Audrey Tang: How are you doing in Singapore?

Radhika Agarwal: Good. It’s been nice to be back here. I’m sure you’ve seen the news about New York these days. It’s pretty crazy times there. I lived in Singapore when SARS was a thing here 18 years ago.

Radhika Agarwal: Being back in Singapore, you can see that it’s a country that obviously will also have struggles with the virus, but here it feels like things are more being controlled as changes happen, as opposed to in the US, where currently it feels like no one really knows how to get things under control and when that will happen.

Audrey Tang: We heard the local clinics are really empowered to be a trusted place instead of a few large hospitals. That’s really commendable.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah, definitely. How are things going in Taiwan? I remember the last time we spoke you said that things were partially under control or at least it felt…

Audrey Tang: There’s no exponential growth. There’s no overt panic. People get masks quite easily. Just finished the first round of mask online ordering system which delivers to convenience stores. It’s going pretty well. We’re still in the double digits per day, mostly case from abroad.

Radhika Agarwal: That sounds great. Given the rise in cases in the UK and the US, I definitely think in the last few days in Singapore it’s risen a little bit. Then of course, hopefully these things settle down. It’s nice to know that here people are still going outside and you can still go for a run in these kinds of things.

Radhika Agarwal: I was actually in Copenhagen as well a few days ago now, I guess. I left right before they shut the border. For a few days, I felt like I was running to different parts of the world figuring out where I would end up being based.

Radhika Agarwal: Maybe since you mentioned we have about 40 minutes, I was curious how the work that you’ve been doing has shifted based on the coronavirus. I read online that there were some different platforms you were working on.

Audrey Tang: Here, the you is definitely plural. I personally work only 24 hours a day. [laughs] There’s a limited amount of hours in a day. Truth to be told the civic tech community has really rose up to the challenge. Just on the pharmacy, mask rationing alone, there’s more than 100 different applications.

Audrey Tang: There’s voice assistance, there’s chatbox, there’s all sort of different things that quells the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, not only around mass distribution. Of course, as the professional pharmacists are distributing those masks, they also deliver a much-needed education about hand sanitation. All the masks are useless without a good hand sanitation habit and so on.

Audrey Tang: I think the pedagogy of the teaching the good habits to work around the various inherent limitations of human beings, such as the inability to spot people’s reflex to touch their mouth or the social distancing, it’s all very counterintuitive. It really needs just constant education and interaction opportunities with robots, and with the online knowledge materials, with visualizations, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Just last Saturday, the g0v community had a more than 100 people large gathering, but purely online. People were in satellite places, had a hackathon together. We order pizza separately but ate in the same time. [laughs] The social distancing doesn’t get too much in the way of the community spirit.

Audrey Tang: People from Japan, Code for Japan. people from Korea, all joined us on a hackathon. It’s such a success that we’re looking to repeat the experience more in the future.

Radhika Agarwal: I see. Was that just a bunch of people on like Zoom platformers or Skype, where it was a bunch of individuals on stream?

Audrey Tang: It’s accurate actually. We have a very, very low latency YouTube streaming, domain architect, which goes by the name of Roni, was one of the very early g0v core project owners. He basically devised this way, where people can just randomly type questions and so on Slack, and it will just float past this live-streamed video.

Audrey Tang: There’s a tour where people…so people pre-record the three keyword to introduce themselves. For example, my three keywords were Taiwan Can Help, or Health4All, and these things.

Audrey Tang: The other thing that goes around here is after the three keywords is heard and all the project pitch is done, each project is assigned a HackMD, which is like Google Doc, which associates with a Jutsu, which is like a Zoom channel. Just like open space technology, you can walk from a corner to a corner.

Audrey Tang: Each of these online places is a corner. There are people who tour, newcomers, on the main YouTube channel to switch between those dozen or so different project corners, to get people a sneak peek into what people are talking about or working on so that if you feel interested, you can then drop by that channel and join that corner. It’s quite sophisticated.

Radhika Agarwal: It’s interesting. I think that that event that you’re mentioning, is actually in the realm of social technology and bringing people together. I think what’s quite interesting about pandemics are these types of situations. I think it’s very revelatory, in terms of what systems are broken or what things are not operating the way you think they are.

