LicenseThis report is released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 International-Open Culture Foundation.
Its raw data is released under CC0 1.0. Universal.
The website is released under MIT license.

Report Website
http://opengovreport.ocf.tw/

Production Team
Author: Mei-chun Lee, Po-yu Tseng

Translation: Melissa Chen, John Chen
Website and Visualization: Kirby Wu
Design: Chofy Lin

Publisher: Open Culture Foundation

Authors
Po-yu Tseng \ Author of Chapter 1 and 3

Mei-chun Lee \ Author of Chapter 2 and 4

Po-yu is an activist fighting for human rights,

Mei-chun is an anthropology PhD candidate

Researcher, Open Culture Foundation

gender equality and generational justice. She is also

the secretary of the Network of Young Democratic

Asians, an alliance of young activists in Asia working
on achieving effective democracy and protectionof human rights. Po-yu was an active participantof Taiwan's Sunflower Movement in 2014, andwas a candidate for the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's
Congress) during the 2016 general elections. She
also served at the Media Affairs Division of Taipei

Researcher, Open Culture Foundation

at the University of California, Davis. She also

holds a master's degree in anthropology fromthe University of Cambridge. Her researchinterests include hackitivism, open movements,

digital democracy and activism. She is currently

conducting fieldwork of civic technology in
Taiwan. At the same time, she is an active
participant of the g0v.tw community.

City Government.

Acknowledgement (in alphabetical order)This report was made possible by the generous support of BOST, Chen Chun-Hung, Chen Ling-Jyh, Chen Shun-

Ling, ET Blue, Hsu En-en, Hsu Wuu-long, Chuang Miao-tzu, Jyan Hong-Wei, Ju Yu-ren, Lee Yi-Kung, Liu Yu-tin,
Lucien Lin, National Development Council, PDIS, Saul Peng, Shaina Wang, Shih Sheng-wen, Taiwan Civil Service
Innovation Coalition, TonyQ, Taipei City Government, the LASS community, the g0v community, the jothonorganizers, the opendata/tw community, the vTaiwan task force, Tseng I-hsin, Tseng Shu-cheng, Whisky, Watchout,
Yu Chihao, and anonymous contributors.

Open Culture Foundation is solely responsible for the content of this report.

Open Culture Foundation
The Open Culture Foundation (OCF), is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, founded in 2014 by several

members of Taiwan's open source community. Our main goal is to support local communities advocate the useof open technologies in broader sectors, including open source software, open hardware, and open data. We help
government, enterprises, and NGOs better understand the benefits of adopting open source,and promote theimportance of open data to the public sphere. We believe that a culture of open collaboration is the foundation for
an innovative society, and the engine of a participatory democracy.

Address：(10058) 4F., No.94, Sec. 1, Bade Rd., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City 100, Taiwan
Website：http://ocf.tw/
Email：intl@ocf.tw

CONTENT
Information
Authors0

Introduction

1

Laws, Regulations, and Policies

15Laws, Regulations, and Policies on Open Data andOpen Government in Taiwan
Structure of Agencies Working on Open
Government in Taiwan
International Comparisons

2

Open Government Data
Introduction
Readiness of Open Data
Implementation of Open Data
Impact of Open Data
Global Open Data Evaluations

15

3

Citizen Participation

31

Development of Citizen Participation in Taiwan
Case Study: The Grassroots Forums of Civic
Constitutional Convention
Case Study: Youth World Café
Case Study: Feiyan New Village
Case Study: Taipei City's i-Voting
Case Study: The Join Platform
Case Study: Participatory Budgeting
Difficulties and Challenges

4

Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

53

Civic tech: A New Possibility for Public-Private
Collaboration
Donation Maps and Victim Identification: Civic Techin Emergence
Document Delivery Management System: Using
Digital Tools to Improve Administrative Processes
AirBox: Building a Civic Tech Ecosystem
vTaiwan: Civic Tech Collaboration to Create an
Open Space for Deliberation
How to Facilitate Civic Tech Collaboration

5

Conclusions

67

O

Introduction

1

Taiwan Open Government ReportIntroduction

0

On Januar y 21st, 2009, the day after US President

open government and appointed the first Digital Minister in"Transparency and Open Government." The memorandum

efforts, we found that open government has made little

Barack Obama took office, he signed a memorandum onstressed that the government should be transparent,
embrace citizen participation, and facilitate public-private

collaboration to regain people's trust in government. It not
only reveals civil society's strong desire for governmenttransparency, openness, and participation, but indicatesthat open government is a new model of governance.

From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring, from Taiwan's

Sunflower Movement to Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution,
the ideas of transparency and openess have become

the driving force behind the wave of democratization
movements of the 21st century.

Taiwan who is dedicated to open government. Despite these
progress in the past three years due to lack of relevant laws

and the culture of openness have not yet been established.

Moreover, the Taiwanese Government did not have a clear
blueprint of open government policies and most officials

showed little political will to encourage relevant actions.
This was especially true when it came to major national

policies (such as the Infrastructure Development Program[1]). People have not been able to see the government as asystem of transparency, participation, or collaboration inthese policies, rendering open government an empty slogan
of openwashing.

What is open government? The 2009 Presidential

In Taiwan, open government is relatively young and is stilland collaboration are the keys to open government. In

open government cannot be achieved with mere slogans

Memorandum stressed that transparency, participation,
2011, eight countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway,

the Philippines, South Africa, the UK, and the US) launched
the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which iscommitted to promoting transparency, participation,accountability, and inclusion. Open government is not justa slogan of reform but a political movement. It redefines
the relationship between government and civil society

and connects government, NPOs, international society,developing. As part of the democratization movement,or empty promises. Taiwan is in urgent need of legal andorganizational reforms, digital skill training for civil servants,

and a new, open culture in civil society. This cannot be done
by a few advocates. Open government is a duty not solely

borne by the government but by every citizen as well. Only
when the value of openness truly takes root in people's
mind will the mission of the movement be accomplished.

and individual citizens to form a network of stakeholders

Ta i w a n O p e n G o v e r n m e n t R e p o r t e x a m i n e s t h egovernance.

to 2016. The report gives an introduction to the current

so as to break bureaucratic hierarchy and facilitate open
Taiwan is not sitting out this global wave of open
government. Many civil society organizations in Taiwan

have long been advocating open data, citizen participation,and public-private collaboration. However, not until the2014 Sunflower Movement was these topics discussed

together in the context of open government. The Sunflower

development of open government in Taiwan from 2014
situation and points out potential challenges. The purposeof this report is to provide a preliminary analysis and a basis
for dialogue so that the public can understand the issues atstake. Moreover, advocates and policy makers can build on

this report to make deeper analyses, critiques, and policy
suggestions.

Movement stormed Taiwan and raised citizens' awarenessof government transparency and openness. After the
movement, the government started to advocate open
data and improve citizen participation as a response to

the criticism from civil society. Therefore, when President
Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, she spoke publicly for

Taiwan Open Government Report20Introduction

The body of this report consists of four chapters. It begins

with a review of open government laws and policies andpoints out the problems in the current legal framework. We
then use "transparency, participation, and collaboration"from the Presidential Memorandum as the structure of
the other three chapters. Chapter Two uses the methodof the Open Data Barometer to look into the readiness,

implementation, and impact of open data in Taiwan. Chapter
Three analyzes the development of citizen participation
through several case studies. Chapter Four explores civic

tech collaboration between civic tech communities andthe government. We want to stress that these four chapters
are not the full picture of open government in Taiwan

but research directions selected by the researchers after
significance and feasibility evaluation. While this report may
not cover all important issues, it is expected to serve as abuilding block of more advanced research and analysis.

Taiwan Open Government Report is a research project
conducted by the Open Culture Foundation (OCF). The

OCF was established in 2014 with the support of multiple

open source communities in Taiwan. Its mission is topromote open source, open data, and open government.

OCF researchers, Lee Mei-chun and Tseng Po-yu, collected

the materials, wrote, and edited this report. During the
research, civic tech communities were invited to collaborate

in hackathons and workshops. The drafts were also open
to public comments. This report could not be possible
without the help of many dedicated members from the g0v
community, the open data community, and the government.

We appreciate all the comments and critiques. This reportis published in both Chinese and English, inviting both
domestic and international readers to learn about Taiwan's
experiences. We would also like to invite readers to interact
with us and play with the data on the report's official

website, OPENGOVREPORT.OCF.TW. We hope that the reportserved as an open platform for participation so that theconversation will continue long into the future.

?

OpenwashingThis term is used to describe the situation in whicha government pretends to be "open" with pretty
slogans or superficial work while, in practice, does

not take views from civil society into consideration.
Openwashing turns "open" and "participation"

into mere propaganda for government andsomething that has no tangible impact. As aresult, civil society comes to have very limited
imagination of what open government means.

3

Taiwan Open Government ReportIntroduction0

The Development of Open Government in Taiwan

1987/07

the Martial Law lifted

1996/03

first direct presidential election

1998/01

the e-government program started

1999/02

citizen participation incorporated into the Administrative Procedure Law

2000/05

first party alteration

2005/12

promulgation of the Freedom of Government Information Law

2013/04"DATA.GOV.TW" launched

2014/03

the Sunflower Movement called for openness and transparency

2014/12

Taipei City Mayor pledged to promote open government

2015/02

the Executive Yuan announced that 2015 is the "Starting Year of
Deepening Open Data Applications"

2015/02"JOIN.GOV.TW" launched2016/10

Digital Minister Audrey Tang took officeNote[1] Criticism can be found in the following reports: "Public Hearing on the Forward-looking Program Was Not Open to the Public, Is
This Open Government?" (Chang 2017) & "Infrastructure Development Program Proved Open Government an Empty Promise" (CK2017)

Taiwan Open Government Report41

Laws,​
Regulations,​​and​​Policies

5

Taiwan Open Government Report!

Key Findings

No dedicated law on open government and open data in Taiwan

There is no dedicated law on open government and open data in Taiwan. Promotion
mostly relies on executive orders. Except for the Administrative Procedure Law,

citizen participation process and deliberative participation is not yet institutionalized.

Taiwan Government started a series of policy making on open
data in 2012

In the early days, the Administrative Procedure Law and the Freedom of Government
Information Law were the key laws stipulating that government information should

be made public. In 2012, thanks to the call for open government worldwide and fortransparent governance in Taiwan, the government started to put many efforts into
formulating policies and executive orders related to open government.

Open data is mainly driven by the Executive Yuan and supportedby the advisory teams composed of agencies and civil society

representatives. However, this structure does not work well as
expected

In Taiwan, open government and open data policies were mainly driven by

the Executive Yuan with the Board of Science and Technology (BOST) and the
National Information and Communications Initiative Committee (NICI) as its staff
organizations. All second-level agencies under the Executive Yuan have an open

data advisory team. However, due to the lack of knowledge in open data among
administrative agencies, the above structure does not work as expected.

The Taiwanese government lacks high-level planning when it

comes to open government. The result of open data policy highly
relies on the political will of political appointees

The government does not have a clear blueprint of open government and how it

works in current governmental structure. That is why the government has made many

political valuable promises yet lack concrete strategic planning for the framework,
political culture, and legislation.

Taiwan Open Government Report6

1​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

1-1

Laws, Regulations, and Policies on Open Data
and Open Government in Taiwan

Legislative History of Relevant Laws
and Regulations

The realization of open data and open government relies

safeguarding "people's right to know" and does not touchthe legislation began rather early. The government started

Zeng, 2016).

on the support of a healthy legal environment. In Taiwan,

promoting e-government as early as 1989. Although thefocus was on improving government efficiency, the use of

Across the globe, as technology and democratization

Administrative Procedure Law, there were early-stage

open government grows. In 2008, the US Federal Government

digital data was already an important topic. In the 1999
guidelines for making government information public but withthe purpose of protecting civil rights.

The 2005 Freedom of Government Information Law (referredhereafter as the Information Law) is the first law in Taiwan
stipulating that government information should be madepublic. Its purpose is very clear: "This Law is enacted toestablish the institution for the publication of government
information, facilitate people to share and fairly utilize
government information, protect people's right to know,

further people's understanding, trust and oversight of public

movements advance, people's demand for transparent andtook the first initiative to open government data on a large
scale. When Barack Obama became the US President in 2009,

he immediately signed a memorandum on "Transparency
and Open Government". The memorandum stressed thatgovernment should be a system of "transparency, public
participation, and collaboration". By 2011, open government
became an unstoppable movement worldwide and the Open
Government Partnership (OGP) was established. The OGP
now has 75 member countries that work together to open
government data and achieve transparent governance.

affairs, and encourage citizen participation in democracy."This trend also influenced how the Taiwanese Government

The Information Law also clearly defines that governmentsociety began to call for a more transparent government andinformation should be made public, and that all information
shall be actively made available to the public unless otherwise
specified as being exempt. Such information to be madepublic includes regulations and orders, structures andcommunication of government agencies, administrative

guidance, administrative plans, budgets and audits, results

viewed open government data. In this period, Taiwanese
government accountability. The 2014 Sunflower Movement

is a good example of people's distrust of the government due
to a lack of public information and accountability in decisionmaking on the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with
China.

of petitions, decisions of administrative appeals, documents

The global wave of open government and changes in Taiwan's

meeting records of agencies based on a collegiate system.

importance of open data and open government. In 2011,

related to public works and procurements, subsidies, andHowever, even though the Information Law does require thegovernment to make information public in an "active andtimely" manner, it does not clearly define what "timely" is or
specify the form and channel through which the information
should be made public. The scope of the Law is confined to

7

upon the aspects relevant to information application (Zhu &Taiwan Open Government Reportpolitical environment drove the government to consider the

Minister without Portfolio Cyrus Chu tried to implement
open data yet the departments still lacked motivation andconsensus. In 2012, Minister without Portfolio Simon Chang(who later became the Premier of the Executive Yuan in 2016)
also strongly supported open data. At the same time, open

data and civic tech communities began advocating the idea​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

from outside the government. The communities engaged

in in-depth communication with and gave consultation to

government agencies and acted as the bridge between the1

It ensures that copyright will not be reclaimed, no utilization
is limited, and sublicense is allowed.

government and citizens. More importantly, they collaborated

Currently, guidelines for open data and open government inlicenses. This public-private collaboration accelerated openof laws and regulations that went through the legislativewith the government to develop open data formats anddata in Taiwan.

In October 2013, the "Strategy to Promote Open Government
Data" was discussed in the 31st NICI meeting [1]. A month

later, at the the 3322nd Executive Yuan Meeting, the Executive

Yuan (a Yuan is a first-level government agency in Taiwan)
took the initiative to plan for open government data (Lee, Lin,

& Chuang, 2014). The "Resolution of the 3322nd Executive
Yuan Meeting" became critical to later open data legislation

and affected many relevant laws and regulations, including

Taiwan mostly come in the form of executive orders instead
process. Therefore, current open data guidelines have some

limitations and only apply to agencies under the Executive
Yuan. There are also no detailed guidelines regarding theopen data formats. Therefore, some members of open data
communities support a separate open data act and theMinistry of Justice also attempted to amend the Information
Law to manifest the spirit of open data. However, due tolack of consensus on open data between all stakeholders,the amendment never came through.

the 2014 "Open Government Data Operating Principle for

Up to today, government and society have still not reached

Operating Principle) and the "Essential Requirements forand regulations. Those who are opposed to a separate act

Agencies of the Executive Yuan" (referred to hereafter as theOpen Government Datasets". Under this policy, the National

Development Council (NDC) established the open government

data platform, DATA.GOV.TW, to supervise open data in secondlevel agencies.

The ide@Taiwan 2020 Policy White Paper published in 2015
reveals that the government attaches great importance toopen data and citizen participation. Also, it looks into andplans for deregulation on advancements of the digital era, suchas the sharing economy, virtual currency, cross-border onlinetransaction tax, online petitioning and voting, digital assets
and legacy, and copyright laws and regulations amendments.

The "Fifth Stage E-Government" project launched in 2016is data driven, people-centric, and relies heavily on public-

private collaboration. The purpose is to "gather and analyze
people's needs through big data, improve governmenttransparency and public information through open data, andprovide more comprehensive services that meet people's
needs through personal data (my data)."an agreement on how open data should be included in laws

say that Taiwan's government structure is different fromthat of other countries and that legislation takes more timein Taiwan. Therefore, insisting on passing a separate act
first may actually slow down open data while executive

orders provide speed and flexibility. Supporters of aseparate act argue that this legal basis should be part of thefoundation of a more open and transparent government.
The current legal basis consists of the Information Law
and the Operating Principle. The former, on the one hand,requires government information to be made "public",
but not "public online" (only needs to be published in the
Government Gazette). Even if the information is madepublic online, the Law says nothing about data format
and licensing. Therefore, the Law in itself is not enough totruly promote open data. The Operating Principle, on theother hand, only applies to agencies and units under the
Executive Yuan and not to the other four Yuan's [2] of thegovernment.

After the advocacy and collaboration of open data and techcommunities, the NDC under the Executive Yuan published the"Open Data License Terms" to replace relevant terms in the"Essential Requirements for Open Government Datasets". Thislicense covers all data on DATA.GOV.TW and is in accordancewith internationally accepted Creative Commons (CC) licenses.

Taiwan Open Government Report8

1​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies
Legislative History of Citizen Participation

The 1994 Environmental Impact Assessment Act is another

While there have been relatively specified laws, regulations,should include a stakeholder meeting, environmental impact

piece of legislation incorporating citizen participation. This

and Collaborationand policies on open data in the past three years, there has
been none on "citizen participation", another key elementof open government. Since citizen participation is more of aprinciple and there are multiple operating models, the concept

is incorporated into various administrative procedures. Someexisting administrative procedures have already included

citizen participation processes, but deliberative participation
is not yet institutionalized.

