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Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
revolution drives Intelligent Transportation
System (ITS) networks
The existing information revolution is bringing
into being new systems of political economy and
social structure. The information revolution composed
knowledge-worker-based economy that is now being
multiplying economic scale of activity.
During the past few decades, our ability to
handle information has multiplied by roughly a
factor of 1 million, and we are likely to witness
another millionfold increase over the next few
decades. This new found power to manage knowledge
is reorganizing economic structures, permitting
huge increases in productivity, eliminating unneeded
routine labor, getting ride of dispensable habitual
travel. Its time, creating more direct distribution
channels, networking the pile-up stocks and accumulative
demands, spurring customization of high-quality
goods and services, opening up vast new markets,
and facilitating global operations of almost any
technologies and business.
The information revolution also exerts an enormous
multiplier effect because this increased ability
to acquire knowledge accelerates scientific blossom.
That is largely why we are witnessing historic
breakthroughs in all fields.
In short, a more sophisticated, technological
foundation for economies is being built that transcends
our former constraints. This emergence of powerful,
worldwide ITS networks can even be thought of
metaphorically as the growth of a "central
nervous system" for the planet that facilitates
the functioning of modern knowledge societies.
Government role is critical the most
As the novelty and good measures of ITS projects
propels most of advanced countries to reshape
their National Foresight Program Into 21st Century,
government role and functions are expected to
be more critical at now and in the future.
ITS has been argued that regional and national
frontiers are "melting away" in what
the economists calls the interlinked economy,
ILE or the interlinked society, ILS.
People today in ILE believe that one of the
most important public goods is the management
of the government. Once the government is able
to become more efficient and reduce taxes without
reducing the level of government services, everyone
benefits. Governments are called for their responsibilities
towards sound management on spatial economies
comprising inner cooperatable system for multiple
carriers and multimodes transportation, sufficient
national infrastructure for surface and aerosphere
transportation, and effective interlinkages between
basic facilities and faculties. Such a demand
drives the United States of America, and some
other advanced developed countries, ADCs, on their
thrusts upon the national intelligent transportation
infrastructure, NITI, since 1997.
Increasing by increasing demands of market
on domestic and international mobility for people
and commodity urges most of modern governments
to extend a good few big pushes of national arrangement
on ICT progress and newly industrialized marketability.
Many government agencies are required to encourage
ITS engineering technologies, and ITS managerial
technologies as well. To fuel economy and to strengthen
energy sustainability and man-system interoperability
should also be taken into the account of ITS advances
of mankind.
The force to transform
economic order and civil society
The electrifying use of ICTs, a world-wide
transition to free markets, an awakening hunger
for modernization, and other powerful forces of
globalization are producing one of the most dramatic
trends of our time－the unification of a diverse
world into a coherent whole. As knowledge, information,
technology, capital, service, people, the human
capital, and commodity move across borders, this
unifying process is now integrating communities
into a single economic entity. In time, these
same forces may drive economic blocs together
to produce open exchanges among most nations,
prodigious new developing ITS markets, and some
form of global governance, such as Regional ITS
Forum and the World ITS Organization.
These trends raise crucial questions about
the nature of socioeconomic life in the future.
What parallels can be drawn from the industrial
revolution to chart the outlines of the knowledge
revolution? In what ways should the new global
order of ITS be an extension of previous economic
and technological patterns, and in what ways may
it differ? What is the significance of this profound
watershed in history? We are to be called for
focusing on how a particular set of forces is
producing a distinctively different dimension
of ecological change for the future ITS in advance.
Observers are justifiably confused because
we are experiencing now a multidimensional transformation
that leads the ITS developments country by country
in different, often contradictory directions.
The current ITS development in countries is indeed
a dynamic, evolutionary process that has come
to drive not only industrial technology applications
change but increasingly the economic, social,
political, cultural, and personal dimensions of
society. ITS will enable us to act upon multiple
challenges and opportunities.
The technological revolution has lowered transaction
costs to levels where any thing can be produced
any where and then exchange any where in the world.
This revolutionary impact of ICTs, but goes on
to explain how other forces and constraints have
ascended to shape the structure of the evolving
global economy, and to cast the mode of the demanded
spatial travel. The power of national governments,
transnational system, and technology make geographical
distance and location fundamental to understanding
the mainstream twenty-first-century global economy.
While the ICT revolution caused ITS advancement
is well known, it is not generally understood
that this amounts to a true worldwide revolution.
A world designed primarily to manage information
and knowledge introduces unheard-of-possibilities
that seem destined to transform the economic order
and civil society. The unique imperatives of knowledge
are driving three major trends that amount to
revolutions in their own right among economic
entities and other institutions: shifts from control
to freedom, from conflict to community, and from
materialism to knowledge. These forces are likely
to produce a "reversal" in common thought
roughly around 2010 to 2015.
