Duncan Hewitt: Is it OK if I make some notes and maybe record?

Audrey Tang: Of course. We’re going to do the same. We will embargo the publishing until you do and we both get a chance to coedit.

Duncan Hewitt: Will you be publishing something as well? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I’ll be publishing all my interviews, actually, on the radical transparency website.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that how you do it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. This is how I do it. You can see that I’ve met with more than 4,700 people on over 1,000 occasions.

Duncan Hewitt: I hope that’s not 4,000 journalists. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Essentially, maybe a thousand journalists now.

Duncan Hewitt: A lot of it is with members of the public or…

Audrey Tang: Also, internal meetings. All the internal meetings that I chair, I also publish the entire transcript. I’m kind of a investigative journalist within the administration. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: It sounds like it. Actually, every word I say is going to be published, is it?

Audrey Tang: You can coedit. If you mention something anecdotal or whatever, you’re free to edit things out.

Duncan Hewitt: Maybe I better be careful [laughs] what I say.

Audrey Tang: No. It’s fine. It’s coedited before publishing. We always publish after you do.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s very kind. In theory, I might be trying to do an article for this for the BBC for a radio program, but that would be for sometime next week.

Audrey Tang: It’s up to you.

Duncan Hewitt: Should I let you approve what I put out?

Audrey Tang: No, not at all. It’s up to you.

Duncan Hewitt: I just want to make sure what the rules are here.

Audrey Tang: We relinquish all the copyright of every word I say.

Duncan Hewitt: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Do whatever.

Duncan Hewitt: They’re very precious, so it’s very kind of you. [laughs] Thank you so much. I’m sorry. I guess you’ve probably got better things you should be doing.

Audrey Tang: No.

Duncan Hewitt: How much of your time do you actually spend in your office? How much time do you manage to…?

Audrey Tang: To meet journalists? [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: No, just working in an office as opposed to be outside and doing different things.

Audrey Tang: This is actually the cabinet office, but this is my real office. This is the Social Innovation Lab, which I will visit after our meeting. This is where I usually work. Every Wednesday…

Duncan Hewitt: Where is that?

Audrey Tang: …everybody can visit me next to the Jian Guo Flower Market, the Da’An Central Park – it’s in No. 99, Section 3, Ren’ai Road – and bring with them their self-driving vehicles or whatever. It’s also a incubator, a sandbox for experimenting all sort of new social and digital technologies.

Audrey Tang: I’m here only actually every Thursday and Monday, by default. The other days of the week, I’m just touring around Taiwan. I just returned from Pingtung yesterday.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I ask you what you were doing in Pingtung…

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Duncan Hewitt: …meeting local people…

Audrey Tang: That’s right. This is the way I usually work. I go to the local people, meeting with local social entrepreneurs, co-ops, and so on, and focus on the issues that they care about.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just listening. I’m also facilitating conversation with five municipal offices, including the Social Innovation Lab, where 12 ministries send their section chief or higher to participate in this remote video conference with the local people setting an agenda.

Duncan Hewitt: How often do they do that kind of conference?

Audrey Tang: Every couple of weeks.

Duncan Hewitt: Sorry. From 12 ministries and departments?

Audrey Tang: From 12 ministries involved in the Social Innovation Action Plan. The 12 ministries all have around two reverse mentors, people under 35 years old that points the direction of the ministry.

Audrey Tang: They can also summon their own local meetings with constituents – I’ll also be there – and similarly connect with the ministries relevant to that particular cause. For example, around education, innovation in performance arts, or in renewable, sustainable…What’s the word? Like clam and oyster farming.

Duncan Hewitt: Oh, really? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: The reverse mentors care about various different things. I just go there and learn from the local peoples with them and connect to the 12 ministries. That’s one of regular work on youth engagement.

Duncan Hewitt: With that kind of contact with people, the idea is to feed back the public concerns or suggestions?

Audrey Tang: That’s one.

Duncan Hewitt: For example, since you mentioned this example, clam and oyster farming. What was the issue?

Audrey Tang: The issue was that they want to coexist with the solar panel. They want to naturally use the waves and the water levels as to reduce the energy use when it regulates the shallowness or deepness of the farming.

Audrey Tang: They want to not overdraw or draw at all any underground water. They want to promote this idea that if they farm with less density, it actually enables a better ecosystem for the local biosphere rather than over-condensed industrial farming of oysters.

Audrey Tang: They also want people to learn as part of their lunch, really, in schools about this whole interaction between the ecosystem and climate change, of course, in a holistic way. This alone concerns five ministries.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. They’re advocates of this way of sustainable farming.

Duncan Hewitt: They’re trying to promote it to the government…

Audrey Tang: Exactly. They want the government to not promote linear, non-sustainable farming. That’s, of course, the advocacy angle. They are also working with educators. Starting this year, in the new curriculum for the 1st, 7th, and 10th grade each school can participate in the creation of their own course materials and indeed design their own course.

Audrey Tang: They are tapping into this newly freed energy and space of what used to be after-school work or club work by integrating it into the school themselves. They finally also want to share their environmental measurement devices.

Audrey Tang: For example, the AirBox and the WaterBox that are social sector technologies that measures the environmental pollution level. They have far more people participating than the environment minister’s devices. They want to invite the…

Duncan Hewitt: This is schools, you’re saying.

Audrey Tang: The schools and also people just measuring about air quality on their balconies. If they are farmers in agri-lands, they also have WaterBoxes that measures pollution.

Audrey Tang: We passed a new act this year that says if you are on a agri-land and you manufacture anything that pollutes the waterways, the minister of economy can cut electricity and water supply to that plant directly without going through the regional or municipal government.

Audrey Tang: Of course, the industrial workers there would say that actually pollution come from upstream, it’s not us. They’re also encouraged to also get some WaterBoxes, which are really cheap. Using 0G IoT technology, they can just report the numbers from upstream as well.

Duncan Hewitt: Sorry. Who are the people? These are just ordinary local people, or these are the school kids?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, just ordinary local people, including the school kids.

Duncan Hewitt: What, you get a box, and do you just put it in the water?

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Duncan Hewitt: I’m not very good on technology.

Audrey Tang: It starts measuring like the top three pollutants and upload it to a distributed ledger, like a blockchain, where people cannot modify each other’s numbers after fact.

Duncan Hewitt: This was just introduced this year.

Audrey Tang: Mm-hmm.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that having much impact?

Audrey Tang: I think so. The new act…

Duncan Hewitt: Have there been some factories already cut off?

Audrey Tang: I think so. There’s quite a few investigations already. Because WaterBox is relatively new. It’s this year’s Presidential Hackathon.

Duncan Hewitt: I had not heard about it.

Audrey Tang: But AirBox has quite a few years back.

Duncan Hewitt: Sorry. This year’s Presidential Hackathon?

Audrey Tang: Hackathon, yes.

Duncan Hewitt: So that was an idea that came out of this.

Audrey Tang: Out of the Presidential Hackathon, which every year…

Duncan Hewitt: Is that an annual thing?

Audrey Tang: It’s a annual thing. Every year from April.

Duncan Hewitt: This started when?

Audrey Tang: April. It started last year.

Duncan Hewitt: Last year, OK.

Audrey Tang: Everybody can propose ideas that combines data from various sectors to solve our pertinent social or environmental issue. For example, speed up the detection of water leaks in water pipes from two months to two days in the Keelung area. That’s one of the ideas last year.

Audrey Tang: Every year, five teams get a trophy from our President. The trophy – there’s no money – it’s a micro-projector. When turned on, it projects the image of the President herself giving the trophy to the team. It’s a self-description trophy.

Audrey Tang: What it does is that it’s a sign of the political promise by the President that whatever the team did in the past three months, we will make it into national policy and deploy around the country within the next 12 months.

Audrey Tang: It’s a quick way to uplift a promising idea from a region into a national scale. For example, last year there was a remote island called Green Island, where the local…

Duncan Hewitt: I know. Which used to be a prison, right?

Audrey Tang: Where the local people didn’t trust the clinics and the nurse there that much. They insist on putting loved ones, when they’re sick or suffering from injury, to the helicopters to fly to the main Taiwan island. At a rainy night, one helicopter crashed.

Audrey Tang: People just looked into the root cause. The local nurses say that they don’t feel that they have a lot of career there because the local people don’t really trust them. They don’t have any good way to practice into actual diagnosis or the treatment, because it’s always flown into the main Taiwan island to do so.

Audrey Tang: So they proposed a telemedicine system where they can be supervised and aided by the specialist doctor in the main Taiwan island, as well as the hospital in charge of dispatching the helicopter, in front of the family so that the family can trust them more. And that they can, along with the local general practitioners, operate on the patients with the supervision of the Taiwan main island doctors.

Audrey Tang: That’s such a good idea that they won one of the five trophies that year. The only problem was that they were against the law. At that time, the law was saying that the nurse can only do such treatments with the doctor physically nearby them and not…

Duncan Hewitt: You mean because the nurse is not qualified on her own?