The 1999 Administrative Procedure Law was the first law toclearly stipulate that people should have the opportunity
to participate in administrative dispositions, regulations

and orders, or administrative plans and express theiropinions. Based on its purpose, the Law has promoted

citizen participation in five aspects, which are transparency,

Act stipulates that an environmental impact assessment
assessment report, an on-site inspection and hold a public

hearing. Although it seems that citizen participation is in
every stage of environmental impact assessment according

to the Act, it is not the case in practice. According to leading
scholars of Taiwan's environmental impact assessment,

citizen participation is, at best, preliminary and incomplete in

the process. That is because that the over-reliance on experts

and science in the narrow sense renders citizen participationa mere formality (Du, 2011/2012; Fan, 2007/2008; S. R. Xu & S.

F. Xu 2001, as cited from Tai & Huang, 2014). Some researchers
proposed to add formal and legal binding hearings to theprocess while others proposed introducing deliberative

democracy to draw attention to the importance of discussion(Tai & Huang, 2014).

participation, debate, generalization, and partnership.

Laws and regulations on public-private collaboration are not

the people, enhancing accountability and monitoringin the collaboration by being a member of a committee, aTransparency: opening the decision-making process tomechanisms. Participation: embracing citizen participation inadministrative decision making. Debate: replacing one-sided
decision making with debates. Generalization: administrative

procedures turned from case-by-case dispositions into a

yet comprehensive and the private sector usually participatesconsultant or a contractor. Neither citizen participation nor

public-private collaboration is supported by institutionalized
laws and regulations.

generalized institution. Partnership: administrative agencies

However, the online petition website, JOIN.GOV.TW, is worth

procedures (Yeh & Kuo, 1999).

basis.

working with parties inter vening into administrative

Aspects
Transparency
CitizenParticipation
DebateGeneralization
Partnership

Implication

mentioning because of its stronger administrative regulation

Contents of the Law

opening decision-making process tothe people, enhancing accountability
and supervising mechanisms

making information public, opening documents of contact for a purpose
other than that of administrative procedure, publishing informationof administrative contracts, promulgating legal orders, releasing
administrative rules published in the Government Gazetteembracing citizen participation inadministrative decision making

inviting relevant parties to make a statement, promulgating legal orders
and allowing comments as well as petitions regarding the orders

replacing one-sided decision making
with debates

holding hearings, regulating the provisions incidental and effect ofadministrative disposition, and holding hearings on legal orders andfinalizing decisions on administrative plans

administrative procedures turned
from case-by-case dispositions into a
generalized institution

administrative agencies working
with parties intervening into
administrative procedures

legal orders and administrative rules

involving the parties in incidental provisions of administrative
dispositions, administrative contracts, and administrative guidance

Table 1.1 Five Aspects of Citizen Participation the Administrative Procedure Law Promotes

9

Taiwan Open Government Report​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

1-2

1Structure of Agencies Working onOpen Government in Taiwan

Current Organizational Structure

BOST

Executive Yuan

NICIBoard of Science and Technology

National Information and Communication Initiative

NDC \ National Development Council

IDB (MOEA) \ Industrial Development Bureau,Supervise open data of the second-level agencies
under the Executive Yuan, and formulate theprinciple and develop the norms of open data.

Ministry of Economic Affairs

Encourage the development of open data applications topromote the innovation of relevant industries.

Figure 1.2 Organizational Structure

Currently, open data policy is mainly driven and implemented

For local governments, open data is practiced based on the

Executive Yuan are required to set up an open government

laws and regulations on "open government", each local

by the Executive Yuan. All second-level agencies under thedata advisory team and upload the data to DATA.GOV.TW

pursuant to the Operating Principle. On the other hand,

the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) is responsible forencouraging the development of open data applications tocreate value-added, which includes promoting the innovationof relevant industries.

Information Law. However, due to a lack of comprehensive
government has different organizational structures andoperation when it comes to open data. Most local governments
actually assigned their department of information technology(ex. Taipei City), department of information (ex. New Taipei

City), or other departments to handle this work. Since thesedepartments are at the same administrative level as all otherdepartments, open data can only be realized at the local level
when there is strong support from the mayor or magistrate.

Taiwan Open Government Report10

1​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

All second-level agencies under the Executive Yuan have an

open data advisory team which regularly conducts inspections
on the progress of open data in the agency. A subordinate
agency must report its open data progress to the second-level agency which it is under. An open data advisory team ofa second-level agency holds 2~4 review meetings annually
to look into the agency's performance. The Executive Yuanitself holds 2 review meetings annually, announces its annual

open data goals at the beginning of the year, and reviews theresult at the end of the year. Second-level agencies must send

information regarding their open data status to the Executive
Yuan for future reference.

Under this two-level mechanism and the principle that "unless{}people request data to be open
Submit request

otherwise specified as an exception, all information shall be

open", when a citizen requests a second-level agency to open

a specific dataset and the agency refuses, it must provide
a reason. If the citizen is not convinced by the reason, he{?
}or she can make an appeal to the Executive Yuan and it can

Decide whether to open the dataaccording to policies

overthrow the original decision and request the agency toopen the data.

{

the advisory team insecond-level agencies
Discuss whether to open it

report to case officer and open the data{

open the data

With doubt

to DATA.GOV.TW

With doubt

Executive Yuanadvisory teamDiscussion on whether to open it

agree to open}

Not open according to law?
agree to open

case officer}

Confidential
information

refuse to openreport to second-level agencies andopen the data

11

Taiwan Open Government Report

Figure 1.3 The Process of Requesting Open Data​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

1

Challenges under Current Framework
In theory, the advisory team acts as a decision maker instead

Promoting open data requires proper legal and policy

decision-making. After the agency receives a person's request

The government did attempt to institutionalize dedicatedof a consultant. In reality, the team rarely performs actual

to open up data, if the case officer determines that the datacannot be opened under the law or the data is incomplete, ofpoor quality, the request will not be sent to the team at all.

In addition, since only one-third of the team members are

citizens and the members have different understanding of

open data, their discussion sometimes fails to respond to what

civic tech communities and the society expect. Many second-readiness yet sufficient dedicated personnel are also critical.
open data coordinators within and between second-levelagencies. Confined by government structure, however, the
NDC is currently not able to coordinate the agencies andthe case officers inside the agencies often have other tasks
or inadequate authority, which has significantly limited theimpact of policy implementation.

level agencies choose not to open the meeting minutes of their

The Taiwanese government lacks high-level planning when

as well.

highly relies on the political will of political appointees. Onceadvisory team in full, which has limited the impact of the teamAlso, even though second-level agencies do send their open
data status to the Executive Yuan for future reference, at leastin formality, the advisory team in the Executive Yuan cannot,

in fact, achieve due diligence. The government does not haveenough manpower to conduct a preliminary review on thecontent and quality of information submitted or organize
the information before the meeting for the team to have ameaningful discussion. This greatly hinders the function ofit comes to open government. The result of open data policy
the appointee is no longer in the position to support thepolicy, its implementation often loses steam. There is neither
effort put into organizing and summarizing opinions nor

mechanism for adjusting next stage policy. In terms of policy
adjustment, the government fully depends on the feedback

from the society and has therefore wasted much energy inmeetings with various actors while little progress has been
made on the overall policy.

the advisory team. However, the meetings at the Executive

In conslusion, perhaps the government's real issue is that it

importance of open data because the heads of second-level

is why the government has made many political valuable

Yuan-level still play a role in terms of politically showing theagencies are gathered in the meeting to re-confirm policy
directions.

does not have a clear blueprint of open government. That
promises yet lacks concrete strategic planning for theframework, political culture, and legislation.

Apart from the advisory teams at both levels, open data
is mainly conducted by the case officer in the agency, yetmany of them do not truly understand the concept of open
data. There is no standard format for data that all agencies

generate that can serve as a reference for the executive units,
nor is there a specific process for handling people's requests
for data. Legally speaking, the case officer should follow theprocess of handling petitions stipulated in the Administrative
Procedure Law, but many of the case officers do not thinkthey need to do so. Therefore, the requests are not processedsmoothly. Civic tech communities expect agencies to design a
dedicated process to deal with open data requests.

Taiwan Open Government Report12​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

1

1-3

International ComparisonsThis part of the chapter discusses three international cases of how open government has been developed in the context of threedifferent countries. In the US, the political will of politicians has been the key drive. Their tool was executive orders, and after some

progress, the effort went into institutionalization and legislation. This process is the most similar to that of Taiwan. In Taiwan,
however, the bureaucracy has prevented open government from making institutions or legislation. Whenever there is a transfer of
power between parties, the current open government framework is very likely to face big challenges.

South Korea took the opposite direction. When the government put forward its open government policy, the legislative process
began immediately and the resulting laws and regulations are rather comprehensive. In comparison, there is no separate law or act

on open government or open data in Taiwan. In Europe, the European Union proposed clear policy goals on open government while
each country passed laws and regulations based on local conditions accordingly. In Taiwan, there is also a policy white paper on
open government, yet it neither touches upon specific operational strategies nor leads to any legislation.

The US
When open government was first introduced to the US, theThe EU passed Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of publicorders and President Memorandums instead of a separate act.

benefits from reusing public information (Lin, 2016). In 2013,

concept was implemented through Presidential executive
In 2009, when President Obama took office, he immediatelys i g n e d a m e m o ra n d u m o n " Tra n s pa re n c y a n d O p e n
Government". It stressed that the government should be asector information which focuses on creating economic

the European Commission made an amendment to the
Directive and there are a few key points worth mentioning:system of "transparency, participation, and collaboration".

1. The basis for pricing data reuse is changed from "Upper

Budget (OMB) to issue the Open Government Directive,

2. The Directive now also applies public libraries, university

This memorandum directed the Office of Management andrequesting all government agencies to open data pursuant to
the Freedom of Information Act, Article 105 of the CopyrightLaw, and the OMB Circular A-130. In addition, the US

government set up the DATA.GOV platform in 2009 (Dai & Gu,

Ceiling for Charges" to "Marginal Costs".
libraries, and museums.

3. It now specifies that the government must release
information in a machine-readable format.

2015).

The amended Directive now has more comprehensive

The US's 2014 Digital Accountability and Transparency Act

then internalized the goals to develop their national laws andserves the purpose of making government budgets andexpenses transparent. In early 2016, Senator Brian Schatzsponsored the OPEN Government Data Act, which will be
the legal basis for opening all government data with narrow
exceptions and codifying preceding executive orders. After theCommittee markup in May 2017, the Act is now cleared for the
Senate. Given that it has support from both parties, it is very
likely to pass (Haggerty, 2017) [3].

13

The EU

Taiwan Open Government Reportdevelopment directions and goals and member countries
regulations.

​Laws,​ ​Regulations,​ ​and​ ​Policies

Government

1

Development Model

TaiwanBy executive orders. No separate law or act.

The US

By President executive orders and memorandums at first and then by the Digital Accountability andTransparency Act (DATA Act). The OPEN Government Data Act is in the legislative process now and willturn preceding executive orders into laws once passed.

The EU

Passed the Directive 2003/98/EC on the re-use of public sector information, focusing on the economic
benefits. It was amended in 2013 and the focus was shifted toward more comprehensive aspects andgoals. Member countries then internalized the goals into their national laws and regulations.

South Korea

Became a member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2012, started promoting Government
3.0 in 2013 and open data after passing a separate open data act.

Table 1.4 Comparison of Open Data Development Models

South Korea
South Korea became an OGP participant in 2012 and theAccording to the Copyright Act of South Korea, open

to change government agency culture with information

used without licensing. The enforcement rules of the Copyrightgovernment started to promote Government 3.0 in 2013

technology. Also in 2013, the Promotion Availability and Useof Public Data Act was passed to safeguard citizen's right toaccess information based on the principle of equality. It also
specifies what data should be open and what should not.

publications of national or local government agencies can be
Act also stipulate the establishment of a copyright licensing

system for public agencies. The South Korean Government
also built the DATA.GO.KR platform after developing theGovernment 3.0 policy (Industrial Development Bureau, 2015).

This Act also stipulates the establishment of the "Open Data

Strategy Council" to deliberate open data policy and assess
the result of data inventory. Apart from that, to avoid disputes
over using data, the "Open Data Medication Committee" wasestablished to find efficient solutions.

Note[1] As of May 2017, the NICI was reorganized as the "Digital Nation & Innovative Economy Taskforce, Executive Yuan" (DIGI+) and the

NICI Guidelines are no longer applicable. http://chuchi.cyhg.gov.tw/News_Content.aspx?n=AFDE5898784A405A&sms=4F8F3F800B3
6E0EF&s=CDDF9C9CC2973F57[2] Refer to the discussion of the Information Law in the g0v community (Taiwan's biggest civic tech community): https://g0v.
hackpad.com/ep/pad/static/b6gTMfhXMYY.

[3] http://www.rstreet.org/2017/05/18/open-government-data-act-moves-to-senate-floor-after-markup/

Taiwan Open Government Report

14

2

Open
Government
Data

15

Taiwan Open Government Report!

Key Findings

Too much focus on economic development and not enough on government
accountability and social justice

There is no dedicated law on open government and open data in Taiwan. Promotion mostly relies on

executive orders. Except for the Administrative Procedure Law, citizen participation process and deliberative
participation is not yet institutionalized.

Quantity over quality, many key datasets were scattered across multiple websites

Government agencies have tried to open more and more data but neglected data quality. As a result, thequality of datasets is jagged and many have to be manually processed to be used. Additionally, Taiwan's
agencies release data on their websites according to the country's Information Law, yet the data is mostly

not in open formats. If the data can be further structured and integrated into DATA.GOV.TW, it will be more
searchable and easier to use.

Not enough impact, policy should be driven by what citizens and civil servants need

Up to today, open data still has no significant impact on open government, citizen participation, and even thedata economy. The government needs to rethink the value of open data, conduct surveys to find out the needsof potential users, and develop policy directions that make the data more "useful". The users can include civilsociety organizations that monitor the government, tech communities that use the data, entrepreneurs andbusinesses that elevate data value, and civil servants who are both producers and users.

Civil service is short of "digital power", system reform is much needed

Due to rigid bureaucracy, an obsolete information system, and lack of coordination between government
bodies, open data has been prevented from improving administrative efficiency and even become a heavy

workload for civil servants. The government needs to go beyond promises, stop giving more and more policy
instructions, and conduct a comprehensive review and reform of the civil service system, which includes
hiring, training, laws and regulations, and information system.

KPI driven, failed to picture what role open data should play in governance

The Taiwanese Government has worked on open data for many years and made various achievements, suchas the DATA.GOV.TW website, the rising quantity of open datasets, and numerous hackathons. Yet theseachievements were meant to create short-term, high performance marks that are measured by KPIs. The

government does not yet have an overall plan covering key aspects of open data, including administrative
procedures, digital governance, and data economy. Factors such as a lack of comprehensive legislation andpolicy, as well as outdated systems and personnel management mean that the success of open data initiatives

rely heavily on the will of the political leader. Without implicit policy or orders from the top, open data brings
little tangible change.

Taiwan Open Government Report16

2Open Government Data

Total Scores

Readiness

71
Government Policies 70
Government Action 70

Citizens & Civil Society 63

66
ImpactEntrepreneurs & Business 80

Implementation

48

77

Law and Organization 61

Government Accountability 68

Political 40

Government Operations 70

Social 45

Public Safety 81

Economical 60

Public Services 90

Economic Activities 89

Economical

SocialGovernment
ActionCitizens &Civil Society

Political
Economic
Activities
PublicServices

17

Government
Policies

Entrepreneurs& Business

PublicSafetyLaw and
Organization

Government
Operations

Taiwan Open Government Report

Government
Accountability

Subcategories
Weightings
Readiness

35.0%

Implementation
Impact

30.0%

35.0%

Figure​​2.1​​Results​​of​​Open​​Data​​Survey

Open Government Data

2-1

Introduction

governance in the 21st century, "open government data"("open data") also became a key means of promoting digitaltransformation and deepening democracy. The modern state isbuilt on the census of people and territory. As a result, national
governments collect a large amount of data and information
on its people. Government data is not the property of thegovernment or of any particular politician. Data collection ispaid for by people's taxes and the data is about the people.
Government agencies simply collect, preserve, and manage
all the information on behalf of its people as this is their
duty (Chen, Lin, & Chuang, 2013). Therefore, government
data should be returned to the public domain through open

licensing to demonstrate that democratic countries are open,transparent, and accountable.

The 2005 Information Law stipulates that apart fromthe restricted information defined (under Article 18),
the government should "actively" make all government
information open to the public. Opening government

Freedom of Information

Purposecertain extent. In terms of government operation, however,
the information presented in statistics provided by executive
development of ICT, the Taiwanese Government began toAs "open government" became an important trend in national

Scope

information can increase government transparency to aunits usually only reveals the tip of the iceberg. With the rapid

Background

Legal Basis2

the Freedom of Government Information Law(2005)

any public data of the people or thegovernment collected by government agencies
for governance should be made public

making the government more open andtransparent, encouraging citizen monitoring,and protecting people's basic rights

open data in 2012. The ultimate goal is to release raw data instructured formats on a unified data platform and to makethe data "useful" instead of simply "for display" through big
data computing. Through analysis and application, open
data becomes a resource that "people, companies, andorganizations can use to launch new business ventures,

analyze patterns and trends, make data-driven decisions, andsolve complex problems" (Joel Gurin, 2014, as cited by Chu& Tseng, 2016) and data governance goals can, therefore, bereached.

Based on this idea, open data not only makes the government

more transparent and accountable but also improves thequality and efficacy of government services and creates

economic value. We want to stress, however, that open data
is not just about economic development. It is the foundation

for government transparency and citizen participation.
As the government promotes open data, it should also

digitalize administrative processes and build a knowledge

base for sharing information, which enables citizens and thegovernment to collaboratively build a new governance model.

