TCA, government officials launching the Big Data Alliance in Taipei

The Taipei Computer Association and Taiwanese government-sponsored institutions have jointly launched the Big Data Alliance, aimed at driving the use of analytics and open data in academia, industry and the public sector.

The Alliance plans to drive the use of analytics and open data throughout industry and government to “transform and optimise services, and create business opportunities,” and hopes big data can be used to improve public policy – everything from financial management to transportation optimisation – and create a large commercial ecosystem for new applications.

The group also wants to help foster more big data skills among the domestic workforce, and plans to work with major local universities to train more data and information scientists. Alliance stakeholders include National Taiwan University, National Taiwan University of Science as well as firms like IBM, Far EasTone Telecommunications and Asus, but any data owners, analysts and domain experts are free to join the Alliance.

Taiwanese universities have been fairly active in partnering in partnering with large incumbents to help accelerate the use of big data services. Last year National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in southern Taiwan signed a memorandum of understanding with Japanese technology provider Futjistu which saw the two organisations partner to build out a big data analytics platform and nurture big data skills in academia.