Radhika Agarwal: I think one of the interesting ironies that we’re seeing now is with Instagram and these types of platforms, that are supposed to be social platforms. I think many are saying about how isolating it is, even in this time of social distancing. It becomes quite apparent of how things are working. That’s really interesting.

Radhika Agarwal: I know that when we met last time, you had mentioned briefly some of the initiatives that your team is going to be focusing on in the coming years. One of the ones you mentioned was not overhaul the websites, but thinking about how the websites become more accessible to migrants.

Radhika Agarwal: I was just wondering…we didn’t talk too much at dinner. What are some of the other things that you’re excited to be working on or are top of mind for you in the coming months?

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, I think I mentioned the RAY Project, which is Rescue Action by Youth Project, which is about young user experience designers, usually in graduate school, but we hire undergrad too, as a two months intern to look systematically at some of the highest-profile websites and services, and do this design overhaul of it. That’s what we mentioned.

Audrey Tang: There’s also, of course, the Presidential Hackathon, which is about a disclosed sectoral collaboration. We’re now brainstorming about a fast track version of the Presidential Hackathon. We don’t have an English name for it actually. We currently call it the 防疫松. Literally, the counter epidemic hackathon, which doesn’t have a ring to it.

Radhika Agarwal: It’s still pretty good.

Audrey Tang: Right. Maybe we call it Coronathon or something.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah. That’s true. I can just see the branding now. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Suggestions are welcome. It’s like a fast-tracked Presidential Hackathon, where we have two or three weeks of a Polis, which I showed you or at least described last time. It’s about getting the rough consensus of what’s the more pertinent issues to be addressed.

Audrey Tang: The idea is that we interview maybe five or seven top experts currently working on the CECC, the Center for Epidemic Control, asking if you don’t have any technology or budget constraints, then what is the single tool or the single idea that you think if implemented well, in a rapid fashion, would significantly reduce the RO, or something like that.

Audrey Tang: We get those five or seven ideas online, we ask people to upload or download them, and if you are a frontline medical worker and you have a better idea to be implemented, then you can just contribute. After two weeks or three, we will have a rough consensus on what is the most legit innovations that is interesting during this coronavirus session.

Audrey Tang: Chances are that A, it will be useful internationally as well. B, it will test the constitutional limit around privacy. [laughs]

Radhika Agarwal: Yes.

Audrey Tang: We were thinking about also having a regulatory impact assessment team in an ongoing fashion. For example, people will probably say, “I want a tool that can just download all my Google Maps data, or my Facebook data, or my Instagram data, and tell me how likely I am within close encounter of somebody who has been known as having been infected so that I can better prepare myself.”

Audrey Tang: That’s a very simple idea. It could be implemented in three ways. One is that the government can have all the data, and then you just go to a government website. You key in your easy card number or whatever, and then it gives you the thing.

Audrey Tang: That means the government is the top aggregator of all the conceptual data, which creates privacy nightmares by the Taiwan standards. Maybe by Singapore standards, it’s fine. [laughs]

Radhika Agarwal: It’s different.

Audrey Tang: Or of course, each individual vendors can agree on a data exchange format, so that you send requests separably to dozens of us, and that only gets you back a hash or something, and then you compute the hash yourself offline. That’s the second model. Or people can voluntarily join a mutual or collaborative, and people joining that data union or something like that.

Audrey Tang: We talked a little bit about that before. We’ll willingly share their private movement information, but only with people in the same cooperative, or in the same family, and so on. That’s a social sector perspective. Of course, the first one is more constitutionally troubling. The second one is slightly better. The third one, of course, can even be run in normal times.

Audrey Tang: The regulatory assessment team’s idea is just for each idea to triage the possible solution landscape into red, yellow, and green lights respectively. After two or three weeks of gathering of the more pertinent questions to be asked, then we just label three or five of them saying, “OK. Now we’re asking for solutions.”

Audrey Tang: People have two weeks or three weeks to start jamming on the solutions. Again, they have to be open-source, because, for all non-green light solutions, they are going to be run on real private data. If they’re not open source, all sorts of troubles will occur. We’re thinking about launching this in a few week. That’s another new topic that haven’t risen up when we talked in New York.

