Manuel Edghill: I’m the expert now on the visiting protocol.

Audrey Tang: Exactly, you’re the protocol expert. You’re probably the only person outside our office who has read through the whole thing. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: Yes, repeatedly.

Manuel Edghill: Are you coffee’d out? No more coffee for you?

Audrey Tang: No, I’ve maximized my caffeine intake today.

Manuel Edghill: No more people? That’s it?

Shuyang Lin: Yes, one more, but I think he’s debugging. He’ll join later.

Audrey Tang: We’re all pretty curious how did you get interested in our...

Manuel Edghill: Here’s the thing. I found a video of you.

Audrey Tang: On YouTube?

Manuel Edghill: That’s right, or Facebook. It doesn’t matter. I was like, "All right, this is interesting. OK, Taiwan is doing something very cool." I read up on you more, and then something ticked, and I became excited. We share a lot of the values. That was what attracted me to email you. We believe in tech as way to create a more optimal government, civic duties that we have, responsibilities, building trust in the government.

Manuel Edghill: Hi, come in. I was just getting started, how I got to stalk Audrey.

Manuel Edghill: I just saw all these check marks, and I viewed it...You’re a lot more techy than I am, but we all did tech stuff and we usually go towards a vision, or we usually follow a leader that has the equal visions as you, for example, for a start.

Manuel Edghill: When I started learning more and more and more of what you’re doing, I thought, "This person has a vision that I can relate to," and, "She’s probably going to need a lot of help." I don’t know how, I don’t know where, or how we could do something, but I just wanted to let you know, "Hey, I’m here."

Manuel Edghill: Some of the things that you said really resonated with me. That’s pretty much how I figured out how to contact you. (laughs) Then I went to your YouTube channel and I just messaged you through there. That’s how it all started. I originally wanted just to...

Audrey Tang: Have some coffee?

Manuel Edghill: Since then I’ve been craving this red velvet cake from this coffee shop. (laughs) I almost bought some, but I wanted just to have a sit down and have more casual, but now there so many formalities and so many people here...

Shuyang Lin: I think we are very casual here.

Audrey Tang: As you can see, it’s like a small start‑up here.

Manuel Edghill: Except for that [points at recorder]... everything is going to be public, except for that.

Manuel Edghill: Anyway, that’s why I emailed you. I don’t know exactly how or where you see someone like me fit in, but maybe an extra eye and ear that could help you brainstorm an idea, or advice in a particular segment, a bridge. You talked about more transparent communication: transparent like glass, reflective like a mirror?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Manuel Edghill: These are all things that align to what I hope to find in some leader ‑‑ I don’t want to say like that ‑‑ but a movement. That’s what gravitated me to where I am here today. So, I’m here.

Audrey Tang: You’re very welcome.

Audrey Tang: We’re pretty transparent, as evidently you’ve probably already read about whatever we’re doing. If you have any suggestions or anything that you would like to contribute, just let us know, or any questions.

Manuel Edghill: Here’s my more philosophical question...where do you see yourself in five years? Correct me if I’m wrong, I feel that now you have this platform, not only technical, but also political, where you could really create this movement that not only changes Taiwan for the better as far as 1) transparency, 2) a bridge to Silicon Valley, 3) a hub of startup, but you could do amazing things. I think that (some Mandarin words).

Audrey Tang: No, our English is pretty good.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, fantastic. Even better for me. I was stressing already.

Manuel Edghill: You have this group of people that could really, you guys could really do something amazing. I don’t know, I feel like it’s brewing... where I could see where it could go. I just want to let you know that I could be of help if you want me to be.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, certainly. Our entire communication strategy is pretty open. In fact, our entire website, the digital copy of it, is kept ‑‑ discussion boards that you’ve been to ‑‑ vTaiwan.tw, of course talk.pdis.tw. If you want to contribute by copy editing or helping us write more English communication materials, which I now have discovered you’re expert in.

Manuel Edghill: All right, I could do that too.

Audrey Tang: It all depends on what you want to do. Around here, in the office we practice what we call the objective key result, the OKR kind of management, meaning that instead of me dictating where the office is going, I actually ask these guys where they would like to see themselves not in five years, but in three months time, and what kind of objectives each individual personally wants to see happening.

Audrey Tang: My role here is to facilitate everybody’s objectives and make sure that they align in some way. We would then collectively determine our office objective for the next three months or so. We don’t plan for five years. For a minister to plan for five years is absurd, because one term is four years.

Manuel Edghill: How about yourself as Audrey? For example...

Audrey Tang: As for myself...

Manuel Edghill: Go ahead.

Audrey Tang: No, I promise to be honest and...

Manuel Edghill: You’ll still be...

Audrey Tang: On Earth. I’m not going to Mars in five years. Even Elon Musk is not going to be there in five years.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, he’ll let somebody else do the testing for it.

Audrey Tang: There will probably be some robots instead. Let’s be fair.

