Audrey Tang: I’ve been less busy this year compared to the last year. Last year I wake up 7:00 AM talking to the people from Northern and South America from the Eastern Time Zone. I go quite late talking to European and African people.

Audrey Tang: Now, our model is generally well known, so there’s less pressure on my time.

Sean Moss-Pultz: That’s interesting. Is it well known and people want to emulate it, people are adopting it?

Audrey Tang: There are parts, like wear a mask to protect your own face against your own hands. That part actually, the idea we’re spreading, it’s spreading. The cue spokesdog, it’s only emulated in places. The daily live press conference and the hotline, that get emulated. The ask-a-scientist portal, chatbots and so on.

Audrey Tang: There are also parts that are, frankly speaking, hard to emulate, like their national health IC card. That’s maybe prepare it in anticipation for SARS 3.0.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Which seems like it’s happening now.

Audrey Tang: …2.5 beta, maybe.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I want to ask three things.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Sean Moss-Pultz: First is, I want to give you an update. I wouldn’t expect talking about financial stuff, but I need to correct something. Last time I came, I told you that we got money from NDF. What we got was the verbal agreement to invest, but then the terms that was agreed upon changed. Long story short, I wasn’t able to sign the agreement. I just wanted…

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Sean Moss-Pultz: For the record…

Audrey Tang: For the auto-correct…

Sean Moss-Pultz: Christmas Eve, I got documents from some other investors that I could sign. That got us the money so we can keep going. I’ll go back to NDF later, maybe the next round. I just wasn’t able to close it, so I wanted to let you know.

Audrey Tang: That sounds good.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Berkley was also a struggle. We did a pilot with 3,000 students. It was really exciting. Then everything stopped because they couldn’t go back to school. Everything got super locked down. We have all of this COVID stuff pending. Not that we want another strand to come back, but we’re using this technology for other stuff. I’ll tell you in a second.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The Berkeley students seemed to really like it. Of course, the faculty we were working with, they really liked it. I have no idea when the US will reactivate this kind of thing. Everybody is so fatigued. There was these starts and stops and starts and stops. It was very expensive, the pilot. That’s 2020. [laughs] Maybe you tell them we’re still struggling with III.

Vivian Chen: [non-English speech]

Audrey Tang: Mind if I still answer in English?

Vivian Chen: Sure.

Audrey Tang: OK. You were talking about a four-year plan from the III.

Vivian Chen: Yeah, there is going to be a four-year plan with III. It’s going to be something about biomedical data and the management of those data. With stuck, was that, and can I get a reply from…

Audrey Tang: Stuck waiting for the Ministry of Health and Welfare or stuck within the III?

Vivian Chen: Stuck within Triple-I.

Audrey Tang: Oh, within the Triple-I.

Vivian Chen: Yeah. They say that, once they got further information, they would get back to us. We keep following up with them, but the result is that we didn’t get anything updated from them. It was just stopped. We couldn’t get more information.

Audrey Tang: Did they indicate whether this is a potential case within the Triple-I with the data they already got, or does it require new data collected?

Vivian Chen: New data. We’re going to work hospitals or other institutions…

Audrey Tang: Right, the Taobao bank or whatever.

Vivian Chen: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: I know how it’s going there. I’m connected to the case.

Vivian Chen: We didn’t get more information. They didn’t get back to us directly. We have to go to them for information, but they couldn’t get us more information, how we are not participating anymore or how can we help out. If we have any connection to help out, no, they didn’t…

Audrey Tang: No, I think because this is new, they’ve not been collected or even if it’s new old data, it was collected under a different consent form. In order for it to be used the way that, as I gather, III is going to try out with their technology, they have to go back and re-gather the consent. That’s a time-consuming process.

Audrey Tang: The people in-charge of this re-acquiring or re-getting consent are doing so. It’s just a process that takes time. Until the time in around which that new informed consent process is finished, I don’t think III or the Ministry of Health and Welfare have more data than they already have.