Radhika Agarwal: That sounds fascinating, as I was wondering what new opportunities for innovation come out of this type of challenging situation. I know we had spoken when we were both in New York, about how I have a particular interest, I guess, from a long time, in these types of topics, if that’s not weird to say I guess, because the topic is a pandemic.

Radhika Agarwal: I remember we didn’t talk too much about it when we met last. As mentioned, Audrey, it would be great to find a way to collaborate. I guess, part of why I wanted to have this call, which is to chat about some of the things that you have going on, understand also a bit more about…I know it is a part of the Taiwanese government, so I’m not sure how much collaboration is done with international.

Radhika Agarwal: It sounds like you guys are very open to that. I was hoping just to chat about what you guys have going on, and then if you see ways that we could maybe work together, and maybe brainstorm what that could look like.

Audrey Tang: Our office is pretty well connected because the initial founders came already, I think I mentioned that before, abroad from the design community. We currently have two colleagues in UK, and also quite a few international visiting researchers as well over the years.

Audrey Tang: With Singapore actually, Singapore GovTech, we connected very early on, both on law and consultation. Actually, they also develop a mass rationing system online. We learned copiously from their design and experience. We didn’t reuse any code, but it was a early inspiration. I think on the GovTech front, we’re very well connected.

Audrey Tang: Now, wearing my other hat, the civic tech front, I think the g0v community is already very international. They have a dedicated English channel and even Japanese channel, with automated translations and things like that. If you joined g0v Slack, that’s join.g0v.tw, then you’ll find plenty of people who don’t speak Mandarin.

Audrey Tang: I think it’s a very inclusive community. Especially nowadays, they’re working on your favorite topic, pandemic. [laughs] If you joined a COVID channel, you will see plenty of international participants as well.

Radhika Agarwal: Got you. Those are international participants, not in the hackathon themselves, right?

Audrey Tang: There’s a lot of those ones, but not from Singapore though. As I mentioned, stay at home hackathon last Saturday, I think Hong Kong, and Korea, and Japan did join. I didn’t remember seeing a Singapore satellite office. That would be fun, if you’re going to stay in Singapore for a bit, to get in touch with GovTech and see what they’re doing nowadays.

Radhika Agarwal: That would be really interesting. Do you know if it would be possible to be connected? I’m not sure that I know anyone in the local community here.

Audrey Tang: In GovTech, I think they have a very beautiful website. GovTech Singapore.

Radhika Agarwal: I’m looking that up right now.

Audrey Tang:                              www.tech.gov.sg                                                  .

Radhika Agarwal: Let’s see. Do you know if there’s anyone in the office in particular, that you think would be good to reach out to?

Audrey Tang: I know a few people working on blockchain, distributed ledger technologies. Crucially, I don’t know any designers.

Radhika Agarwal: No worries.

Audrey Tang: I’m not sure that will be the right point of contact for you.

Radhika Agarwal: No problem. I’m just looking. I’ll have to look into that a bit later, maybe. That makes sense. The other question I had, Audrey, with the exception of these types of events where people can join in different teams, do you work with consultants and things like that, that are not from Taiwan PDIS, or on projects that are very much related to?

Audrey Tang: Only international researchers, like they have a thesis. They pair us say, with the major city, or they want to make a social anthropology, cultural anthropology account of civic hackers, and so on, or they have a idea about how public administration cannot innovate, and here to be proven wrong, and so on.

Audrey Tang: Usually, if they are in a field study, they go to the Social Innovation Lab, which is part of our office of a resident researcher. The fact is that it’s not a privilege, because everybody is an open space part. Everybody can go here and reside.

Radhika Agarwal: I see.

Audrey Tang: It’s popular with researchers, working on social sector and public sector collaboration.

Radhika Agarwal: Got you.

Radhika Agarwal: One of the other ideas I had, I know I mentioned to you that I had been talking to the design group within the Mayor’s office. This is just an idea I’m thinking of right now, so it’s not fully formed. I am thinking, as you mentioned, that there are these Presidential Hackathons that are happening, and new ideas coming out in terms of systems that are working really well in Taiwan.