Audrey Tang: …remote. They has to be in the vicinity, like in the same room. But because the legitimacy for their idea is so high, the MPs passed…

Duncan Hewitt: Changed the law?

Audrey Tang: …the law. The Minister of Health and Minister of Interior worked together very closely on this matter. Again, if they don’t want to talk about it, the team just summon the president and they have to talk about it. Now, we have more than 100 clinics in the indigenous and remote areas all with the bandwidth and the equipment to do such telemedicine.

Audrey Tang: This is one of the very few Presidential Hackathon winners. But even the non-winners, like the top 20, because they’re chosen and voted in by people, they gain social legitimacy regardless of whether they make it to the top five or not.

Duncan Hewitt: The whole thing is voted on by the public?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, and using a new voting method called quadratic voting.

Duncan Hewitt: I was just going to ask how does it work, if it’s not too complicated.

Audrey Tang: We have a national participation platform called join.gov.tw.

Duncan Hewitt: I’ve heard about that.

Audrey Tang: They have 10 million visitors out of 23 million residents, quite a lot of people. During Presidential Hackathon, we…

Duncan Hewitt: That’s 10 million in a year?

Audrey Tang: 10 million in the past couple years.

Duncan Hewitt: 10 million unique visitors?

Audrey Tang: Unique visitors, so a large number of people. All of them are invited to participate in the selection from the 132 teams into the top 20 teams in every year’s Presidential Hackathon. Everybody get 99 points, and they can look at one, for example, using computer vision to solve marine debris before they hit the beach, the shore, which sounds like a good idea.

Audrey Tang: If you like this, you can vote one vote, and that will cost you 1 point out of 99. Two votes will cost you 4 in total. Three votes will cost you 9 in total. The cost for each vote is proportional.

Duncan Hewitt: Exponential.

Audrey Tang: Right, quadratic to the points cost. With 99 points, you can only vote nine votes.

Duncan Hewitt: Could you put all your points on one thing?

Audrey Tang: You can’t because nine votes is 81, and there’s no room for the 10th vote. That person will still have 18 points left, and so they’ll have to look around.

Duncan Hewitt: You have to use them up?

Audrey Tang: Yes, to look around and say, “WaterBox, such a good idea. Maybe I vote four, and I still have 2 points left.” Then I look around, I have 2 more points. I see a way to use machine learning to detect, like Panama Paper, illicit financial flow. That sounds like a good idea, but I only have 2 points.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I take a picture with your screen?

Audrey Tang: Of course. Sometime, people discover natural synergies. Maybe they do a seven and seven instead of nine and four because seven and seven is 49 points, and so on. People can change their mind and look at more.

Duncan Hewitt: Your idea is to push people to look at more different things.

Audrey Tang: To explore rather than just doing binary choice.

Duncan Hewitt: For example, last year in the Hackathon, how many members of the public voted in that?

Audrey Tang: There’s a total of around 200,000 votes, which means around 2,000 people, assuming they use up all their points – I think it’s more people – so thousands of people, that’s for sure.

Audrey Tang: Dozens of people chose this very balanced, very nuanced top 20. A good result is that almost everybody feel they have won because at least one of the team they supported made it to the top 20 as opposed to other voting methods where half the people will feel they have lost.

Duncan Hewitt: How many ideas in total?

Audrey Tang: This is top 20. Each of the top 20 received the coaching and mentoring so that they become trilingual in the sense that they get at least one public servant, at least one industry private-sector person, and at least one person from the social sector/academia into the team. The feasibility is co-determined. The governance is also co-determined by all the three sectors in the society.

Duncan Hewitt: This started last year. What’s happened to some of the people who were involved last year?

Audrey Tang: All the five teams that won last year see their idea scaled to a national scale as of this year. We got pretty good street credibility for that. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: Basically, they’ve done it themselves with some mentoring?

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Duncan Hewitt: It’s not like the government takes it over.

Audrey Tang: If they want the government to take it over, that’s why we have public servants in the team. Sometimes, like water leak detection, it’s best done by the Taiwan Water Corporation rather than the government.

Audrey Tang: For example, the telemedicine, at the end of it, it requires a law change, quite a few budget to equip them with bandwidth and sufficient medical infrastructure. That is something government should do.

Audrey Tang: Based on what we call mutual accountability, like what is best for each sector to do, we settle on the way for them to form a social enterprise maybe or form a task force and things like that. If, at the end, everybody feel the government should do it, then we will heavily take over their project.

Duncan Hewitt: Wow. When they’re trying to decide on the way ahead, are you involved?

Audrey Tang: Of course, I’m the head of the judge panel and also leading the team that incubates them and accelerates them after they won the top 20. The top 5 gets a presidential guarantee, but we track the progress of all 20.

Duncan Hewitt: This started last year, but it’s going to be annual?

Audrey Tang: We have two cohorts now, last year and this year. This year, we also have international track. The winners are Honduras and Malaysia, respectively.

Duncan Hewitt: Anyone in the world can enter?

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Duncan Hewitt: Should the project be related to Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: They should be related to sustainable infrastructure. Each team has to identify with one or more of the targets of the global goals, which are global. [laughs] Of course, they solve a Taiwan problem, but the solution, for example, the water leak detection, the same team went to New Zealand for three months to co-create a solution for the Wellington Water corporation.

Audrey Tang: It’s readily transferable. The WaterBox is so interesting the New Zealand people – actually, they just arrive to Taiwan today – go to Taiwan to learn from the WaterBox to see whether they can use the same model to figure out, for example, the dairy farming, which is a issue there, and things like that.

Duncan Hewitt: The Taiwanese people who developed this WaterBox went to New Zealand?

Audrey Tang: Right.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s very interesting. That sounds like it could already take up a lot of your time.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Duncan Hewitt: There’s also what is called, vTaiwan?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. It’s also run by the social sector.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s separate?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, vTaiwan is used whenever people feel that there is a emerging technology that the government doesn’t have a clue about. They experiment in consultation/deliberation techniques. The latest one was e-scooters, which is a global phenomenon, I’m sure. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: VTaiwan also is a generator of sandboxes, which is a way for people to experiment for a year to convince the society their new regulation is a better idea.

Audrey Tang: Sandbox is a UK idea. It came from the fintech community. In Taiwan, we use it for pretty much everything.

Duncan Hewitt: It’s like an incubator is it?

Audrey Tang: It is like a incubator, with the aim to get people’s response to emerging technologies. If people respond well, then we can co-create new regulations. vTaiwan first started in late 2014. For example, this was the map that we drew for the UberX with help of a AI-powered conversation system called pol.is that we still use.

Duncan Hewitt: I read about that.

Audrey Tang: This is the UberX map. People feel that, although belong to different feeling clusters, they have much in common as opposed to if you only look at the divisive statements.

Duncan Hewitt: When you say it was a map, it’s a map of people’s…

Audrey Tang: Reflections.

Duncan Hewitt: This was the debate about whether to legalize…

Audrey Tang: To UberX. We asked specifically, “What do you feel about…?”

Duncan Hewitt: Was it just about Uber, that one company, or about the whole idea?

Audrey Tang: We ask a specific case, always. The question we asked in 2015 was, “What do you feel about a person without professional driver’s license driving on their way to work, pick up someone, using an app, that they did not know, a stranger, essentially, that takes a detour to the stranger’s destination, and then resumes to work, and charging them for it?” So like a very specific case.

Audrey Tang: We asked people, “How do you feel about it?” Somebody feel, for example, passenger liability insurance is very important. You can agree or disagree. Once you do, your avatar moves toward the people who feel like you. At the end of it, we always get this shape. There’s a few ideological differences, but mostly people agree on mostly everything with everybody else.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s great.

Audrey Tang: We took this into the new multi-purpose taxi regulation.

Duncan Hewitt: Am I right? Someone was talking to me about it the other day. It hasn’t yet been utilized?

Audrey Tang: It’s been enforced. No, all the…

Duncan Hewitt: Is UberX now legal in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I take a picture?

Audrey Tang: All the UberX cars you can call by the Uber app is now taxis. They all get a professional driver’s license because that’s one of the consensus.

Duncan Hewitt: They still look like normal Uber cars?

Audrey Tang: They’re not painted yellow.

Duncan Hewitt: Do they get a sticker on the door or something?

Audrey Tang: Their plate is red.

Duncan Hewitt: Ah, we’re starting to do that in the UK where it’s constantly being banned and unbanned, as you may have heard.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. It’s the same in Taiwan. The large taxi fleets, you can also use their apps, which behave just like Uber with dynamic pricing and all that and to call their taxis, which are not non-yellow as well.

Duncan Hewitt: Is the idea then that that helps to prevent it becoming a monopoly by Uber?

Audrey Tang: Exactly. It’s not about Uber.