Audrey Tang: In any case, honestly, I’m pretty much signed up for the public service. It may be in government. It may be in an NGO. It may be in civil society in an individual capacity. I’ve been retired for a couple of years before I joined the government, so as soon as I’m out of this job, I’ll probably be on a similar job doing, still, governance stuff.

Manuel Edghill: You don’t expect to be in policy‑making for the foreseeable future like your predecessor?

Audrey Tang: Jaclyn Tsai?

Manuel Edghill: No, he was the digital minister before, and then he became the prime minister, right?

Audrey Tang: Simon Chang?

Manuel Edghill: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, Chang is still doing effectively open government on communication work. He’s now working in the Taiwan Mobile Foundation, still doing a lot of policy thinking, working with the civil society.

Manuel Edghill: Do you see yourself doing that type of career in politics?

Audrey Tang: Well, it’s not quite a career. There’s no upward path.

Shuyang Lin: Who knows?

Manuel Edghill: Why not? It could be.

Audrey Tang: Like in the United Nations?

Manuel Edghill: Or Senator Tang, then up and up and up. Do you see something like that...

Audrey Tang: From a minister to a parliament member, I’m not sure whether it’s a move up or down, but in any case...

Audrey Tang: ...I harbor no political ambitions. I’m here to do open government work, regardless of whether Taiwan gives me a title or not. I’ve been doing this work for the past few years now, since at least 2012. If you count other sideline endeavors, then it’s longer. I’ve been here for a while doing, more or less, exactly the same thing.

Audrey Tang: Now I’m blessed with a much more capable team than when I had to do everything myself, but it’s still more or less the same kind of work.

Manuel Edghill: So you could only have a four‑year term. What is your goal through that four‑year term?

Audrey Tang: My goal is to facilitate everybody’s goal on my team. It doesn’t sound fair, but that’s how OKR works.

Shuyang Lin: All the pressure’s on us.

Manuel Edghill: I know!

Audrey Tang: Well you can declare an objective of nothing. You want to do nothing for three months, I will facilitate it.

Manuel Edghill: I see. I know that you have three mandates: One is open government, social entrepreneurship, and then youth council.

Audrey Tang: Right, but the youth council is actually part of the open government work, because their mandate ‑‑ well, ours, because I’m also a council member ‑‑ as it turns out, is to facilitate open government through direct communication.

Audrey Tang: It’s like a subset of the entire open government mandate, but for young people. Social enterprise is something else, of course. It’s a bridge between the traditional NGOs, non‑profit world, and enterprises looking to improve their sustainability or CSR, social responsibility.

Audrey Tang: That involves some policy‑making, but I’m not an expert in social enterprise. I’m mostly learning from people from both sides and trying to facilitate some things, like the upcoming Company Act rewrite, that takes care of both sides’ concerns. What I’m saying is I don’t have a personal agenda for the social enterprise work.

Audrey Tang: Most of our office time is spent on open government work, planning particular designs around how to get ministries to talk directly with people, with stakeholders, instead of through proxies like media. The media of course is very important as an ally, but we want the ministry to also be capable of operating as their own self-media.

Manuel Edghill: All right. Then mostly the work is that is done in this office is towards open governance?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: So vTaiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yes, like vTaiwan and Join are the two Internet platforms, but there’s also things like Facebook pages and websites of each ministry. There’s also public hearings and city engagement roles in many of the ministries, in particular the Ministry of the Interior.

Manuel Edghill: OK, side note. I was checking out vTaiwan. What happens if fake accounts start going on a particular...

Audrey Tang: We don’t vote.

Manuel Edghill: It’s not voting, because you have some aggregations of people’s voices and opinions. So if, let’s say with respect to the Uber thing, because it’s the easiest to discuss...

Audrey Tang: Everybody brings that one up...[opens vTaiwan webpage and projects to wall Uber topic]

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, it’s a beat up subject, but it’s easy. You have Uber, and there’s clusters of people. Let’s say...

Audrey Tang: Let’s say hundreds of people register fake accounts and vote exactly the same.

Manuel Edghill: Or I’m the taxi driver, so I tell all my taxi driver friends, "Hey, we don’t want Uber. Let’s skew it."

Audrey Tang: Right, that’s exactly what happened. When we invited everybody from the taxi, the Uber, and everybody to contribute, that’s what happens. The all voted very similarly in the first week, and they all clustered in the corners.

Audrey Tang: You can see with your own eyes that people are divided in the four corners, because we take as finding agenda only the consensus items, then manage to convince people we’re different than they are. They have to come up with something to convince at least 80 percent of the total population, regardless of how many people they get through here.

Audrey Tang: It is dynamic threshold. It was 80 percent, because it was roughly a four‑sixths split. We’re taking all of 60 and half of 40 to calculate the threshold. In the next case, it was 20‑80 because there’s some mobilization on the 80 part. The threshold is now all of 80 plus half of 20, meaning that you still have to convince 90 percent of people.

Audrey Tang: No matter how many people you mobilize, you still have to convince half of the people in the other side.

Manuel Edghill: To go forward with your particular...

Audrey Tang: That particular agenda. That’s one thing.