Radhika Agarwal: It could be interesting to explore how that translates to some sort of collaboration maybe even between those two offices. Of course, that is stalled currently given a lot of the other things that are happening, but I wonder if maybe there is a collaboration there.

Radhika Agarwal: As well, to talk about how some of the practices that are being developed for the Presidential Hackathon could be really relevant to a city, specifically like New York, that’s going through a lot of different changes right now and likely will be for a few months.

Audrey Tang: Our main connection is through BetaNYC, which is like g0v, but in New York City, is a big design, technology, and data community. Elizabeth Barry or Liz Barry, one of the co-founders of Public Lab, one of the first people, actually the first person, to introduce the Taiwan methodology to the international audience, is also a good friend.

Audrey Tang: BetaNYC and Liz Barry’s team, also the Polis team are our main New York friends. We also have a PDIS colleague currently studying in Yale, Avross Hsiao.

Audrey Tang: There are also g0v community contributors in US East Coast, which is New York and DC, where they also run the hackathons themselves, and we help promote those ideas.

Audrey Tang: While it’s not what we call first-track diplomacy like MOU between New York City and Taiwan or Taipei City, it is just people traveling around with experiences dipping in in both communities. We have quite a few of these people as well.

Radhika Agarwal: What are some of the other communities? I know you mentioned the Singapore GovTech and then BetaNYC. What are some of the other communities that would be interesting to look into?

Audrey Tang: There is not so much a design thing, unless you consider participatory mechanism design as design, which I guess is design. It’s the RadicalxChange community which does the Singapore chapter. It is mostly about a set of labs that use mechanism design, the idea to, for example, rethink how taxation works, rethink how spectrum allocation works, and so on.

Audrey Tang: It’s more wider swathe, broader swathe design, but because there’s a strong link between the RadicalxChange community and the Ethereum community, most of the too-crazy-to-be-realized designs ends up realized in Ethereum anyway as GetCoins and so on. That’s another community that I am personally interested in, but it’s less related to my day job.

Radhika Agarwal: That sounds good, just open up the website. That sounds really interesting. It sounds good. Then there’s another…I was wondering…Let me see if I can find it. I think in the US, there was also another design lab called, I think, the GovLab in New York. I was wondering if you know anything about that lab, the work they do.

Audrey Tang: I’m on their international advisory board, so I know something about it. We collaborated – and by we I mean my day job, PDIS – I think three, four of us, collaborated on the CrowdLaw Playbook. The first banner is called CrowdLaw for Congress, which just launched. We collaborated on the playbook part of it. The other part is the data collaborative, which, of course, Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan is a Data Collaborative.

Audrey Tang: That’s the two endeavors in GovLab that I’m more connected to. There’s other parts around innovation labs and so on that I’m still maybe being interviewed or building connections, but CrowdLaw folks and Data Collaborative folks, we have pretty close relationship.

Audrey Tang: When I visited Beth Novak, we had a public conversation together talking about how vTaiwan works, but also about how to merge vTaiwan into their playbook. This is the interview in the CrowdLaw Playbook. Here is the Beth Novak conversation. It’s a public event that I had when we get interviewed, kind of we co-interviewed each other when I visited New York.

Radhika Agarwal: That’s great. In terms of some of the work that you’re doing aside from your day job, Audrey, what’s most exciting for you right now with all of the extra time that you currently have?

Audrey Tang: My copious extra time.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah. It’s too much extra time.

Audrey Tang: With 24 hours a day and 24 hours working on the day job, I have a copious imaginary amount of hours/

Audrey Tang: Mostly nowadays, I work on enabling connections that bring the latest innovations such as the stay-at-home hackathon through the GovLab tech scene so that we keep our GovTech firmly atop the civic tech stack, instead of working against the civic tech stack, so that the government isn’t seen as poaching the best and brightest from the civic tech into GovTech.

Audrey Tang: That’s something that the Singapore GovTech is currently dealing with as a branding issue. They recruit the best talents, so they no longer work in private sector. We’re saying, well, it’s fine for you to work in the private sector. If you open-source your methodologies, we adapt, we collaborate with you, but we don’t poach you into the public sector. A bit of cultural difference. That’s a cultural hack.