Duncan Hewitt: You did the research on Uber, but you then spread…

Audrey Tang: Applied this to what we call multi-purpose taxis.

Duncan Hewitt: Were the taxi drivers consulted?

Audrey Tang: Of course. The main groups were Uber drivers, taxi drivers, Uber passengers, and everybody else. All of them agreed that proper registration, insurance, and bookkeeping is very important. So I think it’s a broad consensus.

Duncan Hewitt: Did you have to go out and find the people to take part?

Audrey Tang: It’s a rolling survey. All the organizers send the same URL. We published that URL to all the stakeholder groups who already participate in more three months of pre-meetings before that consultation online. They shared that with their LINE groups and whatever.

Audrey Tang: People can brainstorm on more nuanced ideas to convince the other people. We say we only take as agenda any statements that has intergroup consensus, meaning that it doesn’t matter how many people you mobilize to join your group. You still have to propose something that convince everybody else.

Duncan Hewitt: Apart from, for example, this question about insurance, what were the other issues or a few examples?

Audrey Tang: We outlined these on the Pol.is blog. At that time, it’s the largest-scale Pol.is conversation that we did. You can read all…

Duncan Hewitt: Pol.is is from where? Pol.is is American?

Audrey Tang: It’s from Seattle from a few Occupiers. They basically wanted a way to get rough consensus rather than divisiveness online, like prosocial social media rather than antisocial social media.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that the term?

Audrey Tang: The term I prefer to use. These are the four consensuses back in 2015. All of them has been ratified.

Duncan Hewitt: I didn’t know that they didn’t have to be yellow anymore.

Audrey Tang: No, they don’t.

Duncan Hewitt: The reason I was asking about who takes part is because I was just wondering. When you’re dealing with taxi drivers, often you’re dealing with older people.

Audrey Tang: We also meet face to face.

Duncan Hewitt: All of this sounds fantastic, but how easy is it to get older people to join in?

Audrey Tang: The most active participants in our participation platform, for example, this is head of the taxi association in Taipei, are around his age, 65 years old. 65 and 15 are the two most active age groups.

Duncan Hewitt: [laughs] Really?

Audrey Tang: They have more time on their hands.

Duncan Hewitt: Either they’re retired or they’re…

Audrey Tang: Or they’re still in high school. They care both more about…

Duncan Hewitt: The 65-year-olds were what? They were older taxi drivers or retired drivers?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. They care more about the sustainability and the next generations of drivers and less about their personal gain or their personal profit.

Duncan Hewitt: Did some of the current drivers take part?

Audrey Tang: Of course, they also did.

Duncan Hewitt: Was it difficult in the beginning? Was there a lot of mutual hostility?

Audrey Tang: At the beginning, yes. At the beginning, it was two groups that doesn’t overlap.

Duncan Hewitt: You did talk to someone from the BBC about this, didn’t you?

Audrey Tang: Yes, Carl Miller from BBC did a series…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s called Click. He wrote a large volume…

Duncan Hewitt: I read it.

Audrey Tang: …of a book called “Death of the Gods,” about this.

Duncan Hewitt: He wrote a book?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, and also a “Wired” article recently.

Duncan Hewitt: I saw the Wired thing. I don’t want to go over all the same ground, but still, it’s …very interesting. Is that one of the biggest debates you’ve had using this approach?

Audrey Tang: In terms of participants, it’s one of the larger ones. We also, after that, did quite a few ones that concerns a large swath of people recently about the opening mountains and forests policy, which is a large policy change in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: For the longest time, like when I was a child, the mountains are literally forbidden, as are the seas. You have to apply for a special permit to get into most of the mountains.

Duncan Hewitt: Why were they forbidden?

Audrey Tang: I think people were afraid of guerilla warfare or something like that, like rebels in the mountains…

Duncan Hewitt: It was for military defense reasons?

Audrey Tang: It was military. I wish I could say it’s because of respecting of indigenous nations…

Duncan Hewitt: That’s what I wondered…

Audrey Tang: …and territory. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. [laughs] Nowadays, of course, indigenous nations and their sovereignty is very important. It’s also important to make sure that people feel that they’re close to the mountains and the oceans and not trapped in the cities and the concrete forests.

Duncan Hewitt: You’ve had a debate on this or you’re doing it now?

Audrey Tang: We had five debates, five Pol.is conversations on various aspects. For example, there was a aspect of how complex it is. You have to deal with four agencies just to get a permit on a favorite hiking or mountaineering trip. That is really not convenient. And a lot of trails, for no good reason whatsoever, still requires a permit.

Audrey Tang: The lack of telecommunication facilities was also a issue, especially in the rescue operations.

Duncan Hewitt: Just no signal?

Audrey Tang: We, just this year, set up a 4G tower on the north summit of the Yushan Mountain, the highest mountain in Taiwan. You now have very cheap, â¬16 per month, unlimited…

Duncan Hewitt: That was done because of this debate, was it?

Audrey Tang: This was done to enable this debate to happen in the first place. People really need accurate connectivity on the mountains to report what they are encountering and feeling in the mountains, and, of course, education and also responsibility.

Audrey Tang: Because for the longest time, it is the government’s duty, according to law, to rescue and pay for the loss of life if, even during typhoon, you insist to climb. That is unheard of in other jurisdictions. It was seen as a military government property, so, of course, we need to compensate for the damage people encounter in it.

Audrey Tang: Just last week, the Parliament changed the law. We’re no longer liable for it. People are encouraged to buy insurances. All of these are debated by the Pol.is system. We had five concurrent Pol.is conversations and the face-to-face part.

Audrey Tang: The online part always only set the agenda. The face-to-face part talk about possible solutions. That was headed by our Secretary General in the cabinet.

Duncan Hewitt: You go through…

Audrey Tang: The agenda is set by people resonating with each other.

Duncan Hewitt: You start online?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we start online to discover.

Duncan Hewitt: How many levels of debate or how much time…

Audrey Tang: Four levels in the standard design thinking. There’s the discover part like pol.is. There’s the define part, like the face-to-face, open collaboration consultations. There’s, of course, the development part where we invite the stakeholders back into the new system we built for hiking and mountaineering for a series of beta testing.

Audrey Tang: Finally, there’s the delivery part where we make sure the various responsibility authorities are capable of maintaining this kind of continued dialog going forward.

Duncan Hewitt: At what point do you have these face-to-face meetings? Is that at the end or in the middle?

Audrey Tang: At all points. At the very beginning, these are kickoff meetings. vTaiwan meets every Wednesday just for dinner. Anyone can join and have fun and music together. It’s in the Social Innovation Lab. They discover emerging issues that the government may have no clue about. That’s at the very beginning.

Audrey Tang: Then, using Pol.is, a discovery phase. Then face-to-face, amplified telecommunicated consultation in the define phase. Once we set on the common “how might we?” question, then we work with the competent authorities on the development phase. Finally, the deliberative phase.

Duncan Hewitt: To get the right people, for example, to come to your face-to-face meetings, does that involve a lot of work?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you have to go and find them?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you have a team of people?

Audrey Tang: Of course. My office, which is one delegate from each ministry, at most, is trained – by themself, actually – to discover stakeholders, to find the best place to hold meetings with stakeholders. If it’s about a remote area Medicare, like Hengchun, we literally go to Hengchun. All the seven ministries go to Hengchun together. If it’s about Pescadores Islands, we actually fly to Pescadores Islands.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s Penghu, right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s Penghu.

Duncan Hewitt: In your office, these are people who are permanently in your office now? They’re on secondment to you…?

Audrey Tang: They are on a rotating basis. For example, the Foreign Service, Joel is the second delegate from the Foreign Service. Once he want to return to the Foreign Service, we’ll have to find somebody else just like…

Audrey Tang: [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: How long have you been here?

Joel Chen: Usually, it will be one year or two years.

Audrey Tang: A year or so is average. The more people…

Duncan Hewitt: Is that one of the main jobs, is to find the right partners for discussion?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, because the delegates mostly come from the people-facing ministries – the Ministry of Communication, Interior, Education, Finance, Justice, Foreign Service, and so on.

Audrey Tang: All of them, when YEH Ning, the Commission of Communication, joined, he was director general, I think. Joel was section chief. They all have considerable network within the public service when it comes to stakeholder discussion.

Duncan Hewitt: Since you mentioned the example, can I…?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: What aspect of the foreign industries work is related to what you’re doing?

Audrey Tang: I’ll say from my perspective and Joel will say from his.

Duncan Hewitt: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: The core idea of our foreign service in the past few years is this idea of Taiwan can help, which is the way of redefining Taiwan’s identity as a force of good [laughs] when it comes to any of the sustainable goals. The 17 sustainable goals are our core mission.

Audrey Tang: As you can see for Presidential Hackathon, for the social innovation tours, everything has to be indexed by the 17 goals, or even down to the 169 targets. Foreign Service invites a lot of people. For example, this is Zdeněk Hřib. I hope I did him…

Duncan Hewitt: That’s the Prague mayor.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the Prague pirate. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: He’s the mayor, right?

