The Taipei City government has been looking for methods to improve the lives of the city’s citizenry through the use of open data. The first area they targeted was transportation because they felt this information would have the greatest impact on people’s every day lives. Getting accurate data for the 5,000 buses, 1,000 bust stations, and 500 routes was an immense challenge, especially considering it needed to be accurate within 3 minutes. Once this data was made available the private sector stepped up to begin making useful applications to augment the open data. One app that was built by students at a city University alerts bus riders through their cellphone when the bus is approaching their stop. The city is now looking to expand their open data operations and are currently considering opening up crime data.