Audrey Tang: That’s something between my day job and my copious spare time. I don’t really have time for other pet projects at the current coronavirus situation.

Radhika Agarwal: When we met last summer as well, I shared a bit about my background and some of the things that I’m working on. I was wondering, if you had an ideal case in your mind of something that we would work on together.

Audrey Tang: Are you in Singapore for an extended amount of time?

Radhika Agarwal: Potentially. I think I’ll likely be here at least until things calm down in the States. It’s a bit hard to say, but it could be…

Audrey Tang: Next week.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah, or it could be a few weeks. It could be…I think for me right now, it’s also just figuring out. Of course, I think for everyone, the plans have changed quite a bit. Initially, I was actually supposed to be teaching a workshop in the middle of the rain forest next month in Costa Rica, as well as a few other projects.

Radhika Agarwal: I think right now, I’m trying to manage the different things that I’m involved in, and figuring out where it makes the most sense to be based with everything. I am quite flexible regardless of whether I was in Singapore or New York.

Radhika Agarwal: It seems like remote work is going to be the main avenue for a while globally. If an interesting project or collaboration comes up in Singapore, I’m open to staying here for a few weeks or a few months. Of course, if things calm down in the States, I’m also open to heading back.

Audrey Tang: For me, there’s quite a bit of difference, because with New York, we can’t Skype very often.

Radhika Agarwal: Time difference. Once again, something slightly different.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. If you are based in Singapore, then there’s a lot of synchronous. If I knew that you were in Singapore in a stay-at-home hackathon, I might have invited you to join, because it’s an all-day-long event. Asking someone in New York to do that would just be cruel. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: In Singapore, it’s just like asking you to commit a whole Saturday, it sounds reasonable.

Radhika Agarwal: Exactly. That’s true.

Audrey Tang: Just some community events, especially the upcoming Coronathon if it’s a thing. I’ll properly invite you to give some ideas as well as see if you can see if some people in Singapore have some ideas. Truth be told, a lot of the data that we’re going to open up as synthetic data sets are going to be in Mandarin.

Audrey Tang: People in Singapore who at least have a friend who can read a little bit of Mandarin is at an advantage when attempting to tackle those issues or come up with better ideas. That’s a natural opportunity for you to meet people who share your enthusiasm in this topic. [laughs] Something like this together.

Audrey Tang: If you manage to find a GovTech design contact, also feel free to include me in the loop, because I do have a lot of interesting things that I’m willing to try together with the Singaporean GovTech. Previously, there’s no problem that brings the two jurisdictions together.

Audrey Tang: It’s always like we solve something that’s not a problem yet for them, or they solve something that’s not a problem for us, but coronavirus changed that. [laughs]

Radhika Agarwal: Actually, a friend of mine was saying that she thinks coronavirus might be one of the first issues that the world has had to unite against since World War II, which I think was an interesting analogy.

Audrey Tang: It’s a climate emergency red.

Radhika Agarwal: It’s true, but unfortunately, it seems people have selective attention for what they decide they want to care about or deem an emergency.

Audrey Tang: Also, fighting coronavirus, there’s instant gratification, because you can just see flattening the curve happening on a day-to-day basis if you do something right, but for climate change, you have to wait quite a while for whatever you’re doing to have an effect on climate change. There is a shorter attention span topic to work on.

Radhika Agarwal: That’s true. As humans, we’ve only been shortening our attention spans and not doing the opposite. That’s always a fun problem.

Radhika Agarwal: Audrey, the question with the Coronathon is, one, do you know around when that might be? I know it’s still hypothetical.

Audrey Tang: As early as next week, maybe.

Radhika Agarwal: Oh.

Audrey Tang: But we don’t know. We just had a ideation session last night actually. Whether we’ll have budget and personnel for it will only be known maybe at a cabinet meeting tomorrow. It’s very early. Chances also are the cabinet meeting tomorrow will say it’s a great idea, but maybe not the most pressing thing to do. That’s also possible.