Audrey Tang: That’s right, of Pirate party. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: I’ve been reading about his…

Audrey Tang: His favorite animal is Pangolin. [laughs] When he visited, his small cabinet, the various bureau leaders, actually climbed on the Social Innovation Lab in my office. We promoted the sustainable goals together. We shared with each other this way of listening and skill with constituents.

Audrey Tang: For Foreign Service, this is important because it shows that the relation that Taiwan has with likeminded jurisdictions is not limited to government to government or state to state multilateral relationship, but rather what we call locally 暖實力 or ‘warm power’. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: Is that right?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, meaning whatever they’re finding as an issue, as long as they’re in the sustainable development goal agenda, Taiwan can help. We are willing to help. I work with Foreign Service to travel to…I just returned from Berlin and the Netherlands.

Audrey Tang: Before that, I was in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, in Buenos Aires, in Japan, in Ottawa, and in Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Our office went to…

Duncan Hewitt: In general, when you do these trips, what kind of things are you normally looking at. What are the outcomes?

Audrey Tang: We hold workshops. The outcome is that, for example, for our disinformation disarming technique which is fun and games humor, we roll out a humorous clarification within two hours.

Duncan Hewitt: Disinformation disarming, and that’s the government combating disinformation or…?

Audrey Tang: The entire civil society.

Duncan Hewitt: Is this the thing about fake news?

Audrey Tang: I don’t use that word, but you’re free to because you’re a journalist. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: Is it focusing particularly on media, or just online information?

Audrey Tang: On the competency of, for example, our basic education and lifelong education system so that everybody learns how to be a journalist, because with broadband as a human right, they are not only consumers, viewers, and readers, but they are all YouTubers.

Duncan Hewitt: Is this aimed at schools particularly, or it’s teaching people to…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, to learn framing.

Duncan Hewitt: …discern what is fake, what is real?

Audrey Tang: Right. Not really discern only, but also produce their own balanced take on things and participate in collaborative fact-checking, which is one of the main ways that people can, every day, just flagging your incoming spam email as spam. The more you flag your incoming email as spam, then less people receive this spam because it’s a public contribution.

Audrey Tang: For this, for example, this is a civil society project for people to forward whatever, “Do you know your brother is spreading rumors?’ It’s not gender-specific. Every time you refresh, you see a different a value…

Audrey Tang: This is a way for LINE which is a dominant end-to-end encrypted system to call to their users to flag. Every day, they flag hundreds of thousands of rumors just by long-pressing the message.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s LINE in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: That’s LINE in Taiwan.

Duncan Hewitt: How many rumors every day?

Audrey Tang: Here is the dashboard. You can check it on factcheck.line.me. Flagging is 147k today. Unique messages, 32k today.

Duncan Hewitt: What kind of rumors would they be?

Audrey Tang: Here are the top 10. [laughs] Here, it shows with the four fact-checking partners.

Duncan Hewitt: These are more like news-type stories. It’s not personal debates.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s not personal. A lot of it is about food safety. Like if you ate persimmons, don’t drink yogurt. Otherwise, you’ll get poisoned.

Duncan Hewitt: It’s like random information that’s not true.

Audrey Tang: Because food safety, somebody care about it, they will share it with their family, and these go viral. Sometimes these are not disinformation, they’re more like malinformation in a sense that it is actually true. It happened, but it’s framed in a bad way.

Duncan Hewitt: If LINE is flagging the rumors, does someone have to be there editing and checking if it’s true…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, so they could collaborate with the International Fact-Checking Network, which has the Taiwan chapter called Taiwan Fact-Checking Center. Sometimes…

Duncan Hewitt: That’s an NGO or…?

Audrey Tang: It’s an NGO. It’s crowdfunded. It doesn’t accept any political party funding, and only accepts more donations and run by esteemed journalists. These are our main way really. If there’s some rumor that says, “In Hong Kong, they are paying 13 years olds, to 20 million people, to murder police.” This is actually a propaganda, actually from 「中央政法委长安剑」, the central commission of politics and law.

Duncan Hewitt: Really?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Duncan Hewitt: You actually found the source?

Audrey Tang: The source was from their Weibo account.

Duncan Hewitt: How was it found?

Audrey Tang: The Taiwan Fact-Check Center really shared exactly how they found it. You can read all about it. Also, the fake poster they had, purporting to be from Hong Kong, but with wrong spelling and using Hanyu Pinyin which they will never actually use.

Duncan Hewitt: Were these things mainly circulating in Taiwan or in Hong Kong? Not in the mainland…

Audrey Tang: I don’t know about Hong Kong, but the Taiwan Fact-Check Center looks at all the trending rumors in Taiwan. Once they classify publicly something is wrong as a rumor, as false, Facebook stops showing these on the news feed by default. It’s not taken down. It’s buried. It’s just like moving an email to the spam folder.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s an agreement with Facebook in Taiwan or internationally?

Audrey Tang: That’s right, in Taiwan. They signed on a sub-regulate agreement.

Duncan Hewitt: The government is not directly involved with this process.

Audrey Tang: We’re not doing any of this. No, because we don’t want…

Duncan Hewitt: But you’re promoting education. Can I just ask you just very quickly what kind of education? How does that work?

Audrey Tang: Sure. A lot of it is interactive. I personally translated quite a few games that teaches about miscommunication about the segregation effect, where people reinforce their own biases and things like that. They’re all used as additional materials for even the primary schoolers to learn about media framing and about the small world effect.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I just ask you, what is segregation effect in Chinese?

Audrey Tang: 謝林隔離模型 probably. My translation is called 別讓圖形不開心.

Duncan Hewitt: You’re getting some games.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Duncan Hewitt: They’re in English and you’re putting them in Chinese.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Duncan Hewitt: What’s 圖形 here?

Audrey Tang: Polygons. Don’t make polygons unhappy. [laughs] Basically, this polygon is unhappy because they’re among too many squares. If you drag it here, they become happy. The rule is that if there’s less than one-third of my neighbors that look like me, I would like to move. So you can then see…

Duncan Hewitt: This is aimed at kids, really?

Audrey Tang: This is aimed at kids. Then you can very easily see that people segregate automatically.

Duncan Hewitt: Are you getting schools to let the kids use these games?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, to play this game with the kids.

Audrey Tang: Then we say, what about like many people in the panels now, if the panel is entirely of a single gender, they refuse to participate in that panel. Then we start saying if you start with segregated communities, but everybody says, “One of our eight neighbors, there’s at least one that looks different than me, I want diversity,” then very quickly, you can restore a more inclusive society and so on. This is the, of course, Thomas Schelling’s Nobel Prize winning “Dynamic Model of Segregation.”

Duncan Hewitt: How does that relate to the misinformation or disinformation?

Audrey Tang: What we are sharing here is that the echo chamber effect is reinforced by people who would not tolerate even a little bit of dissent and subjectively wrong information on their social network. If we seek such information even in small doses, they are weak, so actually it restores the sense of polity. That is the lesson of that.

Audrey Tang: Another of my translation which went slightly more viral is called the evolution of trust. This used the prisoner’s dilemma to teach about various different collaboration and cooperation strategies. This is…

Duncan Hewitt: Sorry, what’s the prisoner’s dilemma? What’s the concept?

Audrey Tang: This is you, this is somebody else. You can put in a coin. If you put in a coin, the other side gets three coins, and vice versa. You can decide to collaborate by putting one coin and expecting three in return, or you can defect saying you won’t put in any coins.

Audrey Tang: If you put in a coin, and then you will actually see. Actually, it’s easier with the sound effect on. If you collaborate, and then both sides get three coins back, and they’re happy obviously. You’ll be faced with people then of various inclinations instead of somebody who collaborates all the time.

Audrey Tang: Then the lesson here is how to accommodate for these people. If you start collaborating, actually they took advantage of you. What do you do now? Maybe you won’t do anything and things like that. This is called tit for tat.

Duncan Hewitt: These types of ideas, games, and this kind of approach, this is the sort of thing that you talk to people about when you go abroad as well?

Audrey Tang: Yes, and the miscommunications as well.

Duncan Hewitt: For example, can I just ask you, you mentioned was it Addis Ababa you went? What were you doing there, just out of interest?

Audrey Tang: Sure. When I was in Addis, I went with social entrepreneurs from Taiwan that developed a way to detect tuberculosis using AI-based computer vision. It used to be that it took $7 to $10 per check in the WHO recommended expert system, which is prohibitively expensive for many African countries.

Audrey Tang: Using contributions from Yilan and other rural areas, there’s a Kaohsiung company that developed an AI system that can reduce the cost to less than $1 per check, and so massively reducing the cost for TB detection. We’re there to say Taiwan can help on the medical regard.