Open Government Datano legal basis, only administrative guidelines, theOpen Government Data Operating Principle forAgencies of the Executive Yuan (2013)

public data should be structured and opened with a
URL under an open license and in an open format

apart from the left column, facilitating public-private
collaboration and developing data economy

Table 2.2 Freedom of Government Information vs Open Government Data

Taiwan Open Government Report18

2Open Government Data

Definition of Open Data
Open data is "data that can be freely used, reused and

There are two internationally recognized definitions of open

requirement to attribute and share-alike" (Open Data

5-Star Open Data [3]. The Open Definition 2.1 is published byredistributed by anyone--subject only, at most, to the
Handbook, n.d.) [1]. While conventional copyrights restrict
the use, reproduction, and distribution of knowledge anddata, "open" data puts emphasis on the free flow and the
public nature of knowledge. This "openness" with respect toknowledge promotes a robust commons in which anyone may

data, one by the Open Definition 2.1 [2] and the other by theOpen Knowledge International and defines that an open work

must satisfy the following four requirements: open license or
status, machine readable, easy access, and open format (Table
2.3).

participate, and interoperability is maximized.

Open License or Status

Machine Readability

AccessOpen Format

The work must be in the public domain or provided under an open license. Any

additional terms accompanying the work must not contradict the work's public domain
status or terms of the license.

The work must be provided in a form readily processable by a computer and where theindividual elements of the work can be easily accessed and modified.

The work must be provided as a whole and at no more than a reasonable one-time
reproduction cost, and should be downloadable via the Internet without charge.

The work must be provided in an open format. An open format is one which places norestrictions, monetary or otherwise, upon its use and can be fully processed with atleast one free/libre/open-source software tool.

Table 2.3 The Open Definition 2.1

19

Taiwan Open Government ReportOpen Government Data

2

Compared to this relatively strict definition, Tim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the Web, suggested a 5-star deployment
scheme for Open Data (Table 2.4) to evaluate how open a dataset is. When the two definitions are put side by side, it is easy to

see that the four requirements of the former also play key roles in the latter. To get four stars or more, however, apart from therequirements, the data also needs to be connected, put on the Web, and generate more benefits in terms of application.

available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license
available as structured data (e.g. Excel instead of image scan of a table)
available in a non-proprietary open format (e.g. CSV instead of Excel)
use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff
link your data to other data to provide context
Table 2.4 5-Star Open Data

Research Method and Data SourceThis research conducted both quantitative and qualitative

In terms of readiness and impact, our researchers used theof open data policies in Taiwan from 2014 to 2016. Our

the ODB method, also invited relevant agencies to fill out theanalyses on the readiness, implementation, and impact

research method [4] is based on the third edition of Open
Data Barometer (ODB), developed by the World Wide Web

Foundation. The works of many open data researchers werealso taken into account in the writing of this chapter.

ODB questionnaire for survey and analysis. We, following
questionnaire not only to use the answers as a reference but

also to encourage the agencies to rethink open data policy
directions. The draft document produced by the survey was

finished in April 2017 and opened for civic tech and open data
communities to review and comment from April 17th to May

7th. The researchers then took the comments and compiled

the final document [5], which served as the key reference tothis report.

Taiwan Open Government Report202Open Government Data

In terms of implementation, we did not adopt the 15 dataset

analysis on. Within each category, we picked the three to five

Dataset Categories of a Data-Centric Government" [6] (Table

whether they met the 10 requirements in Table 2.6 to evaluate

categories used in the ODB, instead, we applied the "202.5) written and edited by "g0v" (Taiwan's biggest civic techcommunity). These 20 categories touch upon important
aspects of open data, including government transparency,

rights of the public, the framework of economic applications,and so on. Compared to the ODB's 15 dataset categories, these
20 types better represent the context and implementation

most fundamental and significant datasets and assessed

their openness. The datasets were collected, examined andreviewed by the g0v community. The list of the contributors

and reviewers can be found on the github repository of thisreport [7]. The results of this assessment were then calculated
based on the weighting of Table 2.7.

of open data in Taiwan and are easier to conduct structured

Tier
0 Law and Organization

1 Government Accountability

Category
0.1 Laws and Regulations

0.2 Government Structure and Personnel
0.3 Judiciary and Judgment
1.1 Election and Recall

1.2 Budgets and Fiscal Balance

1.3 Civil Service Ethics and Accountability
2.1 Census Data

2 Government Operations

3 Public Safety

4 Public Services

5 Economic Activities

2.2 Basic Information of Incorporated Foundations
2.3 Procurement

2.4 National Defense and Diplomacy
3.1 Public Inspection and Violation
3.2 Crime and Incident
3.3 Environment

4.1 Infrastructure
4.2 Healthcare

4.3 Basic Education
5.1 Production and Various Licenses
5.2 Real Estate and Finance
5.3 International Trade
5.4 Labor

Table 2.5 20 Dataset Categories of a Data-Centric Government

21

Taiwan Open Government ReportOpen Government Data

Question2

Weight5%

1. Does the data exist?

10%

2. Is it available online from government in any form?

15%

3. Is the dataset provided in machine-­readable formats?

15%

4. Is the machine-readable data available in bulk?

15%

5. Is the dataset available free of charge?

15%

6. Is the data openly licensed?

10%

7. Is the dataset up to date?

5%

8. Is the publication of the dataset sustainable?

5%

9. Was it easy to find information about this dataset?

5%

10. Are (linked) data URIs provided for key elements of the data?
Table 2.6 Questions for Dataset Survey and the Weights

Readiness 35%
1. Government Policies

Implementation 35%

2. Government Action

Each Category

4. Citizens & Civil Society

1/20

3. Entrepreneurs & Business
Each Aspect 1/4

Impact 30%
Political

Economical
SocialEach Aspect 1/3

Table 2.7 Weightings

Taiwan Open Government Report222Open Government Data

2-2

Readiness ofOpen Data

Government Policies
No legal basis, open data has been promoted byadministrative guidelines and orders

Platform and licensing ready but data quality jagged

There is no legal basis for open data in Taiwan. There are only

the 2005 Information Law and the administrative guideline,
the 2013 Operating Principle, for open data operations.

Due to a lack of a separate act on open data, the will andpolicy instruction of the political leader has been critical.
The Executive Yuan appointed 2015 as the "Starting Year of
Deepening Open Data Applications", which led to a wave ofopen data with little regard to quality. After that, due to lack oflegal and data governance basis, agencies and units that havedata grew passive.

Although laws, regulations, and policies are yet to be ready,the National Development Council (NDC) setup DATA.GOV.

TW in 2013 as the first open data platform in Taiwan, which
was symbolic. The license terms of the platform, Open Data

License Terms Edition One, were written collaboratively by

the NDC and open data communities. The document wasrecognized by the Open Knowledge International as one of the
few national license terms that are in accordance with OpenDefinition 2.1 [8]. After the platform was launched, datasets
have grown in quantity, but there has been no systematic

integration from the production ends, resulting in varied data

quality. The Study of Dataset Quality Review Mechanism (UDN
Digital, 2016) pointed out that on DATA.GOV.TW, 50% of data

had poor machine readability, hindering data flow between
agencies and value-adding data applications.

23

Taiwan Open Government Report

Government Action
No data governance procedure yet, cannot improveadministrative efficiency

Executive units lack knowledge and technicaltraining

Local governments do open data but with a wide
urban-rural gap

Currently, there is not a coordinating government agency
for open data. Instead, it is the IT personnel in each agency

that coordinate the executive units to open their datasets.
On the one hand, the IT departments support open data but

do not manage the data while the executive units lack IT
skills, knowledge of open data, and practical techniques. The

government offers no systematic training, so open data is
yet to be integrated into the government's decision-making

process. On the other hand, before administrative procedures

are completely digitalized, for civil servants in executive units,
one more dataset to open means one more item to manage

and update. This not only increases their workload but also
drops data quality.

As for local governments, 13 out of 22 local governments have
set up their own open data platforms while the other 9 use

the NDC's DATA.GOV.TW platform to open their data. Most of
the local governments that do not own an open data platform

are of rural areas and they tend to open much less data [9],indicating a severe urban-rural divide.

Open Government Data

Citizens and Civil Rights
There is the Information Law but it is very difficult
to request for government information

There is the Personal Information Protection Act but
agencies tend to dodge the Act by de-identification

The open data advisory teams do not operate in a
unified manner and some meetings become mere
formality

In terms of open data, citizens and civil rights, there are twoissues that need attention. One, how to make sure that the

government does not breach personal privacy while opening
data, and two, how the government responds to civic society's
requests for data.

In Taiwan, the 2012 Personal Information Protection Act(amended in 2016) covers issues such as required consent, theright to access and correct your own data, and penalties andcompensation of violation. However, when the government

opens some highly controversial data, it tends to avoid therestriction of the Act by de-identification. For example, in 2015,

the Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau opened the driving
routes recorded by the ETC (Electronic Toll Collection) service,
the Bureau was criticized by the Taiwan Association for Human

Rights (TAHR). The TAHR pointed out that though the data

was de-identified, it was highly possible that it could be reidentified and therefore should not be opened [10].

2litigation and it was not until 2016 that the MOE provided

the documents requested. In addition, the government often
uses the Personal Information Protection Act as an excuse
not to open data. Take the Central Election Commission (CEC)

for instance. The CEC originally refused to provide election

bulletins in a digital and open format, saying that it involves
candidates' personal information. After advocacy from civilsociety, election bulletins finally became open data in the 2016
election.

Apart from laws and regulations, open data advisory teams
have been set up in the Executive Yuan and all second-level agencies under it since 2015. A team consists ofrepresentatives from the agency and the society and holds

several meetings in a year, covering strategic planning, data

inventory, communication and promotion, and data quality.

In the meeting, the team also looks into the data that people
requested to make sure the agency respond to people's

needs. However, the teams are not always made up of experts
and academics on open data and meet only once every

few months, thus leaving the results unsatisfactory and themeeting a formality.

Entrepreneur and BusinessToo much emphasis on short-term activities andhackathons

Lack of industrial policy for the data economy

As for requesting for information, the Information Law

In terms of open data, the Taiwanese Government attaches

available to the public actively and that within 15 days ofDevelopment Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs

stipulates that government information shall be madereceiving the request for government information by any
person, the government agency shall determine whether toapprove such a request or not. On DATA.GOV.TW, people canalso make a request for data. However, it is very difficult for
citizens to acquire requested data in practice. This is especiallytrue when it comes to controversial matters, for which people
often have to rely on time-consuming administrative litigation

to get data despite the Information Law. For example, in
2014, the TAHR requested the Ministry of Education (MOE)

to open the records of the 12-year Basic Education Advisory
Meeting but was refused. The TAHR then started administrative

much importance to the data economy. The Industrial(MOEA), as the coordinator of such efforts, has organizednumerous competitions and hackathons in the past three

years to boost the open-data-based innovative economy. The

hackathons were wonderful indeed but they were short-term
events that lasted only a couple of days. Without the supportof an industry supply chain and a robust data economy

policy, the products of hackathons were rarely developed
into marketable ones. Also, open data activities driven byhackathons usually ceased after the event. All in all, there has
been no comprehensive industrial policy but mostly shortterm activities and competitions.

Taiwan Open Government Report242Open Government Data

2-3

Implementation of Open Data
77

Implementation
Law and

Organization(61)

Government

Government

(68)

(70)

Accountability

Operations

Public Safety(81)

Public Services(90)

Economic
Activities(89)

Table 2.8 Scores of the subcategory of implementation

Law and Organization

Government Accountability

Most Key Datasets Are Still not Released by Open Data

Need to Accelerate the Opening of Government

Among all datasets under law and organization, we comparedThis type of datasets shared the same issue as the last type.

individual agency on its website. We found that the former

website, such as political donations, property declaration, andStandards

those released on DATA.GOV.TW and those released by the
to be relatively simple (ex. judiciary datasets) or not updated(ex. personnel datasets). Therefore, in our assessment, wechose the version released on the agency website. However,the data on agency websites is often published as public
information instead of open data. For example, the DirectorateGeneral of Personnel Administration of the Executive Yuan has

extensive statistics regarding all local government agencies
under the Executive Yuan, yet these statistics are not offeredin an open format and contained merged cells which makemachine reading very difficult. Also, the Judicial Yuan [11] has
far more judiciary datasets than the Ministry of Justice (MOJ)
but most of them are not machine-readable or available forSpending Data and Data on the Sunshine Acts Website

Key datasets, especially those opened on the Sunshine Acts

administrative penalties, can only be accessed through system

inquiry instead of being organized into open data available forbatch download. This makes the data very difficult to be readby a machine or used in technological applications by citizens.

Moreover, although government budgets are already open on
DATA.GOV.TW, the actual spending is still released in an annual

or monthly report not easy to access or search, making it
almost impossible for the people to monitor the government

through the data. The Central Election Commission (CEC)
does offer comparatively complete election data but the recall
statistics are yet to be opened on DATA.GOV.TW.

batch download. In addition, the MOJ provides both Traditional

Government Accountability (68)

Chinese and English versions of laws and regulations in XML
format, but its licensing terms are not in accordance with theOpen Definition 2.1.

Recall(83)

Law and Organization (65)
Laws andGovernment Structure

Judiciary and

(65)

(80)

(39)

Regulations

and Personnel

Judgment

Table 2.9 Scores of law and organization datasets

25

Election andTaiwan Open Government Report

Budgets andFiscal Balance(76)

Civil Service Ethics

and Accountability(45)

Table 2.10 Scores of government accountability

Open Government Data
Government Operations

2

Public Services

National Defense and Diplomacy a Black Box, Government-

Very Open, Traffic Data Could be Ranked as 4-Start

In this type of datasets, the procurement and part of the census
datasets were relatively open with room for improvement inmapping and cartographic census data. As for the dataset regarding
basic information of incorporated foundations, little could be foundregarding government-endowed incorporated foundations despitethat fact that these foundations receive huge budgets from thegovernment and should, therefore, be monitored by the people.
This means that this type of foundation can easily be manipulated
by fat cats and lead to serious corruption. The national defense
and diplomacy datasets were the least open ones, second only to
judiciary data. Various key data, such as treaties and agreements,
and results of assistant diplomacy, is scattered across government
websites and offered in a non-open manner with indistinct license
indication, unclear update times, and more.

These types of datasets were very open, proving that
open data is the foundation for better public services.
In the infrastructure datasets, traffic data was the mostopen and could be considered as linked data. Water andelectricity data was also quite open thanks to the hard
work of the Ministry of the Economic Affairs (MOEA), which
has encouraged public service corporations to open theirdata since 2016. Healthcare data was rather open, too.
The Ministry of Health and Healthcare setup an open data
platform [12] to provide many open datasets on medical
and healthcare. As for education datasets, part of the more
complete data was published on the statistics and inquiry
website of the Ministry of Education (MOE) [13]. The MOE
offers a lot of machine-readable data but has no license
terms that indicate the data is open.

Endowed Incorporated Foundations not Monitor-able

Government Operations (70)
CensusData(76)

Basic Information ofIncorporated Foundations

Procurement
(94)

(69)

National Defense
and Diplomacy(41)

Linked Data

Public Services (90)Infrastructure(96)

Table 2.11 Scores of government operations(90)

Basic Education(83)

Table 2.13 Scores of public services

Public Safety

Economic Activities

Criminal and Environment Datasets were Relatively OpenWhile Local Public Inspection Dataset was Barely Organized

The crime and the environment datasets were comparatively open
but the public inspection dataset was scattered and fragmentary.
Since public inspections are conducted by local governments,
relevant datasets are scattered across local government websites.
However, local governments open their data in varying degrees
so the data needed to be manually processed before integrated
analysis and application could be carried out. Environmental
datasets were relatively open and there was real-time monitoringdata of both water quality and air quality.

Public Safety (81)
Public Inspection

Crime and

(67)

(90)

and Violation

Healthcare

Incident

Relatively Open Except for Land Value
This type of datasets was highly open, which reveals that

economic development takes priority in the government's
open data efforts. Multiple key datasets were alreadyintegrated on DATA.GOV.TW. Among the datasets, land value
data can only be accessed through an inquiry and is offeredas open data available for user download.

Economic Activities (89)Production and

Various Licenses
Environment
(85)

(86)

Real Estate

International

(83)

(95)

and Finance

Trade

Labor
(93)

Table 2.14 Scores of economic activities

Table 2.12 Scores of public safety

Taiwan Open Government Report262Open Government Data

2-4

Impact ofOpen Data

Political Impact
Transparency: has facilitated government transparency
to a degree but many key datasets are not open

Efficiency: has not improved government efficiency
and implementation

Open data has had some positive impact on transparency andpublic accountability and this can be seen in the application ofelection and budget data. After Taiwan's 2016 general elections,civic tech communities used the Central Election Commission(CEC)'s data and produced an Election Distribution Map tofurther analyze the results of the election. In 2015, the Taipei

City Government also worked with experts in the communities
and displayed the budgets of the second half of the year in aninteractive and visualized way so that people could understandhow the budgets would be used quickly and easily. This method

Social Impact
The environment: open data has empowered

citizens and NGOs to advocate environmental policy
reformThe disadvantaged: no tangible improvements on
public services offered to disadvantaged people

Open data has empowered citizens to take active roles inpublic issues. Open data helps raise people's awareness ofenvironmental protection and is a tool that environmental

protection groups use to monitor the government andenterprises. For example, local governments are working
together with a maker community called Location Aware

Sensor System (LASS) and the Institute of Information Scienceof Academia Sinica on the Airbox project. They offeredhandy air quality sensors to schools and the data collected isstreamed to the cloud in an open format to make up for thelack of government survey stations and to provide practicaleducation on environmental protection issues for the schools.

was later adopted by other local governments. However,Moreover, in 2016, the Green Citizens' Action Alliance (GCAA)

government transparency and accountability is not open or has

Cracker Complex and the government's edited open data andapart from elections and budgets, much key data regarding
not become 3-start data yet. For example, data about political

donations, public officer property declarations, and government
procurement and spending needs to be opened and organized
on DATA.GOV.TW as quickly as possible to promote governmenttransparency and public accountability.

