The People's Party's Legislative Yuan caucus held a press conference today to question the 2014 implementation of the "Urban and Rural Modeling and Digital Twin Infrastructure Application Plan" by the Digital Industry Agency of the Ministry of Digital Development. It spent about 20 million yuan on high-precision 3D modeling of Yeliu Queen's Head, but the actual modeling cost was only about 6 million yuan. The remaining funds were as much as more than 10 million yuan for personnel expenses, accounting for more than half of the total project budget. It criticized the large investment in personnel expenses for the plan, which was basically "supporting one's own people." In addition, the People's Party also questioned the calculation basis of the Ministry of Digital Development and Development's claim that the project would create an economic benefit of 20 million yuan.
In this regard, this newspaper sought verification from Lin Junxiu, director of the Digital Industry Administration, to clarify the purpose of preparing relevant personnel expenses and the calculation method of the 20 million yuan in economic benefits.
Lin Junxiu said that first of all, the budget of the Digital Industry Administration is compiled in accordance with the principles approved by the Executive Yuan, and all funds must be implemented within the approved scope and must not violate relevant regulations. Secondly, the Digital Industry Administration divides this budget into two main parts, one is modeling-related funds, and the other is research and management expenses.
Lin Junxiu explained that the modeling part is through open bidding, entrusting the industry to dream of creating and building a 3DGS model, and entrusting the manufacturer to implement it, someone must be responsible for the management, including the management mechanism of the entire outsourcing case, which requires investment in manpower and costs. These are necessary labor expenses.
As for the research part, since it is the first year of the project promotion, we hope to collect and study relevant foreign cases first to understand the promotion methods of other countries, so as to serve as a reference for our subsequent promotion. In addition, in order to make 3DGS modeling results widely used in different industries such as games, animation, digital learning, and English learning, cross-industry common specifications must also be researched and established to avoid the situation where the model can be used in one industry but cannot be applied in other industries. The establishment of these common specifications requires the investment of manpower for research.
Next, it is to investigate the needs of domestic industries. Because in order to promote this technology in the future, we must first understand what each industry needs before we can further promote its application.
Therefore, the research work mainly covers three major projects, including collecting domestic and foreign benchmark cases (Benchmark), studying and establishing common cross-industry standards, and cross-industry coordination and domestic demand surveys.
He emphasized that most of these three tasks require professional research and execution, which will naturally incur labor costs. However, the relevant tasks are handled according to the original plan and do not exceed the budget approved by the Executive Yuan.
Lin Junxiu pointed out that this type of project is originally based on labor procurement, but labor procurement does not mean that it is raising people, but requires professionals to complete these tasks. It is different from engineering procurement or procurement that mainly focuses on materials and equipment. It mainly entrusts professionals to provide research, management and execution services, and is not simply to pay personnel expenses. Just because the funds involve labor costs, it cannot be considered to be "raising people".
He emphasized that the "Government Procurement Law" has clear regulations on labor procurement. The budget preparation and implementation of the Department of Industry and Commerce are based on laws and regulations and are within the scope of relevant regulations, which is tenable.
As for the calculation method of the 20 million yuan economic benefit, Lin Junxiu explained that this project has four application cases, namely an animation, two games, and the digital learning application of LiveABC. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has conducted interviews and surveys on these industries, and the industries themselves have reported the relevant output value. The total value of the four application cases is approximately 15 million yuan.
Lin Junxiu pointed out that the other 5 million yuan comes from the self-raised cooperation funds of the contractor Dream Creation. The amount of money contracted to Dream Creation in this case is about 6 million yuan. While the government invests funds, it will also encourage manufacturers to invest their own funds. The actual investment of Dream Creation is 5 million yuan.
Therefore, adding the 15 million yuan output value returned by the four application cases and the 5 million yuan invested by Dream Creation itself, the total is 20 million yuan.
Lin Junxiu said that the manufacturers themselves have also invested funds. When calculating the overall economic benefits, the part invested by the industry itself cannot be ignored. Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology included the 5 million yuan in cooperation funds into the calculation and came up with an economic benefit of 20 million yuan.
