Emerson Csorba: Great.

Maciej Kuziemski: Let’s use this opportunity that you’re…

Emerson Csorba: Exactly. Perfect. Just take it into it. Ditchley was founded in the late 1950s in order to bring the US and Europe culture together after the war. That was the reason for the founding of Ditchley. It was partly based on the place on the house, which is just outside of Oxford.

Emerson Csorba: As you may know, it’s where Churchill spent weekends during World War II, working out Cold War strategy, and then Cold War strategy was worked out after the war, and where Harry Hopkins on the American side came to meet with Churchill to work out the lend lease agreement to bring the states into the war.

Emerson Csorba: The US Europe UK relationship is really at the core of Ditchley’s work. Ditchley has transformed over the past five years to become a much more global institution, engaging, for example, the Indo Pacific and its work.

Emerson Csorba: The mission for Ditchley is to help the world’s people sustain peace, freedom, and the rule of law. That is the guiding mission. Fundamentally, the focus is on renewing democracies. Ditchley’s approach to impact is through people.

Emerson Csorba: We are not a think tank. We do not really produce reports, digitally has a loosely bounded community of about 10,000 people. Part of it is senior decision makers across a number of countries. Also, there’s a big focus on geographical engagement in rural areas, in the hinterlands, and bringing together interesting, unusual people to help nudge ideas forward.

Emerson Csorba: We focus on policy, but we don’t focus too much on writing papers around policy. It’s more at looking at what is happening on the ground in the key themes that we focus on, and then helping to nudge those discussions forward, helping people to increase their capacity for action.

Emerson Csorba: A big focus on frank conversations done in a digitally way to help people, improve their strategic thinking, which they can then take back into their work and use in the way that is best for them. Traditionally and digitally has operated, has been through two to three day conferences, that take place at Ditchley, and would bring together outstanding people from politics, industry, etc.

Audrey Tang: I have received an invitation around three months ago.

Emerson Csorba: Yes. That’s been the traditional focus. Ditchley has transformed considerably, though, in that regard over past years where there’s much more of a focus on a political campaigning type approach, which means constant small discussions taking place, bringing new people into discussions.

Emerson Csorba: There’s 30 to 40 person type conferences, but also 8 to 10 person small discussions that take place…

Audrey Tang: That’s new.

Emerson Csorba: …almost every day of the week. It’s a constant engagement of communities around ideas to make sure that there’s talent moving through these different conversations. That is how Ditchley has evolved on people. The themes that we deal with much, we’ll speak in a second on the data and how to work.

Emerson Csorba: Generally, there is the more geopolitical type work that Ditchley has always focused on. There is work on education and democracies, so looking at given the internal and external threats to democracies and threat of climate change. What do citizens need to learn? How can education both formally and informally deliver that?

Emerson Csorba: That’s one of our streams of work. We have a growing climate and energy program and a team building around that.

Audrey Tang: Sorry, a growing what?

Emerson Csorba: Climate.

Audrey Tang: I see.

Emerson Csorba: Yeah, more work focusing on climate. Fundamentally, that is on the political deliverability of climate initiatives. We actually had a community briefing for that yesterday. John Kerry kicked off that work for us about a year ago with a climate conference. We have a good relationship with his team, a good relationship with the UK government on that.

Emerson Csorba: The aim is to help to bring detail to net zero type policies that connect into how this will impact people on the ground. It’s the political deliverability type discussion domestically, and then the geopolitical elements of energy more globally. That’s on the climate work.

Emerson Csorba: Then, there’s the technology program. Ditchley, perhaps surprisingly to some, has strong connections in Silicon Valley, which comes out of the Director James Royo’s background.

Emerson Csorba: His background was 26 years in the foreign office on the UK side, but he was responsible for bringing a lot of technology leaders into the foreign office, bringing Palantir in on the UK side, bringing other technology companies in to help expand UK foreign office leaders thinking in that regard.

Emerson Csorba: He finished up in the SEO as the chief information officer, basically as the head of data for the SEO. He brings a lot of that thinking, connecting foreign policy and technology into Ditchley.

