The French Ministry of foreign affairs hosted international Nuit des Idées recently and invited Audrey Tang, founder of GOV community, to participate this event. Ms. Tang used Tainan City as an example and drew a lot of attention. Even director Julien Antelin from Paris Deputy Mayor office was extremely interested, and hoped to visit Tainan someday.
Ms. Tang introduced the idea of open government through virtual reality to over 7,000 scholars and leaders from around the world. Ms. Tang used how Tainan City resolved the Feiyan New Residential Quarter conflict to introduce the idea of open government. The Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission (REDC) of Tainan City Government, thanked Ms. Tang for citing Feiyan New Residential Quarter’s case in a worldwide conference, and recognizing the open government policy.
The Feiyan New Residential Quarter was located around Liou-jia-ding archeological sites, and the land was owned by the Ministry of National Defence. In the year of 2010, Ministry of National Defence decided to entrust Tainan City Government to reconstruct this area. In 2013, the company that won this construction case decided to build an apartment building which caused a lot of conflicts. Tainan City Government decided to carry out the idea of open government and let citizens participate in the process of decision making. Chao, Chairperson of Tainan City RDEC, stated that this kind of direct participation is extremely rare in Taiwan. Tainan City Government is advocating true democracy and taking real actions step by step. In the past year, Tainan City Government has hosted 11 meetings in order resolve the conflicts. Deputy Mayor Tseng attended every meeting and has very solid discussion in every meeting. Deputy Mayor Tseng also thanked scholars, consultants and civil societies for joining these meetings. These meetings enable City Government to gather opinions and figure out a development plan that is acceptable for everyone.
Chairperson Chao further stated that open government isn’t just a slogan, it is the development of democracy. Mayor Lai lists open government as one of the four major policies demonstrated the determination of city government. Another discussion forum about Feiyan case will take place on Feb. 20th. All the opinions recorded in the discussion will be shown to city government and city council. City Government received 621 participation applications and will picked 108 citizens to join this discussion. More information can be found on the fan page of Feiyan discussion.