Many scholars are mindful of a variety of forces
that could move economies away from raw, survival-of-the-fittest
enclosed system toward a new one that promotes
the broader economic connection and social welfare.
It is to be expectable to develop concepts for
forming civil economic communities spanning countries,
regions and the entire world. This logic of the
"third sector" of community-based economic
institutions from an international perspective,
provides copious examples.
Key
issues to initiate national ITS
But looking down to the current ITS developments
amid governmental agencies the individual nations,
certain issues and challenges are definitely not
to be negligible.
While ITS technologies and systems should be
an integral component of national transportation
plans and programs, success in implementing ITS
depends on people and institutions working to
achieve common objectives. As a planner and economic
councilor to the government Taiwan work to mainstream
ITS, a number of issues and challenges must be
addressed. In many of the local regions that have
been leading the way on ITS implementation, experience
has shown that the following issues pose the greatest
risk to success:
Institutional Impetus and Coordination:
The institutional relationships, in needs of coordination
and cooperation, will enable national ITS to be
mainstreamed into transportation systems planning,
developing, operations, funding, maintenance and
management of the country.
Technological Compatibility Between and
Among ITS Projects: The National ITS Architecture
is going to be as the dominant framework for national
system interoperability and agreement on standards
to ensure compatibility of ITS technologies locally,
nationally and globally.
Human Resource Necessity and Training:
It is required to initiate national needed technological
capacity to implement, maintain, operate and manage
ITS technologies and systems.
Going Financial Supportives: It is as
the top value to marshal private sector participation
and entrepreneurial support for ITS development
to be industrialized and ways to leverage private
sector vigorous resources.
It is more recently acknowledged that institutional
issues have emerged as a key challenge to implementation
of national ITS programs. At least two dimensions
of needed coordination and cooperation are: the
integration of operations and management strategies
into national transportation plans and programs,
and, multi-jurisdictional coordination and cooperation
in executing these ITS related national strategies
and implementing projects which cross jurisdictional
boundaries.
Institutions are normative patterns of social
organization and behavior. They are normative
in the sense that they define modes of action
or social relationships that society believes
are expected and proper in particular situations.
Institutions performing economic functions incorporate
methods, organizations, actions, and traditions
that coordinate ITS service production and distribution
decisions. The patterns of these and other institutions
are regularized by common rules, creating durable,
routine, and predictable behavior on the part
of a society's participants. The pattern of behavior
will invariably be shaped by the values of the
participants (the beliefs legitimizing such interactions)，norms
regularizing the interaction, sanctions and rewards,
and the motives of the individuals involved.
Institutions can be identified operationally,
for they have three distinctive characteristics:
there are people engaged in activities, the activities
are governed by common working rules, and there
is a philosophical basis, or justification, for
the actions and rules. There are groups of people
involved with gathering and disseminating information
and others who formulate the development plan.
Strict rules exist concerning compliance with
the plan (the final plan becomes a legal document
so that each entity is required to fulfill a prescribed
quota in terms of units of output). Finally, there
is justification for the planning activity, which
can be traced to denunciation of private enterprise
and self-regulating markets and establishment
of the planning and development commission.
Changing
working rules create new institutions
The nature of an economy is affected by the
society's social and political structures. Changes
in the social and political structures often lead
to changes in authorities. Such changes will have
a subsequent effect upon the establishment, interpretation,
and enforcement of the nation's working rules.
Economies are fluid, not static, for their working
rules and institutions are subject to modification.
Changes in working rules create new institutions.
New economic philosophies foster attitudes (informal
rules) which subsequently influence authorities
to alter (formal) working rules, thereby reshaping
or establishing institutions. One cannot conclude
that an advanced level of economic development
in a particular nation suggests that its working
rules and institutions will generate the same
favorable performance of a particular economy
will continue over time.
A society's institutions are viewed as highly
complex, interactive, and always in a state of
adjustment to changing conditions. The economic
system is generally conceived in mechanistic terms
characterized by the specification of a set of
economic relations. Most national system setting
and development activities are coordinated through
principal institutions. Changes in working rules
can modify institutions or create new ones, with
the national economy evolving in the process.
The economy is defined as the institutions that
perform national economic functions.
Principal institutions should be focused and
conferred
The principal institutions that affect a majority
of national ITS decisions within a nation include
two categories: state institutions and private
institutions. Former one may refers to parliament,
advisory councils, the cabinet, government agencies,
public enterprises, and state-owned financial
institutions. Latter discussion speaks of business
group, large firms, medium and small firms, private
financial institutions, federations, trade associations,
unions, and the business communities. Nowadays
NGOs should also be taken into the account of
discussion.