The impact of open data on improving administrative efficiency

has not been obvious. Open data did facilitate a few public-privatecompared the real-time monitoring data of the No. 6 Naphtha
found that more than 20,000 entries of emission that exceeded
standards were missing in the latter and that only one NTD

100,000 penalty was issued, revealing the gap between thetwo sources of data. The GCAA then started the Transparency
Footprint project [15] which attempts to promote more correct

and refined open data (ex. the full list of penalized parties) tomonitor the actual government action on factory pollution.

collaborations, such as the Dengue Fever Map of Tainan City and

In Taiwan, open data is rarely employed to help disadvantaged

These collaborations indicate that, through open data, working

2016. The Department of Social Welfare under the Taipei City

the search system for the victims of Formosa Fun Coast explosion.
with crowdsourcing and civic tech communities can indeed help

the government deal with emergencies. However, in terms of
the overall administration system, due to differences in agency
personnel, organization culture, and data format, open data has

not improved cross-agency communication with tangible results.
On the contrary, open data is often an additional burden for theagency. Because of complex research and evaluation procedures,conservative administrative culture, lack of knowledge andtechnical training, and lack of trust of government policy, open
data has had very limited impact on improving government
efficiency and implementation [14].

27

Taiwan Open Government Reportpeople. There was still no known positive impact till the end ofGovernment and civic tech communities did work together

and developed the Domestic Violence Map which displays
de-identified domestic violence data on a map so that social

workers better know which are the potential DV districts

and that local neighbourhood watches can be more aware.
However, scholars and social groups argued that displaying

DV incidents on a map can oversimplify the issue, that it offers
no tangible solution, and that it can cause the stigmatizationof certain neighbourhoods.

Open Government Data

2

Economic Impact
A few new business models but no data economy industrial chain

As the data owner, the government seizes the market and is killing the data economy
The data economy has always been an important aspect of open data to the government. For the past

three years, the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) has invested in enterprise subsidies and incentives
for innovation and held product launch events. There are already a few open-data-based new businessmodels as the result, such as the site choosing system of the Mercuies & Associates Holding and theAGRI-GIS service developed by EMCT are good examples. However, the above-mentioned cases did
not facilitate the forming of a data economy industrial chain. Moreover, in the past three years, thegovernment has worked with long-term system vendors and built websites and apps. These apps havefew users, create no profit for the government, increase public servants' workload, and are destroying
many start-up business opportunities (Chen, 2016).

Impact on
Government
Efficiency

Government

Transparency
Environmental
IssuesCurrent Situation

Problems

cannot improve

complex research and evaluation

introduce administration

implementationlack of training, and lack of trust

on knowledge, laws and regulations,

government efficiency andsome positive impact but

much more data can be open

people's awareness ofenvironmental protection

much preceded data-driven

procedures, conservative culture,of government policy

not enough open or complete

data to monitor the government

open data released by thegovernment is edited

government reform

The

Disadvantaged

Entrepreneurand Business

Possible Solutions

no tangible positive impact

on the public services for thelack applicable datasets

disadvantaged

digitalization and increase training
and technology

conduct an inventory check on thedatasets and release the results ascompletely and as fast as possible
improve digital procedures andguidelines of data production to
reduce human interference

collaborate with relevant civic techcommunities and think about how
data can be employed to serve thepeoplegovernment incentives has led
to a few new business models

no data economy industrial chainstop developing apps and use
the resources on open data
infrastructure

Table 2.15 Possible solutions to increase the impact of open data

Taiwan Open Government Report282Open Government Data

2-5

Global Open Data Evaluations

O p e n d ata h a s b e e n a n i m p o r ta n t a r ea o f st u d y i n

reference as Taiwan is not officially participating in the ODB.

evaluation mechanisms. The Global Open Data Index (GODI)

compared to top countries in the ODB. While most top 10

gove r n m e n t gove r n a n ce a n d t h e re a re m a n y g l o ba l

was developed by Open Knowledge International. The
GODI evaluates around 100 countries annually (number ofparticipating counties varies every year) and has conducted
4 evaluations, from 2013 to 2016. The GODI collects

information regarding the status of countries' open data fromopen data enthusiasts/communities, and then scores eachcountry's openness level based on 16 key datasets throughcrowdsourcing. The GODI's reviewers then determine thefinal ranking. Taiwan became a participant in 2013 and forthe past 4 years, we have moved upward in the ranking from
no.36 to no.1 in 2015 and 2016. However, ranking top in the

Still, Taiwan's performance exhibited a distinct pattern whencountries performed best in readiness, Taiwan performed bestin implementation and performed relatively poorly in terms ofimpact. This shows that although the amount of open data has
increased rapidly in Taiwan, we should put more focus on theinfrastructure, such as policy and properly trained personnel,

and interaction with data users. Attaching equal emphasis ondata quality and quantity, investing enough resources andpersonnel training, and putting data users, citizens and public

servants at the center is the best way to turn open data into afirm foundation for open government.

GODI does not reflect Taiwan’s open data progress but the

government’s intentional efforts on improving those 15
datasets. In addition, the GODI has some limitations. First, it
only focuses on the openness of datasets and cannot reveal
the overall policy readiness or the following impact of open

data in a country. Secondly, to provide a basis for comparison,
it simplifies the politics and social context of each country,

develops clear definitions for types of data to be evaluated,and chooses less than 20 datasets. This greatly limits its
representativeness. Lastly, the GODI does not conduct any

further research or investigation on the data and global
development beyond ranking participating countries.

Another global e volution, the Open Data Barometer(ODB), adopts a methodology that is both qualitative andquantitative and produces in-depth investigation reports.
The ODB was developed by the World Wide Web Foundation,

also in 2013. Till 2016, there have been 115 participants in its
four evaluations. However, Taiwan has never been included.

This chapter already described how the ODB's methodology

was utilized in our research. Taiwan would rank about no.16
in the 4th edition of the ODB (2016). This number is merely a

29

Taiwan Open Government Report

Data and Documents
https://github.com/ocftw/OpenGovReport14-16/
tree/master/data

https://github.com/ocftw/OpenGovReport14-16/
wiki/OGR14-16-Readiness-and-Impact

Open Government Data2

Note[1] http://opendatahandbook.org/guide/en/introduction/[2] http://opendefinition.org/od/2.1/en/[3] http://5stardata.info/zh-TW/[4] http://opendatabarometer.org/doc/3rdEdition/ODB-3rdEdition-ResearchHandbook.pdf[5] https://github.com/ocftw/OpenGovReport14-16/wiki/OGR14-16-Readiness-and-Impact[6] https://g0v.hackpad.com/ep/pad/static/NoJ1mbwsqkQ, accessed on 2017/5/15, CC BY-clkao & g0v contributors.
[7] Raw Data can be found here: https://github.com/ocftw/OpenGovReport14-16/tree/master/data[8] http://opendefinition.org/licenses/[9] http://data.gov.tw/visual/1[10] https://www.tahr.org.tw/node/1656[11] From 2017, the Judicial Yuan has started to speed up releasing open data on DATA.GOV.TW.
[12] http://data.nhi.gov.tw/[13] https://stats.moe.gov.tw/qframe.aspx?qno=MgA3AA2[14] Please see “The Anonymous Notes from Civil Servants,” g0v.news, 2017/03/22.
[15] https://thaubing.gcaa.org.tw

Taiwan Open Government Report30

3

CitizenParticipation

31

Taiwan Open Government Report!

Key Findings

Citizen participation has taken root in Taiwan and the goal has been to lower thethreshold to broaden participation

Citizen participation models built on deliberative democracy and open government have emerged. They
mostly employ online tools and are designed to lower the threshold of participation through less rigorous

forms of discussion. They are distinct from conventional forms of citizen participation (such as public hearings)
and from deliberative democracy in the narrow sense which is small in scale and with strict forms.

The political will of political leaders plays a critical role in citizen participation

Realization of citizen participation relies on the political will of politicians. The success of promoting
participation lies in horizontal connections and the willingness of leaders to be integrated into this process,which then pushes the agencies and departments within the bureaucracy to get involved.

The stage of policy making at which citizen participation is introduced directly
affects its significanceThe stage of policy making at which citizen participation is introduced has a decisive influence on the impactof participation. In addition, agenda setting, choice of issues, and the initiatives all play important roles. The
method and process of participation also determine the quality of participation.

Citizen participation is still largely experimental while some models are being
institutionalized

Most cases of citizen participation in this chapter were experimental. A few were implemented throughadministrative orders and some are being normalized or institutionalized, such as participatory budgeting at
the local level.

To improve the quality of participation, it is important to train civil servants indeliberative skills and invite intermediaries to help simplify the language andconnect different parties

Currently, empowering and training civil servants is the most urgent task. It is also important to inviteintermediaries to help simplify the language used during discussion in order to lower the threshold ofparticipation. These intermediaries can also help inform citizens, and at the same time, guarantee quality
discussion.

Taiwan Open Government Report32

3

Citizen Participation

3-1

Development of Citizen
Participation in Taiwan

Existing Participation Models
Citizen participation as a civil right is a crucial part ofSunflower Movement in Taiwan is an example of the people

article 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

democracy.

democracy. In Taiwan, citizen participation is safeguarded by

However, when Taiwan was under the Martial Law (1949-1987),

standing up to oppose a malfunctioning representative

participating in politics or expressing opinions on public issues

In the face of weakening representative democracy,

there was a wave of democratization movements and citizen

possibility in Taiwan. It started during the second-

were prohibited. When the Order of Martial Law was lifted,
participation finally started to pick up.

The 1999 Administrative Procedure Law stipulates that people
should have the opportunity to participate in administrative
dispositions, regulations, orders, and administrative plans

and express their opinions. Other pieces of legislation that

address citizen participation are the 1994 Environmental
Impact Assessment Act and the Act for Promotion of Private

Participation in Infrastructure Projects. Both Acts requireevaluation committees of relevant affairs to include citizens.
Apart from the above two Acts, there are other institutionalized

forms of citizen participation. Public hearings and explanatory

deliberative democracy became a highly anticipatedgeneration National Health Insurance (2nd-gen NHI) reform

process, in 2001. The reform was a three-year project. The
Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) invited scholars

to establish a citizen participation team in its planningcommittee. The scholars brought consensus conferences
and the idea of deliberative democracy into the reform. In
2003, some Taiwanese scholars visited the Danish Boardof Technology (DBT). They brought back various practicesof deliberative democracy (Chen, 2012) and began toexperiment on consensus conferences and scenario
workshops after 2004.

meetings are good examples but since there is no law forcing

the government to accept or consider people's input, citizens'
voices may be easily disregarded.

The Seeds of Open Citizen Participation
Since the beginning of the 21st century, democracies havemet massive challenges around the world. Many so-called

democratic governments merely keep the appearance of
democracy with elections but have taken despotic actions

that jeopardize human rights and democratic values (The

Economist, 2014). People feel frustrated, disappointed, andunsatisfied by the performance of democracy (Lin, 2016) andinitiated one street demonstration after another. The 201433

Taiwan Open Government Report?

Consensus Conference

Volunteers are selected from different backgrounds

and take relevant classes before the conference. In
the conference, volunteers consult invited experts

about the issue at hand. Then, the volunteers starta discussion which leads to a final report. This
process usually takes 5 days.

Citizen Participation

In the 2014 Sunflower Movement, participants occupied the legislative

chamber for 24 days, during which the idea of "D-Street" (citizen
deliberation on the street) was created. D-Street was proposed to3

Structure of Analysis

balance the representative power among different parties participatingThis chapter includes the analysis of six cases of"inside" and "outside" the legislative chamber. While the protesters

examines how citizen participation was practiced

in the Movement. The occupation was divided into groups of protesters

inside won more attentions from the public and the media, protesters
outside the chamber felt disregarded and alienated. To expand

participation, and give those outside a chance to express their views,

and eventually, form a consensus, protesters began to practice
D-Street (Shi, 2014). The 10-day D-Street experiment was carried out

simultaneously in various locations at the demonstration site, withcitizen participation between 2014 and 2016. Itin each case, and how "open" each practice was.

These cases were analyzed in an attempt to takea closer look at the participation experiences andto demonstrate different types of participation
experiments between 2014 and 2016.

over 100 participants per day. Although the power relations inside andOur first case, the "Grassroots Forums of Civic

public attention to deliberative democracy and the seeds of citizen

Sunflower Movement, is significant because

outside the legislative chamber did not truly "flip," the practice drew
participation were planted in civil society.

After the Movement, the energy of Taiwan's civil society became verystrong, the strongest in decades. In that same year (2014), Ko Wen-je
ran for Taipei City Mayor with the slogan of "open government, citizen

participation" and won by a landslide. His promise was later realized in

the forms of participatory budgeting projects and through "i-Voting" (anonline voting system).

The above events made citizen participation not only known to the

public but popular among local governments. Starting in 2014, there

have been experiments with less rigid forms of citizen participation(such as the "World Café") to expand participation and lower costs. Also,with the advance of technology, online tools have become an importantpart of citizen participation.

This chapter explores several new models of citizen participation that

Constitutional Convention" during the 2014of its bottom-up approach and its impacts on

the following cases. We will then turn to twopractices initiated by the government—the"Youth World Café" and the "Feiyan New Village"cases. The comparison of these two cases shows

how agenda setting plays a key role in facilitating
citizen participation. The next two cases areexperiments on digital platforms. They are theelectronic voting system in Taipei City, i-Voting,and the first online policy participation platform
in Taiwan, JOIN.GOV.TW. Last but not least,

participatory budgeting (PB) has become popularin many cities in Taiwan. Local governments haveadopted various strategies and procedures topractice PB, so a handful of cases were chosen to
represent different types of PB in Taiwan.

were influenced by deliberative democracy and open government.

These models involved online tools, and were designed to lower thethreshold of participation through less rigorous forms of discussion.
Such models are distinct from institutionalized channels of citizen

participation and from rigid practices of deliberative democracy, likethe consensus conference. Through examining various cases, we wantto ask whether these efforts have successfully empowered citizens andinfluenced policies, and whether they were true citizen participation.

Taiwan Open Government Report34

3

Citizen Participation

The Blulu Metrics
We adopted the Blulu Metrics [1] created by Lu Chia-hua andWe selected four tools from Blulu Metrics Family—Blulu Train

The analysis looks into both the composition of participants

four questions in each case:

ET Blue to analyze the level and the quality of participation.
and the impacts of citizen participation on the overall policy-

A & B, Blulu Pizza, and Blulu Meter—to answer the following

making process. We made some adjustments to the Metrics

1. At which stage of the policy lifecycle was citizen

quickly grasp the results of the analysis, the results will be

2. What was the quality of deliberation?

to make it more suitable for our analysis. Also, to help readers
communicated in both commentary and visualized scales. The
purpose of Blulu Metrics is to help more people understandthe structure of deliberation, the citizen participation process,participation involved?

3. Who were the participants?

4. What was the level of openness?

and its challenges. The following paragraphs will explain how
we used the Metrics.

I. Blulu Train A: At Which Stage of Policy Lifecycle Was Citizen Participation Involved?

The Blulu Train A was used to determine the stage of the policy-making process at which citizen participation was involved.
Generally speaking, the earlier it is involved, the less likely there will be a controversy at later stages.

Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

Figure 3.1 Blulu Train A (Policy Life Cycle)

II. Blulu Train B: What Was the Quality of Deliberation?

Blulu Train B divides the deliberation process into eight stages and each corresponds to one of the following eight questions:
1. Were opinions from civil society taken into account in agenda setting? Could citizens set the agenda?

2. Was there any research or survey conducted on the issue? Were the views of all stakeholders and civil society taken into
consideration in the research?

3. Were the participants fully informed? Was relevant information open and transparent?

4. Was the form of discussion designed appropriately? Were the discussion led by experienced moderators?
5. Was there voting and in what form?

6. Did the process result in meaningful decisions? Did the conclusions of deliberation have an impact on decision making?

7. Did the government respond to the conclusions in meaningful ways? Did the government make any concrete promise or use theconclusions as the basis for decision-making and judgment?

8. Could the government be held accountable for the results of deliberation? Was there an appointed executive unit in thegovernment? Was there any feedback mechanism that could be used for evaluation?

35

Taiwan Open Government ReportCitizen Participation

Agendasetting

SurveyInformDiscussion

VotingDecision

Respond3

Accountability

Figure 3.2 Blulu Train B (Public Deliberation Process)III. Blulu Pizza: Who Were the Participants?
Blulu Pizza was used to evaluate the participants.
Generally speaking, citizens are welcomed to participate

and civil servants are often invited as well to show theirpolitical will. Quality citizen participation usually includes
civil servants and stakeholders.

IV. Blulu Meter: What Was the Level of Openness?
Blulu Meter evaluates the level of openness in the policy-making

process in the long run from three perspectives. The first is thehealthiness of the procedure, the second is the openness ofparticipation, and the third is policy continuity.