Emerson Csorba: That has helped to transform the program on that front, but also the operation of the Ditchley House, which now combines the best of the past we think, but also the best of modern times in how we do hybrid engagement.

Emerson Csorba: That’s hopefully a high level background of Ditchley when it comes to the history, the mission, the focus on renewing democracies and on the approach to engagement of people, and finally on themes. How about you go on, Maciej. That’s OK.

Maciej Kuziemski: Sure. Absolutely. Zooming in on one of the programs I recently joined Ditchley to work on, what we call data and democracies. Essentially, it’s a high level effort to look at how democratic countries can work closer together on a number of issues related to data sharing and data flows.

Maciej Kuziemski: Importantly for this conversation, this is an effort that hopes to engage, not only with the US, EU, and the UK, but also with selected Asian companies. In particular, we are looking at some questions around health data sharing, trusted access to data, digital public infrastructures, and then obviously keeping track of policy efforts that are happening.

Maciej Kuziemski: Bunch of EU’s legislation including DSA, PMA data act, the UK one, Online Harms, OECD, etc.

Audrey Tang: You just described my job.

Maciej Kuziemski: Exactly. This is very briefly what we do. As Emerson mentioned, we do it through larger convenience and smaller ones, focused small group discussions, which then feed into wider discussion, which is something quite new for Ditchley as well. I’m very hopeful about this model because it allows to be very focused and then extrapolated to a wider crowd.

Maciej Kuziemski: This is for starters essentially. We would like to use this conversation to learn a little bit about your work and what your priorities, see what we could do together, and then discuss one immediate opportunity, which is an event that we are hosting at the end of March, on March 20, 29, 30.

Maciej Kuziemski: We would like to extend an invitation for you to participate in person or remotely, and hopefully share a case study on Taiwanese model of civic technology development, which will be very informative for other participants.

Audrey Tang: I had to decline, to pass on the previous conference invitation because of time zone differences. I simply can’t find a time during the 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM in Taipei time that overlaps with this time commitment that’s required for a conference. What’s the time commitment looking like for the smaller talk that you mentioned?

Maciej Kuziemski: I know that participating in the entire two days of conference is a big ask, so we could help shape this engagement to cut to your schedule. I’d assume that this could be something along the lines of 20 minute case study, followed by a roundtable discussion. Wrapping it up within an hour or hour and a half tops could be doable on our end.

Maciej Kuziemski: Obviously, at some point in time your schedule allowing, we would love to host you at Ditchley because as Emerson mentioned, we are trying to do this hybrid engagement quite well, but nothing beats in person as well.

Audrey Tang: Right, but it doesn’t have to be me because we have colleagues that I work very closely, both kind of direct, like my office colleague currently in London. Also, our de facto embassy, the TechRow people, are also in London and part of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Audrey Tang: Could it be if that they attend in my stead, and I just drop by or I learn through this intermittent shorter meetings? I understand what you’re saying. It’s that they’re social bonds is that the main trouble. It’s not same thing with whitepapers, right?

Maciej Kuziemski: Absolutely.

Audrey Tang: I would preferably opt for someone I already trust a lot and physically in London to do the work.

Maciej Kuziemski: Yes. Emerson, please jump in if you have views on that, but I think this is doable. I’d assume that the person that will be in London, probably would have more ease to even visit Ditchley in person.

Maciej Kuziemski: If it wouldn’t be too much of an ask to, at some point, have you involved in some shorter discussion or a more focused one, this would be excellent, or deliver opening remarks or closing remarks?

Audrey Tang: Sure. As I mentioned, my working hours are weekdays, 7:00 to 7:00, Taipei time. Within that, in one hour segments, we can always talk about that. Also, because starting around a couple of weeks from now until May ish, it’s our parliamentary interpolation. Practically, that’s my busiest month. It’s unlikely that I can submit…

Audrey Tang: I’m happy to keep up on the updates, and so on. Maybe the next step would be for you to outline the kind of in person participation, that if I’m in London, you would like to invite me over to.