Audrey Tang: I personally share the idea which I talked to you already about reverse mentorship, where the minister of labor has two very young, 20-something, reverse mentors. One of them brought to the minister of labor to Russia to see the WorldSkills Competition, which is like the Olympic for skilled people and skilled students.

Audrey Tang: They won I think the third place worldwide this year. This is our champion of car spraying, also champions of steel work, and also champion of cloud data center deployment, various skills. The reverse mentor proposed two things.

Audrey Tang: First, that they go on the national parade just like the athletes. The second is that they need to integrate back into the education system so they can revamp the schools with the children, so those children know that the applicable skills is for community building and they have somebody to look up to, to aspire to, not just people who study very well or play sports really well.

Audrey Tang: This is a way to get vocational education’s social status higher. They point the direction the minister of labor actually went. They crowdfunded a video, played it in a cabinet meeting, they get the Premier accepting it. So starting this year and in all the years afterwards, these skilled people will be… is already part of the National Day Parade, and this one reverse mentorship.

Duncan Hewitt: The definition of reverse mentorship is bringing someone…

Audrey Tang: Younger.

Duncan Hewitt: …from the grassroots into the system.

Audrey Tang: As a kind of intern, but they are actually pointing to the direction. Hard to translate. I translated that as 見習顧問, as an intern consultant.

Audrey Tang: This is something they really want to imitate.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that something that you promoted?

Audrey Tang: Yes, of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Did you start this whole system?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. I was reverse mentor of the previous cabinet…

Duncan Hewitt: I heard that.

Audrey Tang: …when I was 35, and that was still young. The Foreign Service really likes this story because then we have a catalog in the social innovation platform of over 400 social innovation organizations like this, all indexed through the SDGs and ready to share, whether it’s TB detection or whatever else with people.

Duncan Hewitt: When you mentioned this Kaohsiung organization who…

Audrey Tang: I brought them to Addis Ababa.

Duncan Hewitt: They’re a social enterprise?

Audrey Tang: They’re what we call a social innovation organization.

Duncan Hewitt: Are they a company?

Audrey Tang: A company with a social purpose.

Duncan Hewitt: They’re a private company? They’re a for-profit company?

Audrey Tang: Right. They’re a with-profit company. The B Corps movement is very much taking steam in Taiwan. We have a B Corps that is also a publicly listed bank. You don’t find it [laughs] elsewhere, the o-Bank.

Audrey Tang: For those purpose-led organizations, we’re now calling them social innovation organizations instead of social enterprise because we also have the universities joining. The university won’t call themselves enterprise.

Duncan Hewitt: I guess my question is, really there’s no conflict of interest that you’re just promoting one private company.

Audrey Tang: There used to be, but we change the company act. Now, every company can declare their social and environmental purpose as part of constitutive papers, their company charter. They can also declare how much reinvestment they are willing to do to further their purpose.

Audrey Tang: Like Muhammad Yunus say, the shareholders must only get back the share they put in, and every other dime this company earn must be toward a social mission that’s called a social business. It used to be questionably legal. As of 2017, it’s now entirely legal.

Audrey Tang: There’s less of a concern of promoting private companies when they’re already declaring their social purpose and indexed by the SDGs. The Foreign Service is also shaping this kind of public dialog.

Duncan Hewitt: You said there are 400 of these organizations?

Audrey Tang: Of these social innovation organizations.

Duncan Hewitt: In other words, they’re on a list. If people somewhere in the world are interested, you can find the right people.

Audrey Tang: You just find the right people here, and their case studies, and so on.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I ask you, did you go on these trips as well?

Audrey Tang: It’s time for Joel to answer. [laughs]

Joel Chen: The reason why I’m here?

Duncan Hewitt: Yeah. Did you go…?

Audrey Tang: Go to our international workshops and so on.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you help to find these enterprises or to take them abroad?

Joel Chen: Yes. You mentioned about the workshop. Actually, I’m going to attend the programs from Harvard Kennedy School, that, really, we call it Digital Transformation in Government. The title will be innovating public policy, that I’m going to attend.

Joel Chen: That’s one of the programs that I’m going to share, like my minister mentioned about using the digital method to how to make our policy more engaged in ways. They’re one of the works I’m going to attend as well because of my minister’s recommendations.

Audrey Tang: I think it’s now called public entrepreneurship, or public sector entrepreneurship. This buzzword is catching up.

Duncan Hewitt: Just one of the things, going back to the thing you mentioned about the mountains and the forests, can I just check the beginning of that whole debate. How did that become one of your topics? Was it…?

Audrey Tang: Usually, it’s because people complain about it really loud.

Duncan Hewitt: They complain about it and you hear about it, or do they come to you? Did the government decide we got to do something about this? I just wonder how the process begins. Is it totally bottom-up or is it top-down? [laughs]

Audrey Tang: It’s not that top-down. Anyone who get 5,000 signatures can collect a point-by-point response from any ministry, as long as it’s within the administration’s purview. That’s the usual…

Duncan Hewitt: On any topic.

Audrey Tang: On any topic, as long as it’s administrative purview.

Duncan Hewitt: Was that always the case, or is that something you introduced?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s something that the Occupiers, when we occupied the parliament in 2014, that’s one of the five demands and not one less. Of course, all of these got accepted by the head of parliament back then.

Duncan Hewitt: That was Wang Jin-pyng.

Audrey Tang: Right. That was Wang Jin-pyng. There was a national forum, which was one of the five demands. The forum basically said that we need to institutionalize early-stage engagement in terms of e-petition so that we don’t occupy the parliament…

Duncan Hewitt: [laughs]

Audrey Tang: …to signify our dissent on everything. That was set up around 2015. The 2015 system only said that each ministry need to respond. At that time, there was no horizontal coordination between the ministries.

Audrey Tang: My main contribution is to set up what we call the PO, Participation Officer, system, which you can find in po.pdis.tw, which talks about how the various ministries work together literally every month, working on preparation of each other’s collaborative meetings so that all the cross-ministerial issues brought by the petition system can be handled in a way that is conducive to lower the risk, include and increase the efficiency, and also lessen the chores of the public service.

Audrey Tang: These are institutionalized into national regulations. We have around 100 participation officers, the POs.

Duncan Hewitt: What was the name of the platform you just mentioned, the website?

Audrey Tang: Po.pdis.tw.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s publicly…?

Audrey Tang: That’s publicly visible. You can read all about it. A lot of workshops, we just also transfer the training material of our participation officers, which are now required training for new people entering public service as well. Anyway.

Audrey Tang: So… the mountaineering. In most of cases it was because there was an announcement of a single-entry portal to apply to a mountain trip permits, but what the entry portal did earlier this year was simply to figure out which website you need to open, and then ask you to open those four websites.

Duncan Hewitt: You still needed four separate documents…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s not very useful. The reason why is the agencies had no horizontal coordination, and so a lot of hiking enthusiasts complained really loudly about that. The participation officers of I think Ministry of Interior and Agriculture noticed this issue, and then we had a conversation with also the Secretary General, actually all the way to the Premier to say that we need a properly structured…

Duncan Hewitt: The Secretary General?

Audrey Tang: The Secretary General, or 祕書長, of the cabinet. Whenever there is any cross-ministerial issues, the idea is that the head of the cabinet is in charge of coordinating. At the moment it is Secretary General Li Meng-yen.

Duncan Hewitt: You set up lots of debates.

Audrey Tang: Collaborations, but yes. The difference between a debate…

Duncan Hewitt: The officers you mentioned in each ministry, sorry, what did you say they were called?

Audrey Tang: The participation officers. The POs. There’s more than 100 of these people.

Duncan Hewitt: When did that job start?

Audrey Tang: We institutionalized that a couple years back, but I brought this idea in when I become digital minister three years back.

Duncan Hewitt: Is there something like that in ministries in other countries?

Audrey Tang: Italy, I think, specifically want to copy this model with their Ministry of Direct Democracy but I don’t know how well…

Duncan Hewitt: You didn’t copy it from somewhere else, this is your…

Audrey Tang: No.

Duncan Hewitt: Was this your own sort of…?

Audrey Tang: Because I’m a horizontal, I’m a horizontal minister. Above the 32 vertical ministries each with a vertical minister. The 9 horizontal ministers are already using this way of cross ministerial coordination anyway, they only difference is that I’m making this public, this process public.

Duncan Hewitt: The participation officers, their role is to get public participation, to respond…

Audrey Tang: Exactly, just like the media officers responding to journalists, and the parliamentary officers responding to MPs. They are responding to people who are about to occupy the parliament.

Duncan Hewitt: Is there one for every ministry?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Literally, at least one in every ministry. In many ministries there are agency-level POs as well.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you feel that the system is working as well as it could do?

Audrey Tang: It’s working pretty well. No. Of course we have a lot of room for improvement. At the municipal level…

Duncan Hewitt: Is it evolving?

Audrey Tang: It is evolving. We change our voting methods, our allocation methods, or whatever, literally every quarter.