Redundant Tasks Reduced

Publics

Political
Appointees
Citizens

Stakeholders

Gov

Civil Servants

Figure 3.3 Blulu Pizza (Participant Analysis)

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced

Complete Stages of Participation

Diverse Participants andGroups Involved

Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of
Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic
Requirement

Figure 3.4 Blulu Meter (Levels of Openness)

Taiwan Open Government Report36

3

Citizen Participation

3-2

Case Study: The Grassroots Forumsof Civic Constitutional Convention

Feature: bottom-up citizen participation

Method: Occupy movement hand signals and group
discussion

Digital utilization: meeting manuals and minutes
were published on a website

Bottom-up Constitutional Reform
Constitutional reform has been discussed for many years. Issues

participants were the stakeholders of the discussed
topics and familiar with the relevant issues. In addition

to the Grassroots Forums, the alliance also held training
workshops for the moderators of deliberation.

The forum started with experts introducing the issues sothat participants had a basic understanding. Then thediscussion went in two rounds with Occupy movement

hand signals. In round one, participants were invited topresent their arguments and, in round two, they wereasked to draw conclusions, sometimes in groups. The
meeting minutes and videos are all open online [3].

such as voting age and number of seats in the Legislative Yuan

However, sometimes it was difficult to draw conclusions

after article 12 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of

Grassroots Forums, the issues and form of discussion

often spark discussion on constitutional reform. However,the Republic of China was passed by the last ad hoc National

Assembly in 2005, it became significantly more difficult to makean amendment to the Constitution [2]. In 2014, some civic

groups established an alliance called the "Civil Movement forConstitutional Reform" to stimulate reform within government

in round two. In addition, though the events were called
were not really grassroots. Therefore, the challenge
was how to translate complex and abstract concepts

into something simpler so as to lower the threshold ofparticipation.

institutions, through grassroots meetings outside.

The alliance planned to achieve the goal of "Citizen Participation

x Constitutional Reform" in three stages. First, hold "Grassroots

Forums" around the island to invite people to deliberate

relevant issues and propose possible approaches to political

In 2015, the drive for change in the society quickly diedthe discussion at the first stage and put forward a concrete

became a lobby group for constitution amendment. It

reform. Second, organize "Promotion Forums" to summarize

motion. At the third stage, the "Civic Constitutional Conventions"should be convened to deliberate the goals of reform andfeasible solutions. The results are then sent to the Constitution
Amendment Committee of the Legislative Yuan and a referendum
would be held in 2018.

Starting from 2014, the Civil Movement for Constitutional
Reform held many Grassroots Forums all over Taiwan. There

were 25 forums held by July 2015. The alliance encouraged
local civil society organizations (CSOs) to arrange forums on

topics of interest and worked closely with them to raise the levelof deliberation from specific topics to constitutional reform.

Since many forums were organized by CSOs themselves, many

37

Rapid Changes in the Society

Taiwan Open Government Report

down. The Civil Movement for Constitutional Reform
also proposed a new procedure of constitutional reform,

which incorporates the "bottom-up," deliberative
approach [4]. The original goal, "Citizen Participation x
Constitutional Reform," was not achieved, but a groupof moderators supporting deliberation was cultivatedthanks to the hard work of the Civil Movement forConstitutional Reform. This makes future experimentsof citizen participation possible. While the Grassroots

Forums were highly experimental, they have empowered

civil society and encouraged the following experiments
on citizen participation.

Citizen Participation3

Blulu Analysis

I. Stage of Policy-making → Problem Analysis

The Civil Movement for Constitutional Reform planned to use the Grassroots Forums as a platform to collect and organize issues

regarding constitutional reform. According to Blulu Train A, the forums were held at the problem analysis stage of constitutional
reform.

Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

II. Quality of Deliberation

The agendas of Grassroots Forums were set by CSOs with the help of the Civil Movement for Constitutional Reform. The CSOs'

views were taken into account during research and survey and participants were informed by experts' introduction on the issues.
However, since the forums were initiated by civil society and not institutionalized, the organizers could not move to government
response and accountability.

Agendasetting

SurveyInformDiscussion

III. Participants → No Civil Servants

The Grassroots Forums were organized by CSOs and wereopen to citizens and, when on specific issues, private

stakeholders, but no civil servants participated in theforums.

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

IV. Level of Openness →High, but It Was not a Legal Procedure

The Civil Movement for Constitutional Reform was relatively

open as it was initiated by CSOs and various stakeholders

were invited. However, since it was not legalized, theresults were not implemented and thus impossible to beevaluated.

Publics

Political
Appointees
Citizens

Stakeholders

Gov

Civil Servants

Redundant Tasks Reduced

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced

Complete Stages of Participation
Diverse Participants andGroups Involved
Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of
Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic
Requirement

Taiwan Open Government Report38

3

Citizen Participation

3-3

Case Study:
Youth World Café

Feature: failure of citizen participation on
specific issues

Method: World Café

Digital utilization: open meeting minutes online

Is Divided Participation Real Participation?
The biggest problem with this World Café is the fact thatthese young participants were separated from thoseattending the National Conference. Since the purpose wasto increase youth participation in the National Conference,

why didn't the organizer just invite more young people to
the National Conference? In addition, the World Café could

Broaden Participation in the National

Conference on Trade and Economic Affairs
After the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the Executive Yuan
convened the National Conference on Trade and Economic

Affairs. However, the agenda setting of the conference
failed to meet society's expectations, and it was criticizedfor not being open enough to citizen participation. As a

response to the criticism, the Executive Yuan organized aYouth World Café to diversify channels of participation.

The World Café lasted a full day. Forty young people,

who were selected by the organizer, discussed two main

topics, "Taiwan's Economic Development Strategy under
Globalization" and "Strategy for Taiwan to Participate

in Regional Economic & Trade Integration and for CrossStrait Economic & Trade Affairs." They were divided into 8groups. Four groups focused on the first topic and the otherfour focused on the second. The moderator at each groupguided the participants to discuss the chosen topic andthen came to conclusions. During the process, participants"switched tables" four times to mix with other participants.
At the end, the participants voted on the proposals andthe top three of each topic were the conclusions of theWorld Café. Two participants were then elected as therepresentatives to speak at the National Conference(National Development Council, 2014).

39

Taiwan Open Government Report

not meet the goal of facilitating dialogue between young
citizens and the government since no government officials
attended the discussion.

The participants' representativeness was also called into

question. The National Conference originated from thecontroversy over the cross-strait trade and economic affairs

aroused by the Sunflower Movement, yet no protestersof the movement was invited to attend the World Café.

The World Café was therefore criticized to be an act ofpatronization (Tseng, 2014).

However, one of the proposals from the World Café waslater turned into an online petition and citizen participation
website, the Join platform, in 2015.

Citizen Participation3

Blulu Analysis
I. Stage of Policy-making → Legislation

The National Conference on Trade and Economic Affairs was convened because of the Sunflower Movement, which occurred during
the legalization process of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA).

Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

II. Quality of Deliberation

The agenda setting, research, and survey of the Word Café were all conducted by the Executive Yuan. There were project reports andpresentations during the process, but they failed to achieve open participation and make participants fully informed. There werediscussion and voting during the process and the Executive Yuan promised to make modifications accordingly and follow up on the
progress of the modifications [5].

Agendasetting

SurveyInformDiscussion

III. Participants →Not All Stakeholders Were Invited

Both political appointees and civil servants attended the

National Conference. However, since the entry was on
invitation basis, the conference was not open to citizens,and the topics were too big to invite all stakeholders.

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

VI. Level of Openness → Low

The National Conference can be thought of as a crisis

management mechanism that only occurs when there is amajor policy to be made. It is not a normal procedure fordecision-making. The quality of participation is rather low
due to the fact that participants are limited and that thestages of participation are far from comprehensive.
Redundant Tasks Reduced

Political
Appointees

Publics

Citizens

Stakeholders

Gov

Civil Servants

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced

Complete Stages of Participation
Diverse Participants andGroups Involved

Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of
Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic
Requirement

Taiwan Open Government Report40

3

Citizen Participation

3-4

Case Study:
Feiyan New Village

Feature: citizen participation on a specific issue with arelatively complete procedure

Method: scenario workshop and Rural-Urban Forum

Digital utilization: meeting minutes, relevant informationand live streaming of meetings were all released on one
websiteFeiyan New Village Urban Renewal ProjectIn 2010, Feiyan New Village, which covers 3.52 hectares in Tainan
City, was selected to conduct urban renewal. In 2013, Farglory Land
Development Co. won the bid to execute the project in Feiyan New
Village and planned to build eleven skyscrapers. However, thedevelopment plan was protested by the locals because it would
destroy large pieces of greenland and the Lioujiading ArcheologicalSite, which was unearthed during the land survey.
Generally, before an urban renewal project is carried out, it has togo through reviews of several committees, which include the "Urban
Renewal Committee," the "Transportation Impact Committee," the"Urban Design Committee," and the "Cultural Asset Committee."
However, the plan evoked strong protests from local citizens andthe Tainan City Government was promoting open government at
the time. Therefore, in 2015, the City Government decided to put
the development plan to open decision-making through "Scenario
Workshops" and the "Rural-Urban Forum."

Scenario Workshop—Stakeholders and the City
Government Clarified the Issue, Collected andOrganized Information

The scenario workshops were organized by a task force formed bydifferent bureaus of Tainan City Government, experts and scholars,
representatives from CSOs, Farglory and local residents.There
were three workshops focused on "protection for trees within thedevelopment area," "impact of development volume on the region,"and "reuse of archeological site and monuments" separately. The
purpose of the scenario workshops was to have stakeholders talkabout the issue and develop future scenarios through dialogue and to
propose corresponding action plans. Through this process, scenarios
were turned into work principles that would eventually become
guidelines of the City Government.

41

Taiwan Open Government Report

Rural-Urban Forum—Citizen Group
Discussion

The 108 participants of the Rural-Urban Forum wererandomly selected from Tainan residents. In the forum,
they were divided into 12 groups. Their discussion was
led by the trained moderator at each table. After threerounds of discussion, the participants were asked to fillout a questionnaire, which served as a reference for theCity Government. At the end of the forum, there wasalso an open discussion for all participants to share theirviews freely.
However, the scenario workshops and the Rural-Urban
Forum could not replace the original legal process. The
development plan still had to pass the review of allcommittees to be finalized. Considering the opinions
collected in the forum, over half of the committee
members held the view that the cultural heritage inFeiyan New Village should be "kept in full." As a result,the project proposed by Farglory was suspended.

Which Issues Can Be Opened?

In the case of Feiyan New Village, the strong support andeffort from Tseng Shu-cheng, then the Deputy Mayor,
accelerated cross-bureau integration. His participation insocial movements helped him gain the trust of the CSOs
and made the dialogue among the City Government, thedeveloper, and the CSOs possible.
It can be observed that the practice is a new modelof citizen participation which still highly relies on thepolitical will of the political leader. This deliberation had
a complete procedure and actual political impact, andtherefore, is a significant case of citizen participation in
Taiwan.
However, this case also reveals the importance ofagenda setting. Unlike the case of Feiyan New Village,
another controversial development project in Tainan
City, the underground railway construction project, was
not opened for citizen participation. This shows that theCity Government still places a tight grip on which issues
can be "opened."
How to include citizen participation into existing
institutions is another key issue. In this case, citizens'views were brought into the legal framework throughthe committees. Therefore, the final decision was infact still made by committees with more than half of its
members coming from the government.

Citizen Participation

3

I. Stage of Policy-making → Planning

In the Feiyan New Village urban renewal project, citizen participation was initiated before the development plan went into the legal
process, so it was carried out during the policy planning phase.

Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

II. Quality of Deliberation

The agendas of scenario workshops and the Rural-Urban Forum were confirmed by the workshop team and the participants
conducted research and surveys on the issue at hand. The City Government also provided sufficient information and officials were onsite to respond quickly and to appoint relevant units to take up responsibility, achieving accountability. In the Rural-Urban Forum, thediscussion and research materials from the scenario workshops were presented in the forum manual to make participants informed
and the discussion in the forum served as a reference for the City Government in decision-making.

The agendas of scenario workshops
AgendaSurveysetting

InformDiscussion

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

InformDiscussion

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

Rural-Urban Forum
Agendasetting

SurveyIII. Participants →IV. Level of Openness →The participants of the scenario workshops included
appointed officials, civil servants, and stakeholders whilein the Rural-Urban Forum, in addition to the three typesof participants mentioned, there were also the chosen
citizens.

From the above analysis, it can be observed that the participation in
the Feiyan New Village case had a rather good procedure and highlevel of openness. However, this case was specially chosen by the City
Government to practice citizen participation and did not kick off an
overall mechanism.

Citizens and Government Representatives

Lack Policy Continuity as It Was Only on One Issue

Redundant Tasks Reduced

Political
Appointees

Publics

Citizens

Stakeholders

Gov

Civil Servants

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced
Complete Stages of Participation
Diverse Participants andGroups Involved

Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of

Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic

Requirement

Taiwan Open Government Report42

3

Citizen Participation

3-5

Case Study:
Taipei City's i-Voting

Feature: the first electronic voting system in Taiwan

Does Voting Represent Democracy

Method: local referendum in electronic and physicalThis case was highly controversial because all three

Digital utilization: electronic voting system,

possible solutions. Moreover, there was no clear planforms

meetings were recorded on one platform

solutions were proposed by the City Government andlocal citizens were not invited to express opinions on

addressing citizens' main concerns, the compensation forrelocation and the support for resettling. Therefore, people

were worried they would become homeless when the

Directions for Developing Shezidao
Open government and the i-Voting system were politicalpromises made by Ko Wen-je during his campaign for Taipei
City Mayor. After he took office, he immediately had the i-Voting
website built. Among the proposals on i-Voting, we chose themost controversial and influential Shezidao case to have acloser look at the system.

Shezidao is situated in Shilin District, Taipei City. In 1970,

Shezidao was classified as a flood area, and therefore, a"restricted development area". Construction was either

prohibited or limited and so was the development ofShezidao. The buildings and infrastructure later became
obsolete and development lagged behind. Past Taipei City
Mayors tried to solve the issue, but no attempt was successful
due to environmental protection reasons. After Ko took office,he proposed to let citizens make the decision through thei-Voting platform in order to fix this longstanding problem.

Three solutions were proposed by Taipei City Government:

development begins. After Shezidao citizens protested andeven threatened not to vote, the City Government added a"No Development" option, which only created even bigger
conflict. Many residents felt cheated and, in the end, thevoting rate was only 35%. "Eco- Shezidao" won the voteand the development project was sent to the Urban Design
Review Committee.

The Shezidao case revealed the flaws of the i-Voting system.
This online voting system does not support deliberation

or discussion. Citizen participation is not included in thestages of proposing solutions and final policy-making. It

merely happens in voting. An urban planning project likethe Shezidao case has to go through a number of different
committees and procedures. All these procedures willaffect how the project is revised, so it is significant to havecitizens participate in all stages [6].

?

i-Voting System"Canal Shezidao," "Eco-Shezidao," and "Our Shezidao." There

The i-Voting is an electronic voting system fortheir favorite solution; the other was open to all Taipei City

on the i-Voting platform can be either fromwere two votes: one was for Shezidao residents to choose
residents. In addition to online voting, there were also ballot
boxes set up in Shezidao.

deciding public issues in Taipei. The proposals
administrative departments or from citizens.

However, the procedure to propose a vote iscomparatively difficult for citizens than for
departments. As a result, until the end to 2016,

there were only 10 proposals and all were put
forward by administrative departments.

43

Taiwan Open Government ReportCitizen Participation3

Blulu Analysis

I. Stage of Policy-making → Planning

Citizens participated at the planning stage before the urban planning project went into legal procedures.
Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

II. Quality of Deliberation

The agenda setting, research and survey of the solutions on the i-Voting in the Shezidao case were conducted by the City Government.

Although participants were informed, there was no discussion in the process. Also, the project that won the vote was not the final
decision because of the possible revisions by various committees.

Agendasetting

SurveyInformIII. Participants → Lacked Dialogue

Even though local residents and Taipei citizens both

can vote, there was no dialogue between citizens
and the government.

Discussion

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

IV. Level of Openness →Not a Healthy Process but It Has Policy Continuity

The i-Voting system is not a very healthy process of citizen participation.

Its design lacks room for public discussion and its agenda setting is nottruly open, which can be seen in the Shezidao case. However, as thesystem is backed by an administrative order, it is expected that it will havepolicy continuity.

Political
Appointees

Publics

Citizens

Gov

Redundant Tasks Reduced

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced

Complete Stages of Participation

Stakeholders

Civil Servants

Diverse Participants andGroups Involved
Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of
Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic
Requirement

Taiwan Open Government Report44

3

Citizen Participation

3-6

Case Study:
The Join Platform

Feature: the first public policy discussion platform
in Taiwan

Method: provide policy suggestion on an online
platform

Digital utilization: online platform

Fast and Convenient but Difficult to Have a
Discussion

The Join platform is a convenient and easy-to-use platform

with a very low threshold of participation. A citizen caneasily make a proposal after passing mobile phone or email
validation. As a result, the platform is wildly used. Proposals

on the platforms have real political impact, especially on
the cases that draw public attention. Till now, 71 proposals

The Join Platform

have become official cases. Since the platform is backed byan administrative order, people can hold relevant agencies
accountable and are guaranteed a concrete response.

As one of the conclusions of the National Conference on

However, the current design makes it difficult to have aby the National Development Council (NDC) in 2015 toopinion, but the opinion is merely for reference and there is

Trade and Economic Affairs, the Join Platform was set up
encourage online citizen participation. It took reference fromthe White House website, We the People [7]. The platform
serves as a channel of revealing policy information andenhancing citizen participation in public affairs on a regularbasis.

There are four functions on the Join platform: "Propose an

meaningful "discussion." A seconder can enter his or her

no discussion area on the proposal page. Also, even though
the responsible agency has to respond within the timeline,
there is no mechanism for follow-up oversight or discussion

on the platform. Whether a proposal comes to a conclusion
or not, the case seems to be closed and participation stops
after a response is given.