Audrey Tang: The choices now is either to work with data that’s already there and is clear of the consent requirement. Those data are going to be less significant like the mask donation data, [laughs] or with the actual data. By that actual data, I think the initial cohort, even if it’s of small sample, they still take some time to gather the consent.

Audrey Tang: It will not get postponed indefinitely. [laughs] They’re just rolling out the process now.

Vivian Chen: As what you know, they are now getting consent from Taobao bank or is your…?

Audrey Tang: That’s the idea. They’ve found voluntary institutions including hospital that participates in the Taobao bank project. I’m just saying that it’s a process that’s well-defined, but because it’s well-defined, there’s also a lot of steps to go through for each and every person to re-give their consent and also understanding what they are consenting into.

Audrey Tang: It’s more like a popular science problem than anything else. I need to know what sort of data coalition or data collaborative that I’m going to send my data to. Until such a time where it could be explained in a way that each lay person participating in that consent structure can understand very well, they’re not going to give their consent that easily.

Audrey Tang: When I say it’s time-consuming process, I don’t mean that it’s running serially like each person and then the next person it’s running parallelly. Again, this is more of a communication issue than anything else.

Sean Moss-Pultz: We should be patient and email them every couple of months…

Audrey Tang: That’s the wisest. Also, maybe you can prototype the technology, I don’t know, less consent requirement data, that is to say, something that’s more open. I mean, the entire Civil IoT infrastructure, ci.taiwan.gov.tw set-up explicitly so that we can aggregate all the non-privacy related data in one place. That’s got to account for something.

Audrey Tang: Recently, there’s a presidential hackathon that uses the weather data to calculate heat damage likelihood and remind people to drink more water. It’s, in a sense, also preventative, precision health. That requires only working with entirely non-privacy related data.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Cool. That’s helpful.

Vivian Chen: There’s another project I was going to give you update on. We have been working with DTA, Digital Transformation Association.

Audrey Tang: Of course, great people.

Vivian Chen: They are helping us to connect with New Haven, CT. They are thinking about the gathering a project with three startups to help up New Haven, CT with a smart medicine project.

Audrey Tang: That’s awesome.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Did you meet Sam?

Vivian Chen: Samantha?

Audrey Tang: Which Sam?

Sean Moss-Pultz: Samantha. She’s part of the team.

Audrey Tang: I think so.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I think she’s from Boston, where she’s been back. She’s one of the Taiwanese that went over to Boston, that was there, that did all kind of amazing talented stuff.

Audrey Tang: [non-English speech]

Vivian Chen: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: We’re talking about some person.

Sean Moss-Pultz: She’s been crazy helpful.

Audrey Tang: I don’t know her in person as a friend. I know about her work.

Sean Moss-Pultz: She’s really good, if you could meet her. Good.

Vivian Chen: If the plan goes well, we’re going to work with a hospital in New Haven, CT. They will be helping us on collecting data. There’s going to be another startup for data analysis. We will be the one for management, and there’s going to be another one for hardware.

Audrey Tang: That’s awesome. I’m going actually to meet Amira Yahyaoui this Friday on a press conference about Asia Pacific Social Innovation Summit, that’s taking place, I think, April 10 or something, in Bentel in New Delhi City.

Audrey Tang: We’re going to highlight this sort of cross-sectoral collaborations for public good alongside the Asia Pacific Social Innovation Partnership Award and things like that. There’s going to be a big push on this. The summit’s theme this year, it’s called Invest Asia. Calling for more purpose-led, purpose-driven investments into somewhat risky but still-worth-pursuing startup ideas.

Audrey Tang: That is going to be of benefit to not just this generation but the next. I think that’s going to be this year’s major push. Very nice that you’ve already got contact there.

Vivian Chen: It would be nice. Our main contact is with Wu Ming-ji.

Audrey Tang: He is the person that led the drafting of national social innovation plan, as head of the small and medium enterprise agency.

Vivian Chen: He used to work for central government?

Audrey Tang: This place was part of his work.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Wow.

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Sean Moss-Pultz: I really liked this place. I think this is really special, did a good job.