Duncan Hewitt: The voting method is what, between the different ministerial people?

Audrey Tang: Every month now, we look at all the petitions, regulatory pre-announcement, emerging issues. Any ministry can propose that up for public deliberation. We vote two subjects every month for cross-ministerial collaboration. The rest are done by single ministries.

Duncan Hewitt: You vote for the ones which you think are the most important?

Audrey Tang: For cross-ministerial participation.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that usually easy to get agreement?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. They’re all career public servants and all with really good connection to the public anyway. We learn a lot from each other. The participation officer from unrelated ministries each month participate in the facilitation. They can be seen as both speaking the public sector language but also speaking purely as a stakeholder.

Audrey Tang: Like I’m the PO of the Ministry of, for example, Ocean. A concept of ocean, the hiking have nothing to do with me, obviously, but I know a lot about environment issues. I am a hiker myself. Then I can facilitate in a way that I’m more balanced to all the stakeholders.

Duncan Hewitt: Anyone with relevant knowledge can be part of it.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, can be part of it.

Duncan Hewitt: Just on this forest and mountain thing, is that now resolved? Is it finished?

Audrey Tang: It’s now resolved. There’s 18 consensus points. We respond to them all one by one. It can be found at pdis.tw/hike.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that the same one? No, that’s a different website.

Audrey Tang: It’s a joint website. This one join.gov.tw. This is two ministries talking about mountaineering. These are the five pol.is topics. These are the 18 consensus points. We respond to them all one by one and invite everybody who participate in the online part also on the face-to-face meeting with Secretary-General.

Duncan Hewitt: Has that happened already, or that’s going to happen?

Audrey Tang: It’s happened already. It’s happened. It’s livestreamed.

Duncan Hewitt: The whole thing is still being debated basically.

Audrey Tang: The whole thing is still being refined, but all the 18 things they ask for is actually, the single-entry application of mountaineering, all of this is online.

Duncan Hewitt: There is now already a simpler system, is there?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s right. The face-to-face meeting is at a day before the beta test begins, to just make sure that we did answer and are accounting for all the suggestion they have raised.

Duncan Hewitt: You can still update the beta test approach.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Now it’s still beta testing, actually.

Duncan Hewitt: Roughly when do you think the whole thing will be resolved or…

Audrey Tang: As long as there’s active civil society, it’s just a co-creation way. The main difference between our way of thinking and traditional design thinking is that traditional design thinking ends on the part of delivery. Once you discover, define, develop, and deliver, it’s done.

Audrey Tang: But now, because in Taiwan we use open API as a national standard, meaning that whatever function you see on the hiking service you can actually take it and amplify again using your own app, using VR, translating it to indigenous languages, or whatever.

Audrey Tang: Because it’s open API, everybody can build upon whatever we have built instead of having to do it from scratch. This remix stage, which is not part of design thinking, it’s very important because then it enable people who care about this to not compete but rather build upon the governmental work.

Duncan Hewitt: This is on an open platform?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Which is provided by the government?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course. And maintained by the government.

Duncan Hewitt: People will be refining it by adding information?

Audrey Tang: They can also build their own website and then close the API, which like a connector point…

Duncan Hewitt: Say that you make a basic change, like you make it much simpler to get this permit. Is that basically finished, or is there still the potential for further revision of the rules?

Audrey Tang: For more permit revision. Of course, but it’s always in the direction of more open.

Duncan Hewitt: I’m afraid I’m not an expert on these ideas.

Audrey Tang: It’s fine. The next part is we’re also doing the same with the ocean, with sea sports and other access. That’s the next…

Duncan Hewitt: Because there used to be a lot of restrictions?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it used to be very difficult actually to do any ocean activities without an official permit.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s to do again with sort of defense issues?

Audrey Tang: Exactly, yeah.

Duncan Hewitt: You mentioned like occupying the parliament in 2014, but also was this building also occupied, am I right? As part of the executive yuan?

Audrey Tang: There was a night they tried to storm the executive yuan, but it was not very successful, and it was cleared away, I think, within a night. The parliament was thoroughly non-violent, and set up by 20 or so NGOs, each deliberating about one aspect of the CSSTA.

Duncan Hewitt: Were you actually inside?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Duncan Hewitt: For the whole time.

Audrey Tang: The whole time. I was there before they broke in, and providing Internet connectivity.

Duncan Hewitt: You had come back from the US at the time?

Audrey Tang: Not exactly. I told the US companies that I’m working with that I’m taking a leave, basically a democratic leave. I’m based in Taiwan, I was telecommuting.

Duncan Hewitt: Oh, I see. Maybe I read that somewhere and it was not accurate.

Audrey Tang: The Wired got it wrong the first time, and I wrote a correction and they fixed the language.

Duncan Hewitt: Maybe I read the old version. In general, do you feel that most of the ideals of that movement have now been implemented by the government?

Audrey Tang: It is on the right direction, but many of the occupiers of course say that we’re not yet open enough, or that we’re… actually that’s what all the presidential candidates are now saying. Like Willian Lai, during the primary with Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, was saying Dr. Tsai is very open, but I will be even more open, and Simon Cheng of course say I will be even more open, and so on. I think is the general direction we’re heading. There’s no turning back.

Duncan Hewitt: What are the areas where things could still become more open?

Audrey Tang: Campaign finance was one of the main thing that we work with, because it’s not the administration’s, it’s the control branch. As of last election, the control branch agreed to have all the campaign finance for independent analysis, the raw data.

Duncan Hewitt: Is the control branch the election commission, or…?

Audrey Tang: No, the control yuan is a separate branch. It’s the control yuan. And that is actually one significant victory for the occupiers, and another one concerns the idea of referendums. Referendum of course, when tied with elections is subject to partisan capture, but starting next year, we’re doing referendum on alternate years. So we’ll have one year for election, and one year for deliberation, and one year for election, one year for deliberation. That hopefully moves us towards the Swiss style.

Audrey Tang: Before, it was always with the same day as the election.

Duncan Hewitt: Together, so it won’t be now, it will be separate.

Audrey Tang: It won’t be now, the law has changed. It’s much more room for real deliberation.

Duncan Hewitt: Yeah, because otherwise it just became politicized?

Audrey Tang: Exactly. That’s one of the direction where the open government work can really further people’s understanding of the public issues. Open procurement, that is with beneficial ownership and all the international movement.

Audrey Tang: As you can see, one of the five winner in this year’s Presidential Hackathon, is essentially automated detection of Panama Papers-style, that is a hot topic, and a lot of countries are looking at open…

Duncan Hewitt: Has that already been changed here, or is that something still being worked on?

Audrey Tang: The opening of procurements just happened a couple months ago.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s government procurement?

Audrey Tang: Of course, but including the RFPs, like the whole lifecycle of procurement. At the moment, only for academic purposes. I think that’s…

Duncan Hewitt: There’s still many areas that need to be reformed.

Audrey Tang: There’s still many areas that need to be expanded, like the National Palace Museum is sharing as kind of free of copyright or restrictions, Creative Commons, all their pictures and photos, but only around 300 dpi, meaning that it’s good for the monitor, but not so good if you’re printing it out. For that you still have to ask for a license fee?

Duncan Hewitt: Do you want that changed?

Audrey Tang: Uh-huh.

Duncan Hewitt: That’s your mission, or that’s the…

Audrey Tang: When I went in, they were not opening anything.

Duncan Hewitt: This is new.

Audrey Tang: We’ve made many improvements, but what I’m trying to say is it depends on the social norm, what the social norm feels is good enough, it is hard to push further. But when the social norm increases after experiencing the benefit of open data and open information, then of course people would demand more.

Duncan Hewitt: The rationale for opening up the huge sort of stock of the National Palace Museum by Creative Commons is what?

Audrey Tang: It’s contribute to culture. It enables creators to source materials from the cultural lineages, the various lineages as hosted in the museum. Again, this what other museums are doing. British ones are leading, actually.

Duncan Hewitt: The idea is basically you’ve got all this repository of Chinese culture in the…

Audrey Tang: Also, of the prehistoric Taiwan as well.

Duncan Hewitt: You mentioned this, the occupiers, as a phrase: are those people who were together five years ago, are they still really a group?

Audrey Tang: Are they still working? Yeah, I would say so.

Duncan Hewitt: Are they still like a pressure group, trying to push the government as it were?

Audrey Tang: I would say so as well. Yes, definitely.

Duncan Hewitt: You’re still connected with them?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Are those the kind of people you work with in your other office…?

Audrey Tang: In my office, of course there’s quite a few occupiers, that just went directly to my office.

Duncan Hewitt: Who are working for you.

Audrey Tang: Two of them are right here. [laughs] Working with me, not for me.

Duncan Hewitt: What do they do?

Audrey Tang: One S.T. Pung, was the main journalist, she was a student back then of the NTU eForum, and they were kind of the most trusted reporters of what’s happening in the occupy scene for those three weeks, the eForum folks.

