era.
The open decision-making project will be divided into three parts: citizens’ early participation, young era’s participation, and online deliberation. It will also invite experts from city planning, citizen deliberation, transportation, disaster prevention, environmental assessment, municipal management, industrial economy, natural environment, civic engagement and online citizen to consist a committee, providing more fine opinions to the future projects. The city government hopes to promote the value of democracy via this project.