Idea" (by citizens), "Have a Discussion" (consultation beforea policy is formed), "Let's Oversee" (key policies), and "Talkto the Ministers" (links to mailboxes of Ministers for citizens

to express their views). Through the Join platform, citizens
can make policy proposals online and the responsible

agency is bound to respond openly and in detail on theplatform within two months.

?

Proposals on the Join Platform

All proposals on the Join Platform have to go

through two stages of petition. There has to be

250 signatures in 15 days at the first stage and5000 signatures in 30 days at the second stage

for a proposal to become a case. After that, theresponsible agency has to give a response in
two months. The agency can hold consultation
meetings and invite the proposer to attend. Allof the meeting materials has to be open on theplatform.

45

Taiwan Open Government ReportCitizen Participation3

Blulu Analysis

I. Stage of Policy-making → Problem Analysis

The Join platform enables citizens to have a voice on policy directions, so they participated at the problem analysis stage
Problem Analysis

Planning

Legislation

Implementation

Evaluation

II. Quality of Deliberation

The agenda setting, research, and survey of proposals on the Join platform are all conducted by the person proposing the policy.

Since they only need to provide the reason for proposing the item, it cannot be certain whether they are well informed. The
petition process is practically an open, lax, single-option vote. As the responsible agency is only required to give a response, it isdifficult to achieve accountability.

Agendasetting

SurveyInformIII. Participants → Hard to Tell

The Join platform is open to all citizens. It does
not put any special weight on stakeholders.

Discussion

VotingDecision

Respond

Accountability

IV. Level of Openness → Not All Stages Are Open for
Participation, Good Prospect of Policy Continuity

The Join platform is simply a petition platform. While it can stimulate
public attention on the issue at hand, whether later stages of policymaking are open depends on the responsible agency. Still, since theplatform is supported by an administrative order, its prospect of policy
continuity is comparatively good.

Political
Appointees

Publics
Citizens

Stakeholders

Gov

Civil Servants

Redundant Tasks Reduced

Tasks Intergrated Or Replaced

Complete Stages of Participation
Diverse Participants andGroups Involved
Healthy Policy Making Process

Persistence of
Implementation

Openness ofparticipation

Basic
Requirement

Taiwan Open Government Report46

3

Citizen Participation

3-7

Case Study:
Participatory Budgeting

Compared to other forms of citizen participation, PB is a relatively
complex and highly experimental process. PB has become aninternational trend. In Taiwan, PB was one of Ko Wen-je's key politicalpromises in the 2014 election for the Taipei City Mayor. Since then,many city mayors and county magistrates have seen PB as an important
political promise. Currently, PB is mostly practiced at the local
government level.

?

Participatory Budgeting

Participatory Budgeting (PB) started in
Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1988. The elected

Workers' Party Mayor wanted to reprioritize

City Government Budgets so he invited local
communities to decide the priority of partof the public spending. Generally speaking,
PB is a process in which representatives ofthe local communities and residents discussand make proposals, which are later put tovote. PB has spread across the world. Morethan 1,500 cities and communities havepracticed or are practicing PB.

■ Taipei City: Administration Driven
Feature: administration driven

Method: five stages, which are promotion, proposal & review,budget evaluation, budget review, city council oversight

Digital utilization: using an internet platform to organize
proposals and information on workshops [8]

PB Driven by Administrative Units
Taipei City is the pioneer of PB in Taiwan. After Mayor Ko made the promisein 2014, Taipei started to hold training workshops and set up a series ofprocedures before implementing PB in 2016. PB was implemented byadministrative units in the Taipei City Government. There were five stages
in the process—promotion, proposal & review, budget evaluation, budget
review, and city council oversight.

The Department of Civil Affairs under the City Government is responsible for
PB projects. The Department partnered up with nine universities and threecommunity colleges, each taking on an administrative district to facilitate PB
collaboration. If the winning proposal can be included in the year's annual

budget, it is reported to the Citizen Participation Committee, implemented
by the department concerned, and overseen as well as evaluated by

the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission to achieve
accountability. Otherwise, the proposal will be included in next year's budget
and reported to the City Council by the Mayor.

47

Taiwan Open Government ReportHigh Administrative Costs

The first round of PB projects in Taipei took
massive administrative costs and government

manpower. The roles the Citizen Participation
Committee and the university partners played
were rather burdensome. In theses firstattempts, because the partners practiced PB
in different ways, the forms of proposal andreview in each district were different as well.

Many winning proposals were later rejected by

the responsible departments due to complianceor feasibility issues. This had led to doubts on

the "openness" of Taipei's PB. The root causeof the problem was that the departments did
not participate in the early stage of proposal
making. Also, since PB was driven by the City

Government, the Taipei City Council felt muchpressure from budgeting and oversight. Somecity councillors argued that they should havethe power to "reject, cancel, or cut" budgets of

PB proposals that passed citizen deliberationand even said that PB "made representative
democracy immoral." [9]Citizen Participation

3■ New Taipei City:

Councillor Discretionary Fund and Themed PB
Feature: councillor discretionary fund allocation

Method: a village chief was tasked by the councillor to conduct PB

Digital utilization: one unified platform recording all PB projects in New Taipei City

Councillor Discretionary Fund Allocation
The first attempt of PB in New Taipei City was initiated by councillor Chen Yi-chun. She took the exampleof the "Chicago Model" from the US and utilized her discretionary fund to conduct PB in Daguan Village
with the assistance of the village chief. Through proposal making, committee review, and voting, there
were three winning proposals at the end.

The Daguan Village case was small scale and was pushed forward by a councillor, so the coordination withadministrative departments went rather smoothly. However, there was no oversight in the process andone of the three proposals has not been implemented. Also, since it was the village chief that mobilized
residents to participate, some suspected that the chief was using PB to solidify his own position.

?

The Chicago Model

The first PB practice in the US was in Chicago City. An aldermanof Chicago City has about USD 1.32 million of discretionary
fund per year which can only be used on infrastructure.
The allocation of the fund is completely at the alderman's

discretion. In 2007, Alderman Joe Moore practiced PB in
his ward to allocate his discretionary fund for the first time.

Now, there are also PB projects in New York City initiated byaldermen working with local communities and NPOs. Thereare currently 24 aldermen supporting PB in New York City.

Taiwan Open Government Report48

3

Citizen Participation■ Themed PB Conducted by Commissioned Community College
Feature: PB on a designated fundMethod: the government commissioned a

Compared to other PB cases, the process of the energy

D i g i ta l u t i l i zat i o n : o n e u n i f i e d p l at fo r mof participation as much as possible. Ludi Community

community college to conduct PB

recording all PB projects in New Taipei City

Apart from the case of the city councillor initiating PB in 2015,
the Economic Development Department of New Taipei City

Government also commissioned Ludi Community College toimplement PB on an energy conservation fund in Ludi.

The process was rather comprehensive. It included seminars,
a proposal workshop, a deliberation workshop, a finalization

workshop and a voting fair. There were six seminars
targeting six groups of people who potentially had a stake inenergy conservation. Knowing the possibility that existingorganizations might mobilize supporters to take over PB,
the College had multiple small-scale promotions on thestreet to invite more people to attend the seminars. There
were different energy conservation lessons in each seminarand proposal sheets were handed out to collect ideas. Afterthe seminars, counsellors contacted the attendees andencouraged them to continue participation.

The counsellors then invited those who handed in the sheet toparticipate in the proposal workshop to develop more detailedplans, empowering and supporting the citizens or teams to
make a proposal. The proposal plans were presented by its

proposer to citizens in the deliberation workshop, in which theplans were deliberated in small groups and then revised.

Officials from relevant departments then provided budgetingand feasibility suggestions to the revised plans in the

finalization workshop. Negotiation and text revision between
the two parties were done on site. The final proposals werevoted in the voting fair and there was the option to vote downon the ballots.

49

Focus on Empowerment

Taiwan Open Government Reportconservation PB focused on the "empowerment" of thelocal community. It was designed to lower the thresholdCollege also put efforts into reaching people who were notfrequently mobilized by local political powers. Moreover,the process was designed to increase local proposers'
confidence and competence.

The intermediary or the organizer played a very importantrole. PB not only empowered the citizens but stimulated

the development of the local community. However, thetask of the College was finished after the proposals wereselected and sent to the government. It was a shamethat citizens participation stopped after the government
department took over.

Citizen Participation

3■ Taichung City: Outsourcing PB
Feature: outsource PB through bidding

Method: the Taichung City Government
commissioned a CSO to implement PB

Digital utilization: Taichung digital platform andan online proposal map

PB began in Taichung City after its announcement by Mayor Lin
Chia-lung in 2015. The Taichung City Government outsourced

PB to a local CSO. A project office ran by the CSO was thenset up and the Department of Civic Affairs was its staff unit.
Therefore, the relationship between the executor of PB andthe City Government was vendor to client.

Taichung's PB included four stages, "Brainstorming,""Deliberation & Project Development," "i-Voting," and"Implementation & Monitoring." PB was first promoted inpublic spaces in district offices, then in public info sessions aswell as living room info sessions. There were five main target
groups: individual citizens, community building organizations,schools and community colleges, social welfare groups, andvillage chiefs & neighbourhood wardens. These five groups

were invited to come in groups while interested individuals
were given a living room info session. A neighbourhoodassembly was held next, in which participants discussed

proposals through deliberation and form action plans withthe ladder method. In the assembly, there was an innovative

session called Lottery Marketplace for each team to further

discuss the action plans. After the plans were formed, the City

Government invited relevant departments and experts to each

district to meet with proposers and provide suggestions onlaws and regulations, feasibility, and reasonable budgeting.

PB by a Vendor

Taichung citizens voted in the PB project with physicalballots. On the voting day, citizens participated indeliberation in small groups on the street and gave

their votes, similar to the D-Street in the Sunflower
Movement. However, since the PB was carried out by a"vendor," the vendor could not fully cover the following

oversight & evaluation and the communication between
departments and proposing citizens.

In Taiwan, the implementation of PB highly relies on thepolitical will of mayors or magistrates. This is especiallytrue when there is a need for cross -department
coordination. In this case, it was a big challenge for

the CSO "vendor" to coordinate between departments
without the political support from a high-ranking official.

Also, Taichung's PB was outsourced and the operation
office was not a regular unit. The corresponding civil

servants were not well trained and a PB mechanism
inside the bureaucracy was not created.

In addition, the Taichung City Government did notallocate a dedicated budget for implementing PB
proposals, and the budgets came from the departments.

Worried that PB would limit the funds for other projects,
the departments were conservative and hesitant toimplement PB. This stretched the vendor's operational
fund as well.

PB in Taichung heavily relied on local powers, such as
village chiefs and councillors, for promotion. Some ofthese leaders stepped outside their original roles andhelped with explanation, oversight, and coordination,some mobilized supporters to pass proposals that met
their interests, and still others were opposed to PB.

Taiwan Open Government Report50

3

Citizen Participation

3-8

Difficulties andChallenges

Fro m t h e a b o v e ca s e s , i t i s o b v i o u s t h at c i t i ze nAlso, to expand participation, complex concepts need toexperimental, individual cases. A few of them were

Therefore, practitioners have to strike a balance between

participation in Taiwan has been practiced mostly in

implemented with administrative orders, such as the
Join platform and i-Voting. Some citizen participation

models are being normalized or institutionalized, suchas PB in Taipei City and in Taichung City. However, isinstitutionalization the answer to current challenges ofcitizen participation?

Successful citizen participation usually lies in the politicallowering the threshold of participation and processing
complex but important issues. Intermediaries play animportant role in simplifying complicated topics. In someof the cases, it was done by a CSO or by a community
college. However, mutual understanding and close

cooperation between these intermediaries and thegovernment is still a challenge for both sides.

will of the political leader in Taiwan. Also, agenda setting,In the cases discussed so far, digital utilization did not playroles. That is to say, the political leader cannot only open

as platforms to collect and organize information and live

choice of issues, citizen's right of initiative play criticalthe issues he or she considers "suitable to be handled
through open citizen participation," but should also givecitizens the power to decide "which issues should be
opened for participation."

The mechanism and process of citizen participation is asignificant factor of quality participation. The government

should really put more focus on empowering civil servants,
including stakeholders in the discussion, deciding who

the stakeholders are, the interaction among agencies,

ministers, and stakeholders, and most importantly,
decision-making methods as well as true accountability.
To achieve all these, political leaders must first understandthe value of citizen participation to the administrative
system.

51

be simplified, but this may lower the quality of discussion.

Taiwan Open Government Reporta big role. In most PB projects, websites were simply usedstreaming was used to expand participation. However,

we also saw many attempts of active digital utilization.
For example, the Taipei City Government attempts toinclude electronic voting in its PB and the Taichung City
Government is trying to visualize PB with a proposal map.

Citizen Participation

3Note[1] Blulu Metrics were co-authored by Lu Chia-hua and ET Blue and licensed under a Creative Commons － Attribution-NonCommercial
4.0 International License (refer to https://Blulu.tw).

[2] Article 12 of Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China: Amendment of the Constitution or alteration of thenational territory shall be initiated upon the proposal of one-fourth of the total members of the Legislative Yuan, passed by at least

three-fourths of the members present at a meeting attended by at least three-fourths of the total members of the Legislative Yuan, andsanctioned by electors in the free area of the Republic of China at a referendum held upon expiration of a six-month period of publicannouncement of the proposal, wherein the number of valid votes in favor exceeds one-half of the total number of electors.
[3] For the meeting minutes of Grassroots Forums, refer to: http://www.new-tw.org/p/blog-page_20.html[4] After intensive study sessions and discussion, the Civil Movement for Constitutional Reform finally finished drafting the "Procedure

Law of Citizen Participation and Constitutional Reform." It proposes to replace the Constitution Amendment Committee of theLegislative Yuan with the Civic Constitutional Convention to give citizen participation a larger role. After it was sponsored by young
legislators in multiple parties in 2016, it has been stuck at first reading.

[5] "Effect of the NDC's Implementation of the Conclusions of the National Conference on Trade and Economic Affairs": http://www.
ndc.gov.tw/Content_NoList.aspx?n=F3C4CDB291314363[6] Regarding the controversy, the Taipei City Government proposed a new process in April 2017. (https://ivoting.taipei/i-voting)[7] https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/[8] An electronic voting system will be used to vote on proposals in 2017[9] Taipei City Councillor Said Participatory Budgeting Cannot Reflect Public Opinion, Budgets Suspended": http://news.ltn.com.tw/
news/life/breakingnews/1902083

Taiwan Open Government Report524

Collaborative
Relationships
in Civic Tech

53

Taiwan Open Government Report!

Key Findings

People are the key factor in the current development of civic tech

In the face of inadequate systems, civic tech collaboration requires effort from people ina variety of roles: leaders must contribute political support, mediators must engage incommunication and coordination, and the collaborating parties must share goals and values
and be willing to learn each other's language and culture.

Civic tech emphasizes equality, mutual benefit, and an open approach
to power and relationships

The goal of civic tech is to establish equal and mutually beneficial collaborative relationships,

not to provide IT services for free. As the collaborating parties identify problems andstreamline processes together, civic tech provides not only open tools and mechanisms, butalso an open approach to power and relationships in the interaction process.

Governments must re-think their approach to governance and shift first
toward "small government" and finally toward "open government"

Civic tech goes beyond the traditional top-down model of bureaucratic governance,emphasizing a network of horizontal connections that transforms the government froma ruler to an open collaborator. This transformation enables a shift from big government
toward small government, and finally toward open government.

Future challenges: How can both old and new mechanisms and systems
be integrated?

Thus far, civic tech collaboration in Taiwan has been limited to single ad-hoc cases. With noinstitutionalized model for co-operation, the scale of influence remains limited. There arealso no clear rules on where the responsibility for operational maintenance lies, and who isultimately accountable. How systems and processes created by civic tech can be integrated
into existing mechanisms is currently a major challenge.

Future challenges: How can a mature civic tech ecosystem beestablished?

Taiwan urgently needs a civic tech ecosystem that incorporates governments, communities,

and corporations, instead of relying on the efforts and networks of a few, in order to expand
the scale and influence of civic tech.

Taiwan Open Government Report544Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4-1

Civic tech: A New Possibility for
Public-Private Collaboration

This chapter will explore civic tech collaboration as a new

improved administrative processes across organizations,as the use of digital technology on the basis of open data andissues for the digital age, and promoting participation inapproach through a variety of case studies. We define civic techcitizen participation to transform government services, optimize
administrative processes, and enable participation in government
operations. Civic tech represents a break from the idea of "social

contract", in which the people vest power in the government
to rule and manage society unilaterally; it is a rethinking of theinteraction of power between the government and the people,
and a practical exploration of new possibilities in public-private

opened up new channels for deliberation on importantenvironmental causes through citizen science initiatives.

In Taiwan, however, civic tech collaboration remains

experimental. Civic tech has mitigated the administrative

inefficiencies brought on by inflexible IT procurement rules,
while avoiding the problems of collusion and corruption thattraditional PPP models risk.

collaboration.

And yet, large-scale influence remains elusive for civic tech in

Public-private collaboration is not something new to our time.

integration into existing government operations. Our intent in

The idea of public-private partnerships (PPP) emerged in the
1990s, though even today academics are still divided over its

precise definition. Broadly, the term PPP refers to cooperative
relationships between organizations in the public and private

sector, whether codified in formal contracts or spontaneously
arising from shared values. Chen and Zhang (2010) pointed outthat PPP participants create a high level of trust through frequentinteraction, and share resources, goals, and values, thereby
establishing "collaborative networks." In this chapter, ourconception of public-private collaboration emphasizes civic techcollaboration created through collaborative networks between

government agencies and communities or individuals. Unlike
traditional PPPs, which usually refer to large-scale cooperation
between governments and corporations (e.g. through the BuildOperate-Transfer model), civic tech introduces new models andcultural ideas and practices through small-scale and diverse
interactions with governments.

