Department of Government Ethics

Department of Government Ethics, Taipei City Government (DOGE) held a conference on “citizen inspecting public works” explaining the duties of integrity volunteers on May 1st, 2015. The keynote speaker Liu, Cheng-Wu, Prosecutor from the Taipei District Prosecutors Office, first delivered a speech to the integrity volunteers who participate in the project. Then DOGE officials further elaborated on the topic by specifically explaining the guidelines of what, when, and how to supervise. As people are concerned, integrity volunteers inspecting public works is one of DOGE’s top priority projects, which requires integrity volunteers to help inspect if road digging works in Taipei City violate the regulations. For example, integrity volunteers check whether signage has been set up to warn passers-by of the danger, whether digging permits are displayed at the sites, whether the location, time, and scope of works match the contents specified in the permits, and whether the digging depth and refilling materials conform to the rules. By volunteers’ unprejudiced inspection, DOGE is able to discover any use of inferior materials and presence of construction deficiencies; consequently, problems such as illegal digging by contractors and inconsistency between conditions stated on the permit and those on site were lately reported, successfully unveiling corrupted cases. The contractors were later-on fined by administrative authorities with a penalty of NT$ 70 thousand dollars. In the future, DOGE will continue to promote the concept of “citizens inspecting public works”, and to strengthen the power of external supervision through joining forces of integrity volunteers and citizens in the hope of effectively improving the quality of public works in Taipei City.