Audrey Tang: Then, I forward that my colleague in London, and see if they have the time commitment that is required to make this initial connection, and then we go from there.

Maciej Kuziemski: Yeah, I think that sounds excellent. Emerson?

Emerson Csorba: Yes, it sounds great.

Maciej Kuziemski: Good. Time allowing, would you be keen to share, maybe something about your current priorities?

Audrey Tang: Sure. It’s not like I have anything after this meeting. My time is quite free. We have at least 40 minutes or so.

Maciej Kuziemski: That’s good.

Audrey Tang: My focus at the moment is on what we call the democracy networks, including the multilateral minilateral — What is that? — arrangement that you alluded to, but also widely, speaking with the civic technology communities and on the board of, say, consul project.

Audrey Tang: It started from Mandarin, but now in a lot of Spanish  and non Spanish speaking platforms, radical exchange, reset, you name it. That’s the wider civic tech network.

Audrey Tang: I’m also interested in the flow reverse. Something that is a methodology to turn a successful web 2.0 way of doing business and so on, and do a exit to community, so to speak, and into something that is co governed with all the participants and so on. I try not to use the word crypto because crypto, for me, means something else.

Audrey Tang: Of course, netting zero is also a focus for democracy networks, especially because we shared a lot of contact tracing. That was the case study I presented at a summit for democracy.

Audrey Tang: It turns out that the same data coalition, data collaborative, can also be used to measure anything from the carbon footprint reduced by refilling ones bottle instead of plastics, buying new plastics, or measuring air quality changes and get climate action together or cleaning up the environment together.

Audrey Tang: That has wide behavior change benefits around the world. Anything that can get people to wear a mask can also be repurposed for that purpose. That’s also my interest  these five. Four really, but if you count the traditional Internet governance, foreign, and things like that, five is my focus. I’m also in charge of social innovation.

Audrey Tang: We’re also very interested in the kind of innovations that blurs the boundaries between the traditional coops and the nonprofit sector and the business. Anything from impact businesses, purpose oriented businesses, and so on, and the legal support and the budgetary support, for that, I’m also interested in. It’s variously called an inclusive innovation or parallel innovation.

Audrey Tang: Of course, there’s the more mundane government services. The kind of like EU DCC, right? The Digital COVID Certificate. We rolled it out rather successfully in Taiwan without much fanfare or people mobilizing on the street. That’s perhaps because we’ve never really had a lockdown. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Anyway, the point is that the government service and the timely delivery of all the emerging issues as they come is also a focus.

Audrey Tang: Finally, data governance, that kind of data trust, altruistic organizations, pro social data coalitions, and so on. We’ve got quite a few examples in Taiwan, especially because of the universal healthcare that people trust.

Audrey Tang: Health related data sharing, especially with privacy enhancing technologies that enables zero knowledge sharing and post quantum fully homomorphic encryption, and so on. That’s my geek part. I also do some support to the researchers there, and that’s pretty much it

Maciej Kuziemski: That sounds fascinating. On the last point, we are planning to host a small event on PETs, Privacy Enhancing Technologies, with HDR UK, Health Data Research UK, at the beginning of March, so I’ll take the liberty of also sharing the details. Maybe yourself, or one of your colleagues who is in London would be keen to attend that.

Maciej Kuziemski: Emerson, any thoughts?

Emerson Csorba: You could expect that on social days on engaging that…

Maciej Kuziemski: Would you like to retry it? I can’t really hear you.

Emerson Csorba: How is it right now?

Maciej Kuziemski: When you turn off video, it’s better.

Emerson Csorba: Better? OK, so no video helps a lot.

Maciej Kuziemski: Yes.

Emerson Csorba: I was wondering whether you could expand on some of the current work that you’re undertaking on social innovation, especially engaging business in that work in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: As you are probably aware, we learned a lot of social entrepreneurship strategies from the UK. We also have preferential procurement. I think in yours is called CIC or something. Basically, when some small or medium businesses that they can prove that they’re purpose oriented and so on, they are listed in a special procurement listing.