Audrey Tang: She’s now working to, basically work as an investigative journalist of the work that we do, and we co-write most of my opinion pieces, like with the “New York Times,” “The Economist,” all sort of these articles I co-write with S.T.

Duncan Hewitt: When you say investigative journalist, you mean researching topics?

Audrey Tang: Researching, like whenever people petition for something. Like they really want to, for example, ban the use of plastic straws, and two years ago out was a popular petition, with pseudonym, because we allow pseudonyms, of “I love elephant and elephant loves me.” We know nothing about this person, except they can get 5,000 signatures in no time.

Audrey Tang: The Ministry of Economy and Environment were worried. [laughs] We met them face-to-face in a collaboration meeting, because they were voted in by the monthly… The proposer. And she’s 16 years old. That’s her civics class assignment, like our Greta.

Audrey Tang: The story ends differently, because we did invite people who make single use utensils. They said they were social entrepreneurs. They were there 30 years ago to solve Hepatitis B, which was a real problem in Taiwan back then. Now it’s cured. They are now looking at more environmental friendly way to design, anyway.

Audrey Tang: We brainstorm on upcycling, like coffee beans, or whatever, leaves of coffee bean plants, and whatever.

Duncan Hewitt: Did that produce a result?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it does. Starting this July for indoor drinking even for bubble tea, plastic straws are banned, period. Even for bubble tea. National identity drink.

Duncan Hewitt: How do you drink your bubble tea. Is there like a bamboo straw, or a…?

Audrey Tang: Exactly. Actually, bamboo straws are very popular. [laughs] Also, literally straws, and reinforced, glass also, and stainless steel, and many other manufacturing.

Duncan Hewitt: Somehow, you had to mediate between the manufacturers and environmentally conscious kids?.

Audrey Tang: Who are also looking at possibility of higher margins, because their original social purpose has been fulfilled.

Duncan Hewitt: Were they happy with the outcome?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: That did end up with a change in the law?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, in the regulation.

Duncan Hewitt: It was something that the companies could accept?

Audrey Tang: Of course. At least the company that showed up to the meeting could accept. I don’t know about other companies, [laughs] but the company who showed up brainstorm on solutions.

Audrey Tang: The point of the investigative reporting is that before we meet face-to-face, we need to meet one-by-one to do journalistic fact checking, and cross-checking of the sources, to make sure that people’s perceptions are actually on the same page.

Audrey Tang: We prepare really a volume, but booklet of information we’ve collected, to all the people entering the deliberation, so they can be informed, regardless of whatever rhetoric all the sides say, on the common, basic facts.

Duncan Hewitt: You made the point earlier… You talked about the Uber debates that there were a lot of younger people, and then the older people. In general, is it more likely that young people will participate in…

Audrey Tang: No.

Duncan Hewitt: …this type of debate? No?

Audrey Tang: Retired people participate a lot. The younger people, like 15 years old, set the direction, but the 65-years has the wisdom to make it happen in a feasible way.

Duncan Hewitt: I see, there are lot of say…I don’t know, retired people in Taiwan, who…

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah. Very much so.

Duncan Hewitt: …who now became active participants?

Audrey Tang: Again, as a way of what we call “intergenerational solidarity.”

Duncan Hewitt: Is that quite significant, that you’re trying to…

Audrey Tang: It is.

Duncan Hewitt: …mobilize the wisdom of the older people…?

Audrey Tang: The elderly, yeah, and inviting them to the social innovation lab.

Duncan Hewitt: Politically, we could say that Taiwan is, in some way, still quite a divided society.

Audrey Tang: I wouldn’t say so.

Duncan Hewitt: You wouldn’t? OK. Let me put my question and you can please tell me what you think. My question would be, I would say there are certainly lots of divisions within Taiwan on certain issues, particularly maybe attitudes to mainland China, or…

Audrey Tang: I don’t think it’s like that after Hong Kong.

Duncan Hewitt: OK, tell me more about that. Is it sometimes hard to bring people together? Is this still like a real work in progress? In the past, people often would disagree with each other on many things. Is the culture of debate and consensus-building, was that something hard to create?

Audrey Tang: I don’t think so. In Taiwan, the active word is 共識, common understanding. We use that word differently from the English word “consensus,” which is something you can sign your name on, like strong consensus. Common understanding means only we can live with it.

Duncan Hewitt: 共識, OK.

Audrey Tang: Including the 1992 meeting.

Audrey Tang: The very fact that it could be described as a common understanding, like agree to disagree, signifies how weak the “common understanding” word actually means.

Audrey Tang: Of course, as we said, there are certain divisive statements, but there’s far more things that people can live with. Our approach is to act on these, while putting into practice… Yeah, I always say to people that, “Blue and green are just two colors in the 17 of the sustainable goals.”

Audrey Tang: We all roughly agree that we’re in the ocean, beautiful islands. We’re trans-cultural republic citizens, and that is something can get behind.

Duncan Hewitt: What does “trans-cultural” mean?

Audrey Tang: Trans-cultural means having the liberty, the freedom to look at your own culture from the perspective of a different culture. It’s like freedom to migrate countries. In Taiwan, it is among the various indigenous, Hakka, Tâi-gí, or Mandarin speaking culture.

Duncan Hewitt: Just quickly, because you were talking about the referendum situation. Obviously, we saw the…

Audrey Tang: The impact.

Duncan Hewitt: …the result of that, in terms of the law on same sex marriage. Different people obviously had different views on the way…

Audrey Tang: That’s great. That’s why we’re trans-cultural, yeah.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you feel that law went far enough?

Audrey Tang: We legalized the order by-laws, but none of the in-laws; I call that 結婚不結姻. I think that’s marriage equality with Asia characteristics. When I talk with people in Thailand…

Duncan Hewitt: When you say the in-laws [laughs] can you define that?

Audrey Tang: I mean, specifically, the part of civil code that we had at least 10 words to describe what the English describe as uncle and aunt. [laughs] At least 10 words, maybe more. All this, of course, has to change if you introduce same-sex marriage to form kinships.

Audrey Tang: It’s with particular wisdom that this hyperlinked act that enabled marriage equality, legalized all the by-laws, the rights and duties, but none of the in-laws. It doesn’t hyperlink into the kinship relations.

Duncan Hewitt: Some people were concerned that it didn’t include the adoption rights.

Audrey Tang: Right. These are the following laws and regulations that can be worked with, specific amendments to these laws. The philosophy here is that people who were married before 2007 saw the marriage as marriage not between two people but two families. In Taiwan we call it 親家 meaning kinship families.

Audrey Tang: After 2008, marriage had become a purely by registration issue, so purely administrative. We made sure that we legalized the post 2008 by-laws, but not the pre-2008 in-laws. This is something that a lot of nearby jurisdictions say to me that they are willing to copy. It’s easier for their society also.

Duncan Hewitt: You mean other countries in East Asia?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s right, who are basically looking at the same problem of the in-laws and by-laws having different explanations.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you feel that what did happen, in the passing of the law, that was an important break-through for Taiwanese society?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, because it’s trans-cultural. It respected all the cultural lineages and generations. It’s a republic of citizens, 民國, meaning that the specific ways to go about it is decided by two referenda, in additional to the constitutional court ruling. It really reinforced the idea…

Duncan Hewitt: Some people said actually, that you had the referenda last year. They felt that the government ignored the result of the referenda.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, the referenda basically said that they must not use the civil code relationship to describe marriage equality. We said, “We’re only legalizing the by-law in a separate act.” The in-laws that people care about, these are not legalized. It’s not in properly speaking, a 儀式婚 or a civil court marriage.

Audrey Tang: It actually only legalized the marriage registration, 登記婚, the relationship or wedding, but not the families involved…

Duncan Hewitt: The people who are married, do they not get the same legal status as…?

Audrey Tang: As two persons, but not to each other’s families.

Duncan Hewitt: OK, because this was about the inheritance and so on?

Audrey Tang: It’s about conflict of interests, as well. [laughs] Also, for example, the obligation to support each other’s families if they don’t live together…

Duncan Hewitt: That was the previous law, was it?

Audrey Tang: Yes, for heterosexual marriage.

Duncan Hewitt: When you mentioned the future changes or possibilities…?

Audrey Tang: Also, for artificial insemination. That, of course, is not taken care of by this hyperlink act. We actually had an open collaboration meeting about that very topic, also how single mothers, whether they can legally get a child…

Duncan Hewitt: Is it not legal now? Would it not be legal?

Audrey Tang: No, it’s not legal. Just like in France, there is a prolonged debate.

Duncan Hewitt: You’re doing now a sort of dialog…?

Audrey Tang: We did a dialog a year or so back…

Duncan Hewitt: There’s nothing…?

Audrey Tang: …with people from 護家盟 and 伴侶盟 actually, who are the two more vocal groups in the marriage equality debate. Because the stakeholders have not been born, literally, they actually agreed on some common understanding, which is quite rare.