Audrey Tang: Very capable person.

Sean Moss-Pultz: That’s really cool. Now I’m going to throw a tangent.

Audrey Tang: Yay, a tangent. [laughs]

Sean Moss-Pultz: I’ll just show you. It’s always easy to just show your stuff. We’re making a Bitcoin wallet.

Audrey Tang: Yay.

Sean Moss-Pultz: It’s a full node crypto wallet. It’s really three things all in one. We give you your own full node so you’re like a true peer in the network.

Audrey Tang: But not on this phone?

Sean Moss-Pultz: In the cloud.

Sean Moss-Pultz: There’s an app on the phone, your own node in the cloud. We have a P2P contact list that uses DIDs, and then a backup system that uses a social key recovery. If I lose my phone, friends can help look up. The longer vision of this wallet, the name we gave it is the same name as the health stuff. It’s called Autonomy.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The vision of this is that we’re going to go with Bitcoin, which is per kilobyte the most expensive data, probably, most valuable data per kilobyte, maybe.

Audrey Tang: In terms of the values.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Right.

Sean Moss-Pultz: People really have trouble with private keys, even bitcoiners. There was a “New York Times” article this morning about how they keep coming up every time the price goes up.

Audrey Tang: I’m aware of that, yes.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Hopefully not personally aware of it. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I throw away my private keys to my Bitcoin wallet.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The longer-term vision of this is that not just your money and your identity but you have all the personal data as well under your own full node that’s controllable. The architecture we have is everything is multi-sig. Any transaction that happens, your node and your phone are both signing.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I’ll show you really quick. It has a phone book. Vivian, I can pay her. This uses the W3C DIDs. I want to ask questions about that in a second.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Sean Moss-Pultz: We’ve basically taken the full power of a full node and all of the things that make it hard for everyday people to use like Bitcoin addresses, things like that, we’ve done it. All the messaging, I sent her a note that uses Signal’s protocol.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Then the node itself, we’re not quite there yet but when we launch it soon, the node will be using Tor. It’s super-good security privacy, but the main thing is it’s easy to use.

Audrey Tang: We’re seeing the legendary processing speed of the Bitcoin.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The Bitcoin network.

Sean Moss-Pultz: It is fast compared to banks.

Audrey Tang: I know the arguments.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The people we built this with is Blockchain Commons, I think you know Christopher Allen.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Christopher Allen and Joe, they were the ones that worked on the W3C’s DID standard. This is all public now. I can share it. They’re working with DHS in the US. DHS is wanting to use these verifiable credentials. They want to use DIDs because they don’t want a situation where the government is using technology that can be captured, like vendor lock-in.

Audrey Tang: I’m aware of that.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I’m wondering. Are there any interesting opportunities here, well, she’ll ask you about Bitcoin, but that’s probably more difficult, but around DIDs or around VCs?

Audrey Tang: With Triple-I DID, it’s a survey about it.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Oh, really?

Audrey Tang: There’s an internal research group. They’re probably not the same group that you were in contact with. There’s quite a few people working, understanding DIDs within the Triple-I that I know about. I’ve read their summary report. Broadly speaking, in Taiwan, the social sector is always of a higher legitimacy than either the economic or the governing sector of the private or public sector.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Explain what you mean, social sector?

Audrey Tang: Basically, I call this people-public-private partnership. People who run air boxes have more legitimacy than the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s just a fact. Then the EPA, they can’t beat the civil society. They must join them.

Audrey Tang: The public sector, once teaming with the social sector, then apply pressure to the economic sector to, for example, industrial parks, install those micro sensors for street lamps. Another good example is the people who go to the audits and office of the Control Yuan to get a campaign donation expenditure report.

Audrey Tang: It used to be only printed on paper based on Freedom of Information laws. Where we, as in the g0v community, run this CAPTCHA to re-digitize those paper records so that everybody can do analysis on campaign expenditure. Control Yuan said, “The social sector, you can’t trust their OCR” — Otaku character recognition.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, their CARL source OCR. I’m like, if you’re not going to trust our numbers, you’re going to publish your own numbers as open data. That’s the best way to clear up any errors or typos. They actually eventually worked with the legislature on that, and in 2018, published for the first time as open data. Again, public sector caving in to the demand of the social sector.