This chapter provides four case studies using in-depth interviewsas the main source. We explore their respective backgrounds,
problems to be solved, collaboration models, challenges faced,and possible future effects. We focus on three important facets ofeach case in particular (see Chen and Zhang, 2010): (1) Whether

the parties are equals in the power relationship, and whether

they share resources, information, goals, and values; (2) Whether

the collaboration process maintains an appropriate balance
between collective goals and individual interests; and (3) How
the participants use their social capital to create a network andbuild relationships of mutual trust.

We have seen impressive examples of civic tech in action over the
past three years. Civic tech has provided aid during emergencies,

55

Taiwan Open Government Report

Taiwan due to a lack of mature business models and systemic
discussing civic tech in this final chapter is to invite the reader

to join us in thinking to the future, in addition to looking
back on the developments of the past three years. What isthe potential of civic tech in comparison to other possible

approaches for a future governance model? What are thechallenges that must be faced before civic tech can become
truly influential?

4-2

Donation Maps and Victim
Identification: Civic Tech in
Emergencies
Case: Patient search systems, maps of donatedgoods, and digital identification of victims

Problem statement: In an emergency, needs cannot
be filled through traditional procurement processes.

Government collaborator(s): Taipei City Department
of Information Technology and Department of Social
WelfareCivil society collaborator(s): Online volunteers and
g0v participantsCollaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

An Explosion Results in Taipei's First Civic
Tech Collaboration

A dust explosion at the Formosa Fun Coast Amusement
Park during a "color party" event on June 27, 2015 shocked

Taiwanese society, and sparked the first example of publicprivate collaboration between the government of Taipei Cityand its tech communities. Taipei City Hall was overwhelmedwith phone calls as staff attention was focused on disaster

relief work, and an online platform for searching for victim
information was proposed. However, the city's Department ofInformation Technology had no open-ended contract in place
to acquire temporary workers or equipment in emergencies,and regular procurement processes could not work quickly
enough for this need. The City Government therefore
requested aid from the communities.

With this request for aid, City Hall and the community began towork together. Tech community member TonyQ first converted
the list of casualties into a structured dataset and published it
online. Two hours after the data was made public, volunteers

across the internet had programmed ten different systems
for searching the data that Taipei City Hall linked to its official

website, allowing anxious friends and family to look up thestatus of injured loved ones.

Open Source Programs in Disaster
Prevention and Relief

After the Formosa Fun Coast explosion, Saul Peng twice [1]invited city government agencies and civic tech communities
to meetings discussing how to establish relief mechanisms
to improve crisis management during a disaster. These twomeetings were an opportunity for City Hall staff to forge

connections with civic tech communities. Tseng I-hsin and Yu
Ting-ting of the Department of Social Welfare even submitted a

4

project was inspired by an in-kind donation collection systemdesigned by Ju Yu-ren and Shih Chia-lin for an effort to recall

legislators from the then-ruling KMT party; the project was
eventually developed into a submission for a disaster relief

application contest. The victim identification system was

proposed and developed by Liu Yu-tin in a hackathon. The
system is in essence a digital registration system that allows

shelters to keep track of victims' movements in a chaotic scene
after a disaster, and provides information for family members
to find their loved ones.

Ju Yu-ren and Liu Yu-tin, the developers of these two systems,

are both members of the g0v community. They are passionate

about applying open source technology to public services,not only participating in the development of information

search systems for Formosa Fun Coast victims, but also in thediscussions convened by Saul Peng. They then volunteered

to contribute their IT expertise to Taipei City, helping the city
government improve its administrative services.

Throughout the process, from the hackathon to the meetingsin City Hall, no contract was signed between the Department ofSocial Welfare and Ju and Liu, nor was any money exchanged.

The Department of Social Welfare provided information andresources, while the community provided the technology.

The two parties complemented and trusted each other, andcollaborated on accomplishing their common goal. For Ju

and Liu, making the system open source was an essential
requirement of the collaboration. Only when the system isopen source can it be modified and reused by others, making ita long-lasting public good. Open source was an unfamiliar idea

for the Department of Social Welfare, but the agency saw thatthe open source system could help digitalize administrative

work, and that such open-source sharing of public services
could reduce the workload of government agencies and saveon resources that would be expended for developing similarsystems from scratch. The agency was therefore happy toaccept the open source requirement.

proposal at a g0v hackathon in December 2015, and began two
collaborative projects with the g0v community to help improvedisaster relief—donation maps and a digital system to identify
victims.

The donation map project created a dynamic management
platform for donated goods after a disaster. The idea for the

Taiwan Open Government Report564Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

Bridge Builders Are the Key to Civic Tech
Collaboration

Taipei City is uniquely well-suited for developing civil techcollaborations compared to other counties and cities in
Taiwan. The political will of its leaders and support of mid-level management ensured that Taipei City's experiencein promoting open data and civic participation has been
relatively smooth. Taipei is also home to an important clusterof technology communities. Crucially, Taipei City Hall also
had staffers who were willing to serve as contact points for

4-3
Document Delivery
Management System: Using
Digital Tools to Improve
Administrative Processes

community cooperation. Saul Peng and Tseng I-hsin served
as important bridge builders within City Hall, skilled at bothseeking external assistance as well as internal communicationand coordination. Faced with the very different cultures andlanguages of the government and civic society, these bridgebuilders are both a buffer between the two sides and an

Case: Official document delivery management system

Problem statement: Administrative processes areunnecessarily convoluted

engine for action.

Government collaborator(s): Taipei City Department of

Civic tech collaboration is not just about outsourcing

Civil society collaborator(s): TonyQtechnology. The political will of leaders and the social capitalof these bridge builders are essential for integrating civic

tech into government operations. However, an over-relianceon a few bridge builders, and the lack of institutionalized

procedures and mature collaborative networks, has becomea predicament for civic technology collaboration in Taiwan.
Once a bridge builder departs from their position, therelationships and trust that have been built up may vanish in
the blink of an eye.

Social Welfare

Reforming Administrative Processes with
the Power of Digital Technology

In the previous case, applying civic tech to disaster
relief opened up new possibilities beyond traditional IT

procurement for governments. However, donation maps anddisaster victim identification systems are not IT systems thatsee everyday use. Reforming overall administrative processes

using digital tools and data governance is the next challenge
for civic tech.

The previous case mentioned meetings convened by Saul

Peng after the Formosa Fun Coast explosion in 2015 thatformed connections between Department of Social Welfare(DOSW) staffers and tech communities. Soon after the

meetings, Tseng I-hsin of the DOSW shared her troubles withtracking the delivery of official documents on her personal

Facebook page. TonyQ, a community member, volunteered tohelp the DOSW solve this problem with digital technology.

The DOSW is the Taipei City government's largest agency,
and is responsible for administering the city's various social
welfare systems. After an application for a subsidy is received,
the DOSW will mail a physical copy of an official document

notifying the applicant of whether the application was

57

Taiwan Open Government ReportCollaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4

granted. The delivery of the document is tracked using theclearly describe their needs, while contractors are unable tocompletely non-digital. Staffers must keep track of thousands

The enormous rift in language and culture between the two

post office's registered mail system. However, the process isof physical mail receipts, and identify the receipt involved

whenever an appeal is filed regarding a decision. Though thisproblem seems extremely minor, it nonetheless creates aheavy workload for the department.

TonyQ proposed a simple solution: tracking the delivered

documents using a QR code. However, simple solutions often
require complicated communication when the government

understand the complicated inner workings of government.

parties, the misunderstandings that arise as communication
passes through level after level of the bureaucracy, coupledwith complex webs of interest between bid reviewers andcontractors, all contribute to the frequently absurd outcomesof IT tenders. Such tenders often result in systems that are
difficult for staffers to use, or e-government services that draw
waves of complaints.

is involved. TonyQ and the collaborating staffers had to visit

Civic tech provides more than a single system or website;

Information Technology and Chunghwa Post (Taiwan's official

agency, clearly identifying problems through long-term

several offices in the DOSW as well as the Department of
post office) in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how
a document is produced, delivered, and the receipt obtained.

After understanding the entire process, he had to tackle theproblems of incorporating the new tool into existing systems.
For TonyQ, civic tech collaboration is "especially for thosesolutions that are too small to receive the resources to open aformal bid, but have the potential to solve critical problems."

This case created an example for digitalizing administrative
processes, allowing the collaboration model and culture to

take root in the government. Although the specifics of the casecannot be copied directly, the idea and spirit of collaboration
is something that can spread [2].

Long-term Partnership: Start by
Identifying the Right Problems

Government is an enormous and complex machine. Over the

past few decades, the civil service has exchanged informationand communicated through meetings, official documents, andfiles, creating a unique information flow in every department.
It is therefore impossible to digitalize the entire government
using a single system, and civic tech has no such ambitions.

Its goal is to solve small but concrete problems and introduce
digitalization to administrative processes.

However, identifying these small but concrete problems is
precisely the challenge.

Government agencies must first identify their needs throughreviewing their processes. However, civil service training

does not include process management skills. In addition,
government staffers are usually too overworked to evenfind the time to articulate problems and clarify processes.
Agencies with no IT background are usually unable toit allows external collaborators to interact directly with thepartnership. The system that TonyQ created is not difficult, but

few are willing to spend as much time as he did as an external
collaborator in low-level government offices, listening andcommunicating. Such external players also require the trust of

the civil service system and the approval of mid- and high-level
leaders. Under these conditions, TonyQ was able to continue

working with the DOWS after developing the mail tracking
system and began more collaboration projects.

Difficulties Faced by Civic Tech in
Government

Civic tech currently faces many difficulties regarding its use ingovernment. First, volunteers who participate in collaboration
cannot receive adequate compensation for their time andenergy. Most collaborators receive only a small stipend when

they attend meetings in person at government agencies.
In the long run, how to give collaborators the respect andremuneration they deserve, so that collaborative relationships

can be sustained and more collaborators encouraged to join,
is a question that will require more thought.

Second, civic tech development almost always uses agile

development to create a minimum feasible product that
immediately goes online to solve a specific task-based

problem. It can become impossible to maintain operations ofa system once a collaborative relationship ends. Government
often requires more stable and long-term systems, giving
contractors with stable funding and concrete agreements anadvantage over civil tech. Whether civic tech can integrate
systems created through agile development into existing
government platforms through feedback and optimization,

will become another ke y to bringing civic tech into
government.

Taiwan Open Government Report584

Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4-4

AirBox: Building a
Civic Tech Ecosystem

Case: AirBox

Problem statement: Environmental issues

Government collaborator(s): 8 county and city governments[3]Civil society collaborator(s): LASS community, Academia

Sinica Institute of Information Science, and IT companies

A Civic Tech Ecosystem of Governments,
Companies, and Communities

In the previous case, we identified two major difficulties currently
faced by civic tech: First, that unpaid collaborators may be treated as

free contractors; and second, that maintaining long-term operationof civic tech is often filled with uncertainty. Taiwan urgently needs

governments, companies, and communities to form an ecosystemthat can act as a foundation for developing civic tech. The case of
AirBox may point to one way forward.

AirBox is a real-time sensor, that can be installed in homes to conduct
monitoring of temperature, humidity, and PM2.5 concentration. It is

a compact mechanism, about the size of a hand. The data collected

is synced to a cloud platform and open to the public. Throughvisualization of the data, the platform then provides information

on local air pollution to the general public. The system fills in thegaps left by the low number [4] of official Environmental Protection
Administration air quality monitoring systems.

Thanks to AirBox, Taiwan has the highest density of air quality

monitoring micro-stations in the world, with over 2000 monitoring

locations across the country [5]. As a matter of fact, development of
air quality sensing systems had long been under way separately in the

LASS (Location Aware Sensing System) community, as well as within
Academia Sinica's Institute of Information Science, and IT companies
like Realtek. Taipei's smart city initiative in 2016 became the catalyst
for the community, academia, and companies to work together on

air quality sensing. Their joint efforts eventually took AirBox from anexperiment to a product and brought it from the community to thegeneral public.

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Taiwan Open Government Report

Small Government Is the Starting
Point for Public-Private Collaboration

Taking Amsterdam as a role model, Taipei City's

Department of Information Technolog y (DOIT)

formulated a smart city policy that positioned City Hall

as a matchmaker, providing incentives to encourageconnections between companies and communities
and building a smart city in a bottom-up way. Realtek
was a company that actively reached out to become
part of the initiative. The DOIT connected Realtek

with the LASS maker community. The two parties
began working together to improve the technology,

and Academia Sinica provided assistance with datacalibration. The result of their efforts was AirBox.

AirBox is more than just a PM2.5 sensor. It is part of
the Maker Movement, encouraging users to modify

it and use their creativity to come up with new uses.

Users become part of its production chain. Taipei
City went one step further, making AirBox part ofenvironmental and IT education programs. Companies

were commissioned to donate AirBoxes to elementary

schools and junior high schools, allowing makerculture to take root in education. After the success of

AirBox in Taipei City, eight counties and cities joined
the project in 2016. Companies like Realtek, Edimax,
Asus Cloud, and Aaeon helped AirBox expand acrossall of Taiwan.

The success of AirBox relied on several factors. In

terms of technology, the sensor technologies it

employs are not new, but the various facets of thesystem were made open source only recently, allowing

the maker movement to adopt the technology. In

terms of environmental awareness, the public is now

increasingly familiar with the issues of air pollution
and PM2.5, and AirBox provides citizens with a way toparticipate in environmental monitoring. In terms ofpolitics, the paradigm set by Taipei City made otherlocal governments more willing to participate.

Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

T h i s c a s e d i s p l a y e d a s u cce s s f u l p r i v a t e - p u b l i ccollaboration by building an ecosystem of civic tech.
Each collaborative party benefited from this project. The
government implemented its smart city policy by matchingcompanies and communities and providing them with aplace to show the results of their work—the city's schools.
Companies that donated AirBoxes were not only granted apublic relations boon, they were also given an opportunity
to expand beyond the Taiwan market with the city's good

will. Communities that provided technical assistance wererewarded with rapid growth as the AirBox project expanded
throughout Taiwan. Academic institutions that assisted withcalibration were given the opportunity to promote citizen

science education and obtained more data for analysis.
Government, companies, communities, and academia allshared resources and information, and each was rewarded
for it. The AirBox case shows that governments should
go beyond its traditional self-conception as a ruler oversociety and become a matchmaker for multi-stakeholders.
Only when big government becomes small government canpublic-private collaboration begin to develop.

4

Building an Online Deliberation Platform ina Hackathon

On December 20, 2014, then-Minister without Portfolio Jaclyn
Tsai went to a g0v hackathon [6] with one question: "Is it

possible for companies not to headquarter in the Cayman
Islands?" After a whole day of discussion in the hackathon, theparticipants concluded that, instead of having them answer
the question of how to convince start-ups to stay in Taiwan,

the question should be opened up to the general publicby building a digital public participation platform. Minister
Tsai and these civic hackers, bringing together Tsai's legal

background and their familiarity with the digital world, began

to build the vTaiwan Virtual World Laws and Regulations
Adaptation Exchange Platform. The platform particularly

focuses on digital policies and allows discussion of how old

and outdated laws and regulations can be amended for thedigital age.

Standardizing and digitalizing the deliberation process isvTaiwan's biggest contribution. To bring in more online
participants, vTaiwan used technologies such as Discourse,

Pol.is, and Sli.do to build online discussion spaces, and

4-5
vTaiwan: Civic Tech
Collaboration to Create an
Open Space for Deliberation

integrated them with physical offline meetings. As of theend of 2016, vTaiwan has been used to deliberate 18 issues.

Amendments to laws and regulations have been enacted forhalf of the issues, while amendments for the remaining half
are still in the drafting stage or awaiting legislative approval.

Case: vTaiwan

Problem statement: How old and outdated laws andregulations can be adapted for the digital age

Government collaborator(s): Executive Yuan, Institute forInformation Industry

Civil society collaborator(s): g0v participants

Taiwan Open Government Report60Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4

Power and Relationships Should Be
Opened Up

After the g0v community built vTaiwan, they did not hand over
the operation of the platform to the government. Instead, thecollaboration between the government and civic society has
continued. Three parties are now in charge of operating theplatform. (1) Issue sponsors: the government agencies which
submit drafts of laws and regulations that they are proposing.

