Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) and its partners organize this conference once a year since year 2000. Over the last 16 years, with the continuous support from Department of Industrial Technology (DOIT) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), this event gradually builds up its international reputation and connections, and has become one of the most important of its kind.

This year, the conference agenda is “government innovation and open data”. Recently “Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing“ probably are the two most heard of buzzed words in the industrial and innovation policy communities around the globe. In Taiwan, the equivalent is “productivity 4.0”.

These concepts are meant to assist us designing better and smarter policy to improve productivity, and to bring values to the society as a whole. However, if we really like to achieve this goal, the government must also upgrade its mindset and its way of doing things to “Government 4.0”. That means the government needs to play smarter, and to take a more proactive approach to innovate itself, in order to be compatible with the fast-moving private sector.

The Era of Big Data and Open Data is presenting a set of good opportunities for government innovation. Many tools and data which are valuable and useful to the industry, are now also available to the government. The government should take these emerging opportunities, and make the most of these tools and data to deliver better public services. Making the government more proactive and innovative is not an easy task, especially in an age of austerity. It requires a great deal of effort. Many critical issues and elements should be taken into account. Many wicked problems need to be solved as well. This is also the reason for why we have this conference.

This year, we invite seven remarkable speakers from the UK, South Korea, Sweden and Taiwan to share their valuable knowledge and experiences in relation to “government innovation and open data”. We also invites a group of high-ranking official guests from Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. This conference encourages everyone to participate and initiate dialogue more actively! We believe lively conversation and idea-exchange is the mother of all kinds of innovation. So let’s try to practice it in this two-day event, and make this conference a great international forum to innovation policy communities around the globe.