Audrey Tang: They say, “We need to prepare the society so the society is friendly to single mothers. We need to prepare society so that the society can be more inclusive, understanding that child-rearing is a community effort, and not pertaining to any particular family formation.”

Audrey Tang: Once we hit that point, then a lot of stigma associated with that will go away.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you feel that the Taiwanese society is still very divided by generation when it comes to, say, attitudes to same sex…?

Audrey Tang: You mean authoritarian, for instance?

Duncan Hewitt: No, but when it comes to same sex marriage, for example? Is most of the support for it from young people?

Audrey Tang: I don’t think people are against weddings. People, the older generation, are against the idea that a same sex wedding brings two families into kinship.

Duncan Hewitt: That would take time then?

Audrey Tang: Which is what the hyperlink act is not doing.

Duncan Hewitt: Yeah, OK. Can I ask you, I don’t know what your views are, but in terms of, say, rights for trans-gender people, that has not been fully resolved?

Audrey Tang: I don’t know whether it’s fully resolved anywhere. [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: No, but I mean, is that an area that you’re promoting debate on, or…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. One of our reverse mentors actually proposed the ministry of education to start setting up restrooms that are gender-inclusive. More than half of higher education facilities are now building or already constructed…

Duncan Hewitt: That was a reverse mentor in the ministry of education.

Audrey Tang: In the ministry of education.

Duncan Hewitt: Oh, really?

Audrey Tang: There’s quite a few strides, actually, when it comes to what we call mainstreaming of transgender…

Duncan Hewitt: In terms of having legal status, is that satisfactory?

Audrey Tang: For a foreign transgender non-binary person, I think we’re handing a new, what we call a UID or a number, that represents non-binary people, for foreign.

Duncan Hewitt: For foreign residents, or…?

Audrey Tang: I think for foreign residents who use the…visitors too. They can get a UID.

Duncan Hewitt: What about for local citizens?

Audrey Tang: That means that the software system need to accommodate for non-binary.

Duncan Hewitt: That helps to promote.

Audrey Tang: That helps, and it will take a year or two. Once the systems have been upgraded to allow for non-binary, then we can begin the conversation about whether we introduce another digit, likely zero in the national ID, the NID system, to account for non-binaries.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you think it would be possible to get that approved and make law in the near future?

Audrey Tang: It depends on the norms. Always we’d look at the norms.

Duncan Hewitt: I guess my question is, how far have the norms changed?

Audrey Tang: I think the foreign non-binary people is generally, at least in Asia, I think, Taiwan is the most inclusive, for foreign binary people. Period.

Duncan Hewitt: Are there many such people here?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Sure. Artists and so on. I think with time, this is just becoming a normal thing. With the redesign of bathrooms and everything, that people feel that, “Oh, this is just a normal thing.”

Audrey Tang: Then I think the social norm will be ready to influence, not only the market and the code, the architecture for the registration system, and so on, and then law will catch up to the norms. The norm first is always the strategy we use here.

Duncan Hewitt: If you don’t mind me asking, when you made that choice, was it very difficult at that time?

Audrey Tang: It wasn’t a choice.

Duncan Hewitt: Sorry, I used the wrong word.

Audrey Tang: When did you choose to be heterosexual or a homosexual? [laughs]

Duncan Hewitt: So when your awareness of this issue was developing, did it feel like it was very difficult in society at that time?

Audrey Tang: Not at all.

Duncan Hewitt: You never felt much resistance from society.

Audrey Tang: Not at all. I am the resistance, in the Star Wars sense. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: What I mean by resistance is that, resisting stereotypes, making sure that I don’t see half of the population as others, be it gender, or party affiliation, or whatever. To be taking all the sides, and that’s what I always did.

Duncan Hewitt: You do feel that that consciousness or that attitude, is becoming more common in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Very much so. Very much so. The younger generations…as of last year, there’s no head of province anymore in Taiwan. There’s no head of Fujian province or Taiwan province. The old way of saying the “Taiwan province people” and “extra-provincial people” just disappeared. There’s no concept of province.

Duncan Hewitt: Was that last year when it was changed?

Audrey Tang: It was only last year, where we stopped assigning head of provinces.

Duncan Hewitt: I didn’t know that. That’s quite significant.

Audrey Tang: It’s significant because the word 「外省」 (extra-provincial) loses meaning,

Duncan Hewitt: In terms of identity in general, this is new.

Audrey Tang: Yeah. The provincial level just withers away.

Duncan Hewitt: One last question. I don’t know if you want to answer it.

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Duncan Hewitt: For example, I’ve been living in Mainland China. We’ve been watching society developing a lot in the last 20 years. Of course, it became much more open in many ways, but recently we perhaps see that the government is…

Audrey Tang: U-turns

Duncan Hewitt: …less open to many types of difference. When you look at the mainland, do you feel that that’s a society… that Taiwan and the mainland one day can grow together? How do you see the situation for people there?

Audrey Tang: They also signed on the sustainable goals, meaning that they also promised by 2030, they need to have a fair, accessible representative rule of law system, in terms of justice and governance.

Audrey Tang: While of course, many foreign observers are now seeing that they’re walking in the opposite direction, in terms of SDG measurements and targets, if they come around, of course, I’m sure Taiwan can help.

Audrey Tang: In Hong Kong already, there’s people who just won the regional elections already visiting me in my offices, and we’re already working out ways to help them to transfer some of the community building techniques that Taiwan developed over the ‘70s and ‘80s, especially the ‘80s.

Audrey Tang: That was also a time where we don’t have general election of presidents, but many democratic mechanisms are already developed in Taiwan. That’s something they really look forward to. Of course, Hong Kong is in a unique position, where people are looking at Hong Kong and see whether they can by 2046 evolve … 7 … evolved into a fully democratic governance system, or whether they will go to the way of authoritarianism. We’re working quite closely with the local developments.

Duncan Hewitt: From your office, can you actually go and do things in Hong Kong?

Audrey Tang: Of course. I gave talks. Even in Hangzhou, but as a hologram, as a avatar, as I did in UN Geneva.

Duncan Hewitt: You weren’t physically there.

Audrey Tang: There’s physically a role.

Duncan Hewitt: What was the talk in Hangzhou?

Audrey Tang: It was a public lecture, so people in Kaohsiung dialled in, and Hangzhou also.

Duncan Hewitt: Was that recently?

Audrey Tang: It was late 2016, but after I’ve become digital minister. I also gave talks like these to the Global Classroom, SDGs, and I’m sure that people from Shanghai dialed in as well. So on the cyberspace, really, there’s no boundaries of jurisdictions. I’m still working with whomever within PRC territory, that are still working on the art of transcultural republic citizens.

Duncan Hewitt: Do you think that there’s a lot of interest in that from the people in the PRC, grassroots?

Audrey Tang: Of course.

Duncan Hewitt: Can I just add one final question – I’ve talked to lots of people about different issues related to gender, related to what the government is doing. Just on a really simplistic question, do you think it’s important that Taiwan now has a female president?

Audrey Tang: It’s important globally, but I think local people, it’s so mainstreamed that people don’t feel it’s special.

Duncan Hewitt: She’s still the first one. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Sure. I don’t think she’s being particularly feminine or masculine about her presidency.

Duncan Hewitt: No, sure.

Audrey Tang: She projects a sense of stability.

Duncan Hewitt: In terms of the achievement, that a woman for the first time became a president.

Audrey Tang: Also, even more usefully in the Indo-Pacific context, that she is not president because she is somebody’s wife or daughter. She earned presidency, by working on political issues as a expert in trade negotiations and so on.

Audrey Tang: I would say that it is significant to show that people who are willing to do political work to build their career, not building family relations, but rather achieving a expert level understanding of the geopolitical area. I think that has repercussions not only in Taiwan but also reverberating around the whole Indo-Pacific area.

Duncan Hewitt: Is Taiwan now a sufficiently equal society, would you say, in gender equality?

Audrey Tang: In parliament, there’s less than 40 percent women in parliament positions. Although it’s like 39 percent, but it’s not fully equality. We don’t compare ourselves so much favorably with the Nordic countries, for example. But in our small region of the world, which is Indo-Pacific, we’re doing really well.

Duncan Hewitt: Finland just made a big breakthrough.

Audrey Tang: Exactly. Age-wise as well. We’re not saying we’re leading the world. We’re saying that we’re maybe a good example for Asia.

Duncan Hewitt: There’s much more. There’s still more that needs to be done.

Audrey Tang: There’s much more to be done.

Duncan Hewitt: Is that an area that can come within your remit, in terms of education?

Audrey Tang: Of course. Part of my work is youth engagement. Making sure that people who are 15-year-old are already well versed in public debate so that by the time they’re 30 years old, they’re ready to take on. I don’t know. They should try something like that.

Duncan Hewitt: Thank you so much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.