Audrey Tang: I personally go out and give awards for the vendors that purchase such goods and services. That’s one. Also, we give out Presidential Hackathon Awards, so that out of those local scale collaborations if they ideate and think of a behavior change app or whatever that can deliver on any of the SDGs. We use a novel form of voting called quadratic voting for the past four years now.

Audrey Tang: People vote more than 200 projects each year, and the top five, after three months of coaching gets the presidential promise, that whatever they did on a local scale will become national policy in the next fiscal year with all the budget and personnel and regulatory support. That’s a way to rapidly scale out and scale up social innovations from a smaller society.

Audrey Tang: I also tour around Taiwan, I have office hours, and things like that, in a way, to blur the lines between the ministries that previously was focused on one or two aspects of the SDGs, and think in a much more collaborative holistic way, so that we can ideate, for example, how to ban the plastic straws of pub and tea takeout’s.

Audrey Tang: In a way, that increases adoption of the more pro environmental behaviors. Also, supporting the newer social entrepreneurs focusing on that particular issue.

Audrey Tang: For example, my personal food delivery, Misco is a startup in the social innovation lab. We incubate around 30 teams a year. They focus to make carbon neutral/negative alternative to raise Foodpanda. That’s what I literally use myself, and many others. I’m also a kind of amplifier of their messages.

Audrey Tang: Does that sound…?

Maciej Kuziemski: Yeah, that sounds very interesting, and one other theme or threats that we’re trying to explore at Ditchley and perhaps something of interest. I’ll loop our colleagues who are working on that, is climate commitments and carbon markets, looking at ways to incentivize collaboration between stakeholders in that space.

Maciej Kuziemski: It would be a good thing for us to have a deeper look into what you just described on the carbon negative alternatives to platforms to ride hailing and food delivery platforms.

Audrey Tang: Right, but I would like also to say that social innovation in Taiwan corresponds to any number of SDG, but it’s not just about netting zero.

Audrey Tang: Of course, there’s also a strong movement, for example, as I mentioned, co ops not necessarily registered as such, maybe the communities using distributed ledgers to emulate a traditional co op and things like that.

Audrey Tang: Basically it’s very broad what we mean by generation, which is why I switched to use the term plurality or the social factor or the plural sector because of the diversity theory.

Maciej Kuziemski: I’m interested in a question around how do you scale up local digital public infrastructures, and then ensure interoperability internationally to approximate some global commons, etc. I’m curious, what are your views on that?

Audrey Tang: Just to clarify my understanding, are you suggesting about taking one or a few pieces of technology and reach adoption to a global audience, or do you mean people pulling together their cross governmental resources, digital nations, so to speak, to co-develop such things?

Maciej Kuziemski: Well, both the outcome and the process is interesting. The easier question is probably, how do you scale up? The more interesting is, how do you ensure international co production and then adoption?

Audrey Tang: Scaling up is an easy question. [laughs] There’s any number of convenient answers. Maybe I’ll just touch that and go straight to the networking part. It’s not easy because it’s their procurement rule for need to change like Taiwan did to prioritize open standards and OpenAPI.

Audrey Tang: We even went further and we did something like reverse procurement where the community creates the standards sometimes with international collaboration and the government implements the necessary APIs to fulfil that.

Audrey Tang: For example, when South Korea implemented in their pharmacies, in March 2020, the APIs for masks visualization, they can actually re use, and they did, the Taiwanese masks made develop one month prior.

Audrey Tang: One of the first visualization of medical grade masks in Seoul was actually from Tainan. The developer speaks no Korean, but he speaks JavaScript. That’s sufficient. It requires, in pandemic times, a discretionary procurements process, and it depends on a really good OpenAPI fabric that both South Korea and Taiwan have.

Audrey Tang: With the common urgency, then it became very easy to connect together. A simple story maybe told about the Taiwanese team of detecting water leakage in pipes and they went to Lightning Lab in Wellington, to work with New Zeeland because it became more urgency and so on.