Audrey Tang: We won’t know until tomorrow, but I’ll keep you posted, and if there is a website, we’ll make sure that it’s bilingual, and if you see anything wrong with the English…

Radhika Agarwal: I’ll let you know.

Audrey Tang: You’ll let me know.

Radhika Agarwal: Sounds good. In terms of the teams for the Coronathon or the hackathon, is it individual participants are welcome, or is it mostly based by team? If by team, are there core skillsets that are…?

Audrey Tang: As I said, there’s two phases. One is the ideation phase, the first payment, where people discover the various important problems to solve. That part is purely individual.

Audrey Tang: When we narrow down on the three or five problems that we really want to solve…And by the way, there’s no prize money. The prize money is again, like Presidential Hackathon.

Audrey Tang: Instead, we do whatever it takes to make your idea real, I would say. It will require a team, obviously. That’s when we expect international participants to come in pre-formed teams.

Audrey Tang: If I make myself a free radical – pun intended – that one can [laughs] consult, then I’m sure that we can also make a bulletin board for something. There’s bound to be people who propose a good idea, but these ideas are not selected into the final ideas set. They become free radicals to join the solution teams for those ideas.

Radhika Agarwal: That makes sense.

Audrey Tang: Maybe we’ll have an address book or something like that. Yeah, this by itself is the social interaction design. At the end of it when we’re jamming together, it will be based roughly on the idea of the stay-at-home Hackathon with the live streaming, with the Zoom groups and things like that.

Audrey Tang: If you’re interested in the design of this very made-up [laughs] thing, then that’s possible as well. We can keep talking about that.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah. That sounds great. What I’ll do is after this call, I’ll go on the GovTech website. I don’t know if you think cold emailing would be effective for this idea?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it might be. I’m sure that nowadays they need all the help they can get.

Radhika Agarwal: [laughs] Sounds good. I’ll see if I can reach out to someone there, whether that’s LinkedIn or email, or something. I also know a colleague who graduated from CID last year. I think he works in the government here.

Radhika Agarwal: I might reach out to him and see if he’s interested in participating in something like this, and see if that might make sense. Let’s stay in touch about the Coronathon, if that’s the unofficial/official name.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Radhika Agarwal: I will keep you posted with…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I will call.

Radhika Agarwal: I’ll think about it. That’s the first [laughs] collaboration…

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Radhika Agarwal: …it’s the branding of this event. Yeah, let’s be in touch. I’ll keep you posted of how long I’m in Singapore, as mentioned. I don’t have a return ticket back. As long as there’s interesting work to be done here and things still feel quite crazy in New York, I will be here. Yeah, I would love to work with you on this and all of the meta and granular ways.

Audrey Tang: OK, awesome. We’ll make a transcript and once you’re done reviewing it, we’ll publish it. I imagine the published transcript itself may be useful when you’re sending things to GovTech and so on.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah, that would be great. When you said to loop you in, I mentioned that we had a phone call. I guess, how are you comfortable being referenced?

Audrey Tang: You can even link to the transcript.

Radhika Agarwal: Oh, OK. That sounds good.

Audrey Tang: The radical, transparent way.

Radhika Agarwal: Sounds good. I actually used that phrase in a very different context last night. I think I mentioned to you, I also advise different startups in different spaces.

Radhika Agarwal: They were talking about some of the challenges around creating collaborative environments for employees online. Radical transparency was, let’s just say, a very important theme that came up, to enable better collaboration.

Radhika Agarwal: Perfect. Audrey, I will let you go, because I’m sure you have…You know, obviously, copious free time. I don’t want to encroach upon that.

Audrey Tang: That’s very wise.

Radhika Agarwal: Yeah, it was great to catch up. Let’s keep in touch via email. I’ll let you know, I’ll send out some emails in the next day or two to people here, even in the group that you mentioned, the Radical…

Audrey Tang: …xChange.

Radhika Agarwal: RadicalxChange. Then yeah, see who I can get together and look forward to all of the things.

Audrey Tang: OK, awesome. Cheers.

Radhika Agarwal: [laughs] All right, I’ll see you later. Bye.

Audrey Tang: Bye.