The rapid growth of Taiwan's high-tech industry
came about as a result of the combined efforts
of both the government and the private sector.
As for the role played by the government, the
high tariffs policies adopted to protect the industry
in the early stages were abandoned, and the government
instead sought to create a favorable environment
for the industry. Measures adopted in this regard
included the training of skilled technological
personnel, the transference of the fruits of government
research to the private sector, assisting and
encouraging private R&D and product innovation,
and setting up the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial
Park in 1980. The success of the Hsinchu Park
has caused it be dubbed the "Silicon Valley
of Asia".
Financial institutions have been composed of
dual layers with state-owned and private one.
Taiwan financial institutions and the interrelationships
among them are similar to those of the manufacturing
sector. A vertical hierarchy exists throughout
the public and private financial sector according
to size of institution. The interbank borrowing
pattern shows funds flowing from smaller to larger
banks, while the allocation of credit from the
central bank, CBC is exclusively to large commercial
banks.
The leader in the banking system, the Bank
of Taiwan was established in 1899 for the specific
purpose of promoting modernization through channeling
funds to industries deemed most important by the
State. The bank's policies are shaped by the prestigious
Ministry of Finance which supervises banking operations
closely. Three industrial banks has been settled
recently and specialized in funding newly emerged
industrial items.
With regard to financial policies, the government
has made special efforts to ensure that there
are sufficient funds for high-tech industries
to develop, especially during the initial stages
when investments are huge and risky and the traditional
banking is unable to meet business needs. The
government has, therefore, brought in the idea
of venture capital, establishing a development
fund and a development bank, and allowing venture
capital companies to be set up. In addition, the
government has also assisted firms in obtaining
part of their funds at relatively low cost, and
has actively encouraged syndicated loans as a
source of finance.
The government's "Development Fund"
of Taiwan was established in 1973, with the purpose
of using funds from the government to invest,
or else jointly-invest in or lend to technology-intensive
industries in which private investment is insufficient.
While the Fund was formerly directed towards basic
industries such as petrochemicals, in recent years
it has been used to fuel the electronics, information,
biotechnology, pollution abatement, aerospace
industries and now including those ITS related.
In addition, the Fund also provides relatively
low-interest funding in conjunction with bank
loans.
In 1979, the government reorganized the public-owned
Chiao Tung Bank into a development bank to focus
more on the financial needs of industrial development.
To supplement its source of funds, a portion of
the incremental postal saving deposits was required
by the Central Bank of China to be redeposit with
Chiao Tung Bank from 1982 to 1992, as seed capital
for investment in high-tech industries. Chiao
Tung Bank also actively promoted syndicated loans,
which contributed significantly to industrial
upgrading in Taiwan.
In order to encourage the private sector to
provide venture capital, venture capital companies
have been allowed to be set up in Taiwan since
1983. The growth of this industry has been particularly
noticeable within the last twenty years in view
of the sizable investments being made in the ICT
related industry. A great number of well-known
high-tech companies in Taiwan today have resorted
to the "Development Fund" the development
bank or those 124 venture capital companies for
their funding requirements and have greatly benefited
as a result. The ITS related industry might follow
since this year 2002.
Private institutions are on the other side
of the principals.
Business institutions must be understood within
the context of the organization of the private
sector. More than in any other economy, the organization
of this sector is an intricate web of competitive
and complementary relationships. The unique combination
and the gradations give the private sector a multifaceted
socioeconomic structure.
Most of labor unions are typically enterprise
unions in Taiwan, found primarily in large firms.
They are oriented along company interests, but
now rather shifted over being organized at the
national level or according to workers' industry,
trade, or craft. Class consciousness among the
workers is characterized more by a feeling of
belonging to the enterprise than by one of alienation
from employees of a higher rank.
The special interests of Taiwan's business
community are communicated to state officials
and bureaucrats by national federations of industry
and business organizations. The ability of this
influential group to influence prominent members
of the state higher-order authority stems from
the fact that the business community serves as
the body which allocates campaign funds to political
parties and individual office seekers.
The newly emerging momentous NGOs has been
consequential. Those who affiliate with ITS systems
might comprise of the institution in technological,
industrial, financial, business and human capital
initiatives, such as the Industrial Technology
Research Institute (ITRI), Institute for Information
Industry (III). Quite a few foundations and funds
included are also outright contributory.
* paper
presented in the 5th Asia-Pacific ITS Forum, Seoul,
Korea, on July 2-5, 2002.
** President and Professor of the World Economics
Society -- the think tank for policy study on
Taiwan, Republic of China.
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