Audrey Tang: Then, we together applied pressure to Facebook saying, “For your political advertisement, you probably should publish this open under the advertisement library because campaign donation is only domestic.” Foreign people cannot donate. Through Facebook, we see that done in 2018. There’s a lot of foreign sponsorship for political campaigns.

Audrey Tang: For the 2020 election, Facebook eventually said face was the potential of social sanction. They said, “OK, we’re going to open up everything.”

Audrey Tang: For 2020, election there’s substantially less political manipulation of information, for using neutral term, from foreign interference when it comes to Facebook advertising. That’s, again, a social sector first, a people-public-private partnership.

Sean Moss-Pultz: We have focus on this then. This is really interesting.

Sean Moss-Pultz: How about VCs? Verified Credentials?

Audrey Tang: I know.

Sean Moss-Pultz: It’s super hard for me because, like VC and then Miami, I’ve been dealing with VCs for the last five years, and I’m just like, “These cannot be verifiable connections.”

Audrey Tang: That’s very funny. Well, we’re great friends with Saint Vincent and Grenadines.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Is there anything credentialing in the social sector that you’ve found interesting?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there’s a bit network called the Tao Coin for the people from Orchid Island that sparked a lot of conversation.

Vivian Chen: Tao Coin?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the Tao bit. It’s probably the earliest one. There’s countless forks and different inspired ideas from the Tao Coin. It’s issued for real in 2019. It’s an app, the Tao Passport app, that basically try to keep the consumption being friendly to the indigenous nation of Tao in the Orchid Island.

Audrey Tang: It’s more like a community currency, but also serves as a deed because only people who identify as a supporter of the Tao Indigenous Nation get to be authenticated within it. A lot of indigenous people saw this as a very interesting aspect of their national sovereignty, this kind of passport. They use the temp password, which is by definition a identity word.

Audrey Tang: Also many governments around the township level, also municipal level, civil and city level also issue their own coins, which are actually passports. This is also a deed thing because in Taiwan you either use your national IC cards for healthcare, which is the most centralized system ever.

Audrey Tang: If you are outside of the healthcare domain, because that card can only be used for writing by healthcare workers and for reading only by public service, will pre-registered with the National Health Insurance Agency. It’s forbidden for non-commercial use, basically that IC card.

Audrey Tang: All those different deed configuration focus on the niche whereas niche is larger than non-healthcare [laughs] parts of the transactions.

Sean Moss-Pultz: That’s really cool. There’s a whole lot bunch of these things.

Vivian Chen: Is there a case of like city level that is using this card?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think Taitung is the more prominent if you get their app called TT Push.

Sean Moss-Pultz: TT push?

Audrey Tang: TT push, [laughs] yeah. Taitung Push.

Audrey Tang: They are quite visible, but many other cities are emulating that as well.

Sean Moss-Pultz: What’s the response from the people? People like it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s fun, like Pokémon Go, right? I collect them all, I mean the TT coins. [laughs] Also, I think it’s ecosystem building because it’s coupled with this like V people. In Mandarin its called [non-English speech] . That’s because in our national ID numbering scheme, actually it’s the same for ARC holders, the first letter is the place who issued you the ID card.

Audrey Tang: Mine begins with an A because I was born in Taipei City and registered here.

Sean Moss-Pultz: What is OC?

Audrey Tang: OC, [laughs] O, oh, you have not updated your ARC net.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I guess not, yeah.

Audrey Tang: It’s another topic that, yeah, we keep going on tangents.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Outer space, maybe?

Audrey Tang: No, Y is outer space.

Sean Moss-Pultz: …could be ocean.

Audrey Tang: Y is the Yangming Mountains, but we’re no longer using that letter. O is Hsinchu City. V is Taitung. The V people means people who are registering their birth certificate or their residential certificate in Taitung City.