Although vTaiwan has become an institutionalized mechanism
for adapting laws and regulations, there have been several

cases (such as the issues of Uber and online liquor sales[7]), in which draft legislations were eventually stalled in

the legislature due to societal backlash. vTaiwan faces thefollowing challenges in deepening its impact:(2) Editors: affiliated with the Institute for Information Industry,

First, how can vTaiwan gain more active participants fromthe drafts into a format more conducive to discussion. (3)laws and regulations for the virtual world, a rather difficult

a government-sponsored NGO, which collect and organize

Administrators: g0v's vTaiwan task force, which works together
to maintain the online system and update the content. In
addition, the administrators will invite active participants ofeach proposal to form working groups, which hold online andoffline meetings to clarify points of disagreement, keep theissue focused, and suggest modifications. All working groupmeetings are recorded in text or video and made public online.

vTaiwan not only built an open platform for civic participation

the stakeholders of each issue? As vTaiwan aims at adapting
and obscure mission, it is hard to raise interests even among
stakeholders. So far, the number and diversity of participants
has been limited. vTaiwan needs to move beyond a mere

online platform and be more active in connecting with

communities to include more representative participants.
Also, it is important to train more mediators to conduct

communication and facilitation, in order to lower theplatform's barrier to entry and expand participation.

in digital-related law amendments, it also maintained an open

Second, how can vTaiwan avoid being caught up in divisive

There are no requirements or qualifications needed toinfluence through the deliberative process? In the online liquor

approach during its system's development and operation.
participate in vTaiwan's operation. Anyone interested can join

their weekly meetings. The meetings are held outside of any
government agency, with no chairperson or set agenda, toavoid the restrictive culture of the bureaucracy. This spirit ofopenness allows vTaiwan's collaboration network to maintainequal and non-hierarchical relationships.

party politics, and give the voice of the people politicalsales controversy, vTaiwan had submitted an amendment billto the legislature, which was identified as one of the session's

priority bills; however, the Executive Yuan withdrew the billafter the DPP took office in 2016, and no action has been takenon the issue since. This shows that party politics maintains
primacy over deliberative democracy.

vTaiwan is an influential case since it is much more difficult

Third, how can this new mechanism for participation be

governments. The social capital and political position held

and how can legislators be brought into the process fromto introduce civic tech to central government than to local

by vTaiwan proponents have been the key to its success.
vTaiwan was first spearheaded by Jaclyn Tsai, with community
participants helping to build the platform. Its later operations

integrated with existing mechanisms (such as public hearings);

the beginning, so that the deliberative democracy does not
become cut off from representative democracy?

were mostly headed by Audrey Tang, who was then still a g0v

Fourth, are there enough staffers in various governmentin October 2016, Tsai took over the running of vTaiwan as

contact between the government and civic society, ensuring

participant. When Tang became Minister without Portfolio

a member of civic society. These developments show thatvTaiwan very much relied on the support of Ministers Tsai and
Tang.

61

How Can vTaiwan Deepen Its Impact?

Taiwan Open Government Reportagencies who are empowered and flexible enough to act as aclear communication and thus the political authority andinfluence of vTaiwan?

Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4-6

4

How to Facilitate Civic
Tech Collaboration

Civic Tech vs IT Procurement
Earlier in this chapter, a contrast was drawn between civic

Civic tech is not necessarily mutually exclusive with IT

to provide governments with solutions through digital means,with Taipei City, needs were first identified through a civic

tech and IT procurement. Though both approaches attempt

they are in fact appropriate for different types of problems.
Civic tech is well suited to emergencies or situations in which
problems and processes have not been clearly identified;collaborators can directly interact and communicate with theagency in need, using agile development to flexibly develop

systems to solve the problem. IT procurement is well suited
to systems with clear needs and long operational life cycles;

government IT agencies can act as a mediator between thecontractor and the agency in need, using the waterfall model

to develop systems that are contracted out for operationand maintenance. However, we have also identified many

procurement. For example, in the senior welfare center casetech collaborative process, then the system was built throughprocurement and integrated into government operations. Thiscase revealed the possibility for institutionalizing civic tech.

However, as we have emphasized, civic tech does not only
provide systems. Without reforming current IT procurement
systems, purchasing civic tech may lead to reasonable

compensation for collaborators, but it is not the best longterm way to institutionalize civic tech collaboration. How theinfluence of civic tech can be scaled up remains an unsolved
problem.

difficulties with IT procurement in practice [8] (Table 4.1).

The biggest difficulty faced in IT procurement is identifyinguser needs. This difficulty means that many systems areincompatible with needs from the planning stage. In contrast

to IT procurement, civic tech emphasizes interaction andcommunication in real practice. The collaborating parties work

closely together to identify problems and ways to improve
processes, instead of simply providing new tools. Civic techis still unable to solve large-scale structural problems, but it

has introduced new ways of thinking and culture, in the hopesof spurring governments to keep pace with the industry andlisten to users' needs. Civic tech can also provide more flexible

solutions when existing IT procurement processes remain
unimproved.

Taiwan Open Government Report624Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

IT Procurement Phase
1. Budgeting in previous
fiscal year

2. Legislative reviews andpasses budget

Problem Encountered in PracticeOverworked staffers begin planning out the budget days before the proposal
is submitted, or the budget is written by contractors they know.

Budget goes through changes by legislators.

3. Procurement planning

Higher-ups have new ideas and planning must begin from scratch.

4. RFP and specification

Agencies without necessary IT expertise outsource the RFP writing to

documents are written

5. The tender is approved
and published

6. Bid reviewers are invitedcontractors.

Months pass.
Many bid reviewers are retired and unfamiliar with current industry trends.

Some even have inappropriate connections to contractors, leading tocollusion between industry, government, and academia.

7. Bid reviews are conducted

Under the above processes, winning bidders are often system contractors

8. The winning bidder is

Official discussions of the agency's needs are conducted only after the bidder

9. Bid implementation

In agencies without the necessary IT expertise, the contractor is often inchosenmanagement

10. Final acceptancethat have worked with the agency for years.

is chosen. Sometimes due to time constraints development goes ahead
based on the unmodified RFP.

charge of managing the implementation.

The agency is unfamiliar with how to test the system, and lack the project
management know-how to implement and operate the system. The agency
therefore must again rely on the contractor.

Table 4.1 Problems faced with IT procurement

63

Taiwan Open Government ReportCollaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4

Four Models for Civic Tech
From the above cases, we identify four models for civic tech collaboration based on the interactive models and how closely theparties work together:

A
B
C
D

Model (least in-depth interaction to most)

ExamplesGovernment provides open data;

Formosa Fun Coast victim search platform, Drugcertification search system, The Mosquito Man,
budget visualization

civil society develops applications

Government connects different parties incivil society to develop systems

Government and civil society

collaborate to develop systems
Civil society collaborators enter
government agencies to assist in
improving administrative processes

AirBoxDonation map, victim identification system, vTaiwan

Official document delivery management system

Table 4.2 Four models for civic tech collaboration
In models A and B, the government plays only an auxiliary

For all of the above models, we have identified fiveprovides open data or experimental spaces, and encourages

collaboration with civil society in the public sphere:role and the focus is on the needs of citizens. The government

the autonomous development of civic communities. In these
two models, the government should not see itself as the soleprovider of public services. On the contrary, models A and B
require small government. With good policy as a foundation

key points for facilitating government connection and
1. The political will and support of leaders are important.
2. Good mediators make the collaborative relationshipsmooth and efficient.

and solid infrastructure as a backbone, the government then

3. Collaborating parties must learn together to identify

services and build a civic tech ecosystem.

4. The collaboration process requires an opening up ofModels C and D are more focused on government operations,5. The approach to governance must be re-thought,

encourages civil society and companies to provide public

and involve more in-depth interaction between the governmentand civil society. Civic tech under these two models may

the right problems.

power and relationships.

from small government to open government.

require integration with internal government systems andprocesses, so the collaborating parties must spend more timecommunicating and assessing possible political influences.

These models require an open government, one of many
stakeholders collaborating with civil society on an equal basis.

Taiwan Open Government Report64Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech

4

Turning Difficulties Into Challenges
Civic tech collaboration remains rare in Taiwan. Every case

Similar programs have been discussed in Taiwan. After theconditions, and dedicated people. It is difficult to copy any

community regarding the possibility of a fellowship program

discussed in this chapter relied on good timing, favorableof them, and each has its limitations. In Taiwan, civic techcollaboration still faces difficulty in four major aspects:
1.

The institutional aspect: How can new and existingmechanisms or systems be integrated?

2. The management aspect: How can civic tech developed

through informal relationships be managed, maintained, andeven held accountable?

3. The talent aspect: How can the reliance on a few bridgebuilders be broken, so that civic tech collaboration can bebeyond single unique cases?

4. The societal aspect: How can a mature civic tech ecosystem
be built to support collaborative relationships?

As experimental civic tech collaborations begin to bear fruit,
we must ask: Can they be scaled up and institutionalized inorder to solve the aforementioned difficulties?

While civic tech collaboration in Taiwan is still limited to adhoc single cases, systemic collaboration programs havebeen put into practice in other countries. Code for American
and Code for Pakistan have started fellowship programs intheir respective countries, using funds raised by civic groups

to place engineers and designers into local governments

for six months to a year. The engineers and designers thencollaborate with government staffers to improve IT services.

In Japan, governments work with companies to provide
corporate fellowships, offering three-month grants for

digital talent in companies to offer consultancy services atgovernment agencies twice a week.

65

Taiwan Open Government Report

Formosa Fun Coast explosion, Taipei City had consulted the[9]. However, the limitations of government personnel andprocurement laws meant that such a program was never

put into place. In addition, a funding model of civic tech has

not been established. Where the investment comes from is apractical problem faced by civic tech advocates. Even today,

government IT procurement treats IT services the same as
hardware. This has hindered the development the software

industry in public services. It will be difficult for civic tech toreceive stable investment funding like in the US, when no civic
tech industry has formed.

Government is an enormous and intricate machine. How cangovernment take in different voices and approaches from theoutside? How can it build a foundation of trust with anotherparty, so that they can collaborate in an equal and mutually

beneficial manner? How can laws and regulations open thedoor for interaction? What is the market and commercial value

for civic tech? In the face of these big questions, civic techcannot be content to remain an ideal or an experiment. We
must face the political and economic questions behind civic

tech, just as civic tech hopes to solve political and economic
problems in society.

Collaborative Relationships in Civic Tech4

Note[1] The two meetings were held in July and October 2015.

[2] From Tseng I-hsin's lecture "Experiences on Digitalization of Government Operations" in June 2017.

[3] Local governments that joined in the AirBox project before the end of 2016 were: Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taichung City,
Tainan City, Kaohsiung City, Chiayi City, Chiayi County, and Yunlin County. In 2017 Taoyuan County also joined.
[4] There are only 76 EPA monitoring stations across Taiwan.

[5] See the AirBox status report https://pm25.lass-net.org/AirBox/[6] Please see g0v's 11th hackathon event page: https://g0v-tw.kktix.cc/events/g0v-hackath11n[7] See Business Next report on the issue: https://www.bnext.com.tw/article/40741/BN-2016-08-27-201942-44[8] The problems with IT procurement are not the focus of this paper, so only a simple table is presented for comparison. For a
deeper understanding of current problems with IT procurement, see "What Are the Problems with Government IT Procurement?"(Lin, 2017).

[9] See "g0v.taipei fellowship" https://g0v.hackpad.com/g0v.taipei-fellowship-LJZw6OzdO9g

Taiwan Open Government Report665Conclusions

67

Taiwan Open Government Report

Conclusions

Laws, Regulations, and Policies

5Open Data

Following the changes in Taiwan's socio-political atmosphere

Open data has become an important topic in government

unmistakable trend in the country. Open government puts

a step further and emphasizes the use of data analysis toin 2014, the concept of open government has become an
information transparency, citizen participation, and publicprivate collaboration in the same context. In practice, however,open government is manifested in individual laws andpolicies. Currently, information transparency is regulated by

the Freedom of Government Information Law, and the spirit

studies in the past decade. It takes information transparency
examine government operations and to provide better public
services. Ideally, open data empowers citizens to take theinitiative to oversee the government and facilitates publicprivate collaboration through civic tech.

of participation is revealed in the Administrative Procedure

Open data in Taiwan has several key problems. First, there iscollaboration.

administration has not yet been digitalized and the information

Law. There is no relevant laws or regulations on public-private
In addition to laws, administrative orders and policies are theTaiwanese government's most important tools to promote

open government. Unfortunately, in the past three years, thegovernment has yet to come up with an overall plan to practice
open government. Most of the government's efforts have been
put into reaching superficial KPIs instead of building a firm

foundation of open government. There is no long-term policy

continuity on most open government policies so far. Policies
often die when the few political leaders who back themleave office. The concept and practices of open government

have yet to take root in the hearts of most political leaders.

Open government is viewed only as a popular slogan and its

no solid data infrastructure in the government. Governmentof individual departments is not connected. Second, data
quantity has been put before quality. Implementing open data

only increases civil servants' workload and data quality is notgood enough to create value-adding applications. That is why

open data has had no tangible impact on Taiwan so far. Third,

the government has been trying to develop the data economy

in the past three years, but there is no guiding industrial policy.

Instead, the government competes with startups for business
opportunities to reach their KPIs. Last but not least, the focus
on the data economy has led to negligence on other important

aspects of open data, such as government accountability andsocial equality.

concrete planning as well as execution are lacking.

Open data is still a heated topic for debate in Taiwan, but after

A possible solution for Taiwan is to take the experience ofand its impact is still limited. In reviewing open data practices,

the Open Government Partnership (OGP)—make a National
Action Plan every two years and review the impact of its

implementation on a rolling basis. An action plan will provide

civil servants with a clear policy direction and enable citizens

to understand government policies better. It can also help
increase the chances for Taiwan to become a member of the
OGP and to raise visibility in the international arena.

three years of practice, we are still far from our ultimate goals
we came to realize that the real issue is no longer with how

open the data is, but with whether the government caneffectively distribute, manage, and utilize the data it produces
in governance. In the past, the bureaucracy has produced allsorts of paper-based information flows and strictly controlled
their access for management and anti-corruption reasons, forinstance. Now, to make open data useful and to create impact,
it is necessary to open the machine bureaucracy, reconnect
information, and reform the governance model.

Taiwan Open Government Report685Conclusions

Citizen Participation

Collaborative Relationships In Civic TechIn Taiwan, deliberative democracy has been practiced

In this chapter, we focused on civic tech collaboration

reforms in 2001, in which many consensus conferences andsociety were organically connected with government

since the second-generation National Health Insurance

scenario workshops were held. The street deliberation thatdeveloped during the 2014 Sunflower Movement and the"Grassroots Forums of Civic Constitutional Convention"that was held following the Movement further promoted
deliberative democracy. We conducted case analysis on
several participation models between 2014 and 2016. They

mostly employed online tools and were designed to lower

and analyzed four cases in which skilled members of civil
staffers, so that they could analyze problems of governanceand formulate solutions together. Civic tech attempts toreverse the conception of government as a ruler, advocating

for a re-thinking of power relations between government

and people. Through civic tech practices, the two partiesare reconnected in a collaborative relationship.

the threshold of participation through less rigorous forms

Without an adequate institutional system for workingof citizen participation and of deliberative democracy,

bridge builders. Various roles inside and outside theof discussion. They are distinct from conventional practices
which is small in scale and strict in form.

Most of the practices discussed were experimental andrelied on the political will of the political leader for

implementation and horizontal communication. Amongthe practices, local participatory budgeting (PB) is being

institutionalized and normalized. The PB projects tellus that the positioning of the executive unit, the city

government, and citizens is of great importance, and it isnecessary for civil servants to feel empowered.

with government, civic tech has relied on people as

government have put efforts in civic tech collaboration:
leaders contribute political support, mediators facilitatecommunication and coordination, and, most importantly,

the collaborating parties share goals and values andshow a willingness to learn each other's language andculture. Unfortunately, civic tech practices have notbeen systematically integrated into existing government

operations, nor has a mature business model or ecosystembeen developed. This prevents civic tech from scaling up its
influence.

Digital tools have not played a big role in these citizen

The government can facilitate civic tech collaboration in

as a medium through Taiwan's "i-Voting" and "JOIN"

the government should no longer think of itself as theparticipation models. Digital tools are only actively used
platforms. Intermediaries play a key role in communicationand translation, and must strike a balance between
lowering the threshold of participation and fostering
informed, quality discussion in citizen participation.

two ways. The first is the "small government" approach:sole provider of public services. With good policy as afoundation and solid infrastructure as a backbone, it should
encourage civil society and companies to provide public
services and build a civic tech ecosystem. The second isthe "open government" approach: The government, as oneof many stakeholders collaborating with civil society on

an equal basis, should open up governance processes andcollaborate with civil society on an equal basis to reformthem, allowing new and old mechanisms to be brought
together.

69

Taiwan Open Government Report

Conclusions

5

Final Note
When President Obama proposed putting open government into practice, the technology communities
were full of excitement, which drove the government technology boom. Two years later, the US led theestablishment of the OGP, promoting the idea to countries around the world. However, looking back at
this time in 2017, international politics has gone through dramatic changes. Trump's disregard for open

government policies, successful dis-information campaign that led to Brexit, and fake news campaigns

affecting elections in many countries seem like a slap in the face to those who are passionate about
open government.

What about Taiwan? After the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the then-KMT government started to makesmall changes. However, after the change in government and the DPP came to power in 2016, thedevelopment of open government seems to have cooled down. There is no high-level plan on open
data, citizen participation has lost steam, civic tech has stagnated at the experimental stage, and there
is no tangible impact of open government to be seen. "Open government," apart from being the petphrase of all politicians, is but an unfamiliar and empty term to the public.

In this process of accumulating expectation and disappointment, we cannot help but wonder: are we in
the right direction? Do the tiny and grassroots attempts of political "disturbances" have any meaning?
Even though we walk in anxiety and uncertainty, there are a few things we are still sure of.
We know that open government should not be old wine in a new bottle. It is neither an upgradedversion of e-government nor is it a new package for deliberative democracy. In the previous chapters,

we discussed the core elements of open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration,
and analyzed the complex issues involved in each of them. There is no one solution for all. The issues
cannot be simplified and every stage has to be handled with care.

We also know that open government is not simply a technological reform. Digitalization is not the
only answer. Open government has to do with politics, with participation, and with the relationshipbetween people and power. Technology can be a tool but how the tool is used and what impact it will
have depends on human operation, thinking, and judgment.

Finally, we know that open government cannot be a fight outside the institution and we cannot wait
for institutional reform to happen internally. Open government requires collaboration inside and out,

and all parties need to make an effort. Open government does not have a big enemy to defeat on its
way. What it needs is for every individual in the government, in corporations, or in communities to seethemselves as citizens and use their skills to seek out future directions and answers, together.

Taiwan Open Government Report70Reference
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