Emerson Csorba: The point is that only because of the urgency that is caused, for instance by the pandemic, the countries were really able to work together and maybe banned the procurement processes?

Audrey Tang: Water shortage, things like that. The year of Presidential Hackathon, the national track which, truth to be told, is kind of exhibition track. It’s not exactly the same model especially in the past couple of years because of travel restrictions.

Audrey Tang: It did enable us to think if we keep running Presidential Hackathons, and then connect to the German Prototype Fund or Learning Lab, or if everyone have been to the VHacks in Vatican.

Audrey Tang: It could be that if we just put up similar reverse procurement such innovation and education protocourse without explicitly coordinating the teams using OpenAPI and Open data, will do so by themselves in the social sector.

Emerson Csorba: Then the question from my end would be, how do you try to codify and solidify the learnings from this extreme context? This is one of the big questions. What stays reverse after this pandemic in terms of new policies?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. The countries or jurisdictions that have worked together closely even if just bilaterally or unilaterally, tend to just piggyback whatever does already work and then add new topics to it.

Audrey Tang: I’m quite optimistic in something like that. It’s like the, prototypical ARPANet-linked academic network connecting to the pre Internet. [laughs] It’s a little bit like ARPANet globally which started as just sharing some research issues – not at all for cat pictures. Cat pictures piggybacked on that.

Emerson Csorba: If any, which international organizations or multilateral organizations you would think to be well positioned to take on those issues and progress them internationally?

Audrey Tang: You mean something for democracy or is it democracy affirming technologies? I think the US explicitly said that right and a grand challenge around that. That’s, obviously, “for democracy”, not “of democracies”.

Audrey Tang: It’s building upon the existing structure of the hybrid parts multi stakeholder parts, multi lateral, Open Government Partnership, the OGP. I’m very involved with the previous OGP permits.

Audrey Tang: In the past couple of years, we’ve also launched our national action plan on open government, but also open parliament. We run open parliament summit a few months before with international MPs joining. That’s also good. Democracy affirming technologies tech, at least a more universal actionable item that can be brought back to their respective parliaments.

Audrey Tang: Countering disinformation, or to counter cyberbullying and hastened each avoid polarization and things like that, that are pedagogical competence, dedication topics, that is not as geopolitical as a, I don’t know, countering the cybersecurity within the system spreads, seven norm package.

Maciej Kuziemski: Similarly, in that vein, that’s why all those advancements that you mentioned were quite successful in the health conflicts writing related to the pandemic as this is probably less contested than other areas.

Maciej Kuziemski: This is also where we see a lot of value that stakeholders otherwise would not be willing to sit in the same room. When it comes to health, they are amendable to make some discussions.

Audrey Tang: Which is why I always take an epidemiological view and let this information crisis. Instead of conspiracy theorists being interference operators, I take the view of, basically, it’s like virus variants. We’re here to develop viral vaccines and then the mental health makes it a health issue and conversation much more possible.

Maciej Kuziemski: That’s very interesting. Emerson, are you with us?

Emerson Csorba: I am. Have you been?

Maciej Kuziemski: Partially.

Emerson Csorba: I’ve heard everything. Well, one question.

Maciej Kuziemski: We can’t hear you, Emerson, maybe you can write in chat. As you can see, Audrey, there are some connectivity issues in the UK.

Audrey Tang: Broadband is a human right here. We’ve not suffered this violation for quite some years.

Maciej Kuziemski: [laughs] Emerson, feel free to write your question.

Maciej Kuziemski: We can’t hear you, Emerson.

Maciej Kuziemski: If I may write while we wait for Emerson. I was also quite compelled to that you’re one of your recent appearances where you mentioned this model of collaboration between, you call the PPP, but not public private partnership, but the people public private.

Maciej Kuziemski: This people element is quite interesting for me because I’m myself coming from let’s say, Science Technology Studies background. Doing public engagement is very hard. The bigger the country, the bigger the pond, the harder it is.