Audrey Tang: Their numbering would begin with a V, but they’re going on the branding exercise that V also for virtual. You can be virtually a Taitungnese, even if you were not born in Taitung. [laughs] That’s pretty smart.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I love that. That’s so cool.

Vivian Chen: That’s so Taitungnese residency.

Audrey Tang: That’s Taitungnese residency, essentially.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I want that. Taitung is…

Sean Moss-Pultz: That’s where the waves are.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. You’ve got to be a virtual V person.

Sean Moss-Pultz: This is really fun. I think people would like this.

Vivian Chen: How is it accessible? Is it really easy for people to use?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you just download the app, TT Push.

Vivian Chen: OK.

Sean Moss-Pultz: How are they doing this? Are these NFTs, or are these credentials that are getting attached? Are they blockchain-based? Are they just signatures? What is this?

Audrey Tang: I think they outsource it to a developer that is currently still using centralized ledgers.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I think we can work with that. Help with that.

Audrey Tang: Maybe you could.

Sean Moss-Pultz: That would be so cool.

Audrey Tang: Technically, this is not a cryptocurrency.

Sean Moss-Pultz: But the idea is perfect. It’s exactly…

Audrey Tang: The idea is crypto inspired. The Tao Coin is genuinely crypto.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I like this. I need to get this V thing?

Audrey Tang: If you love Taitung, might as well get it.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I love Taitung.

Vivian Chen: You get to go to Taitung.

Sean Moss-Pultz: The most beautiful part of Taiwan, if it just wasn’t so far to get. I would be there all the time. It’s such a great place.

Audrey Tang: I know, I really like the place as well.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I guess it’s rare that you can have beautiful ocean and beautiful mountains, and you can see it right there, both. You have the mountains behind you and the ocean in front of you.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Sean Moss-Pultz: It’s unbelievable. What sort of things are top of mind for you in 2021, maybe around connecting people, social things, and government? Is there anything that you could share? What’s going to be exciting, you think?

Audrey Tang: We’re going to announce with the parliament very soon the open government national plan. If you search for open government, it’s going to be the first hit. I’m quite excited about that because this is for the first time through vTaiwan platform, the parliament is also making their own commitment for transparency, participation in accountability, and inclusion.

Audrey Tang: Previously, this system more administration led process. Parliament, all the four major parties are on board. This will make a political climate where this is just Taiwan. Taiwan is just about democracy, open governments, and linking to the world. According to president-elect, I get to use this word now, Biden…

Sean Moss-Pultz: Be careful.

Sean Moss-Pultz: It’s so embarrassing, seriously.

Audrey Tang: When we occupied the parliament, it was non-violent, but anyway.

Audrey Tang: Anyway.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I got to show her this picture.

Vivian Chen: Oh, the one comparing Taiwan occupying parliament.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Yeah, I’ve shared it with…Did you see this picture? You’ve seen this one, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I did see this one.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I translated it for my friends in the US.

Audrey Tang: That’s because these people were non-violent. That was the whole point.

Vivian Chen: I love it.

Audrey Tang: Sorry. I’m saying that if the government and the administration pushed for the open government agenda, bearing the people in the parliament, if they resisted, then tension will arise. I think the tension is a result for good because the parliament is also committing to open parliament. We’re probably going to do a joint press conference in a month or two.

Audrey Tang: The President-Elect, Biden, who promised, in part of his platform, the inaugural democracy summit in the US within the first year of his presidency. I think that’s a great opportunity for us to show how we countered a pandemic was no lockdown, and countered the infodemic with no takedown. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: That’s going to be very exciting as Taiwan’s contribution to the world.

Sean Moss-Pultz: I used up your time but it was great. We will look into these. I like these small groups that are creating their own identities. Thank you for sharing. Bottom up, this is really, really cool. Thank you so much. It was great to see you again.

Audrey Tang: Any time soon.

Sean Moss-Pultz: Yeah, all right.

Vivian Chen: Cheers.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.