Maciej Kuziemski: I’m curious about your views, what are some of the tools and ways of engaging people on complex topics related to tech for instance, where they are and where the people are used to?

Audrey Tang: Most people in Western countries when they think about public engagement or large scale, tend to refer to things that they already have experienced with, say juries, for example, or citizens assembly by sacration, which emulates juries, for example. They’re always added decisional stage, or at least have the power that traditionally we relegate to experts or to MPs.

Audrey Tang: That creates a competing effect. The bar is quite high if you compare the deliberative quality with deliberation, with the committees. It’s not seen as worth it unless the controversy is huge. On the other hand, in Taiwan, we do a lot of those micro co creations where 5,000 peoples’ petitions can start one online.

Audrey Tang: Today, we look at the monthly knurling. There’s five or six topics that reached a threshold, and they cover the whole gamut of things. When we do collaboration meetings, we’re not there to get a decision. We’re there to ideate, to brainstorm, to do problem definition together, problem discovery together, and so on.

Audrey Tang: The great thing there is that it’s a natural augmentation of the parliamentary role because all MPs want a fuller understanding of the solution space. If we can figure out a solution space together, it makes their job that much easier because there’s less zero sum and more positive sum stuff. That preparatory work, nobody objects to that.

Audrey Tang: They can also be run almost natural semi automatically using policies and maybe other technologies that do a weekly survey where people respond to each other’s sentiments without a reply button. Trolls don’t control.

Audrey Tang: We crowd source, not the decision, the agenda. It replace a lighter engagement. It’s literally a couple of minutes of your time. Of course, they can always commit more time. It feels like a latter of participation that have gratification along the way, instead of a national referendum on the EU UK relationship.

Maciej Kuziemski: It’s all the way to the top. I like that ladder of participation. Assuming that people can commit different amounts of time and resources. There are ways to engage for them, no matter their amount of time and an interest. Is this something that you consistently apply across the board, or do you use it only…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s more than 100 collaboration meetings done this way, and none of which have blown up, so we’ve got quite a good reputation among the career public service about that.

Maciej Kuziemski: Interesting. I see Emerson posted his question in the chat. The question is an obvious question. How Ditchley can be of help in your lines of work, and there are many lines of work. What kind of groups Ditchley could help, engage, and connect with? What kind of contacts do you think from your perspective would work best?

Audrey Tang: The feeling I got from my counterparts in other countries was that, let’s say, democracy and technology are still seen as two things. The view that we just went over, the view of democracy itself as a social technology that everyone can contribute too in our international way.

Audrey Tang: This view of democracy is a technological paradigm that is different from state surveillance of aggregated data, and also different from absolute individual’s sovereignty. It’s a different path and a commitment to the networks of this kind.

Audrey Tang: Explicitly saying, we are reworking AI into assisted intelligence, and we’re rewarding singularity into plurality.

Maciej Kuziemski: Interesting. Well, there are a couple of organizations that touch on those themes. Like Demos Helsinki, for instance, or the New Institute recently as well. Indeed, these are conversations that are happening at the margins. It will be interesting to see them more prominently at the center.

Maciej Kuziemski: Well, look, this is something that we would be very keen to explore and keep discussing. Maybe we could curate something together around those issues, drawing from your networks and our networks to bring a good group of people together.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. It aligns with your mission, after all.

Maciej Kuziemski: It does. Great. Emerson, are you trying to say something?

Emerson Csorba: I’m not trying to say anything, I just said great and thank you.

Audrey Tang: I hear that very clearly.

Emerson Csorba: That’s good, amazing, for understanding then.

Maciej Kuziemski: Perfect. Thank you so much, Audrey. Thank you for your time, and that truthful discussion. Let’s stay in touch, and we will send that all the materials and invitations there shortly, kindly asking for advice and interests from your London colleagues.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. Live long and prosper.

Maciej Kuziemski: Perfect. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of day.

Emerson Csorba: Thanks.

Maciej Kuziemski: Bye bye.