Audrey Tang: The other thing is that if you mobilize a million people and you vote exactly the same, it’s just one dot on this two‑dimensional plot. What we’re visualizing here is not the weight or the rank between the people’s positions, but rather the diversity. If you mobilize a dozen people, and they vote exactly the same, it’s just going to count only as one point around this mark.

Audrey Tang: What we’re trying to do is to get a spectrum of stakeholder positions, so that when we’re doing the face‑to‑face deliberation, we can consider everybody’s positions, and it’s regardless of how many people uphold this position.

Audrey Tang: In fact, the person who wrote this software was a civics teacher who taught Habermas. He insisted that even if there is a tiny fraction, like three people, as compared to thousands here, that holds a peculiar position that’s not share with any other cluster.

Manuel Edghill: They’ll still show.

Audrey Tang: It will still show.

Manuel Edghill: That’s right.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, that’s right. That’s how it was designed.

Manuel Edghill: Let’s go back to the Uber thing. Let’s say we’re crowd‑sourcing policy...

Audrey Tang: The agenda.

Manuel Edghill: The agenda, that’s right.

Audrey Tang: What we’re talking about, yeah.

Manuel Edghill: We give them the points of this stuff or everybody brings their own points. What happens if, for example, let’s take a famous quote from Steve Jobs, I think he says something like "If somebody asked the people in the times of Henry Ford, they would have just asked for a faster horse.’

Manuel Edghill: Would that be applicable here that most people might not see the benefits of having a service like a peer‑to‑peer car sharing?

Audrey Tang: Maybe.

Manuel Edghill: So then would that be that we are creating policy based on a...

Audrey Tang: Democratic institution?

Manuel Edghill: No. OK, yes. I see what you’re doing here.

Audrey Tang: Isn’t that the point? (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: That is the point, but the majority sometimes doesn’t see the long term.

Audrey Tang: That’s true, which is why we need to have this reflective space, so that the initial minority positions get time to disseminate into this wider population.

Audrey Tang: You would note that it doesn’t look anything, the four corners now. This is because, after three or four weeks, they started to cohere ‑‑ more eclectic, more nuanced. More thought is being put into the subsequent ideas, so that when people ranked those ideas, they found stuff they tend to agree with things that are more... considered every stakeholder’s position, that is to say, more eclectic.

Audrey Tang: It is true that, with this process, we can’t count on somebody from the collective intelligence to have the foresight of Steve Jobs, but this is not what this is about. This is about getting something that everybody can live with among controversies.

Manuel Edghill: OK, I understand.

Audrey Tang: OK, you’re welcome, glad to explain. But that was the point, seriously.

Manuel Edghill: You mentioned one of the things that you wanted to do was not be the Silicon Valley of Asia, but more of a hub.

Audrey Tang: Linking Asia and connecting to the Silicon Valley.

Manuel Edghill: So how come we don’t want to be the Silicon Valley of Asia?

Audrey Tang: Because there’s already a Silicon Valley of Earth.

Manuel Edghill: Do we not want to create that type of innovative environment here?

Audrey Tang: Probably not that particular type.

Manuel Edghill: Why not?

Audrey Tang: Because it’s not going to work. Taiwan’s essence and very peculiar culture towards startups, towards innovation, and towards foreigners… I would, of course, love to have some more Silicon Valley kind respect for diversity or getting more talented people from around the world.

Audrey Tang: This is part of linking Asia plan and educational diversification, so we are not caught in one discipline. But still, with all these efforts, we’re still not replicating the Silicon Valley culture at all. Taiwan has its own culture. Branding it as Silicon Valley of Taiwan just dilutes the Silicon Valley idea and also dilutes the Taiwanese culture. I don’t see anything useful in branding it like that.

Manuel Edghill: Ok. So how can we be better than Singapore as a hub?

Audrey Tang: Well I don’t care. Singapore is very good at being Singapore. Singapore doesn’t have 23 million people. It’s a city‑state that excels in what a city‑state does, because it’s very small and it has a lot of efficiency‑minded policy‑making.

Audrey Tang: Taiwan is much larger, a lot more people, a lot more respect in this kind of consensus‑making, rather than sheer efficiency. It’s going to be a different path. It’s going to be a different model. Taiwan’s better at being Taiwan than Singapore does, but that’s not saying much.

Manuel Edghill: OK, so how do you see...

Audrey Tang: I’m pretty uniquely non‑competitive.

Manuel Edghill: No, no, that’s fine. I just wanted to see where we’re going as far as Taiwan and the bridge...

Audrey Tang: We’re going upwards.

Manuel Edghill: Good. As long as it’s that way, we’re good.

Audrey Tang: Towards the sun, towards the stars.

Manuel Edghill: That’s right. How are we going to get there, the particular aspects?

Audrey Tang: Through what we call a convergent boundary between the two tectonic plates.

Manuel Edghill: When they hit?

Shuyang Lin: We’re technically going upwards.

Manuel Edghill: You mean physically?

Audrey Tang: ...we go up a little bit more every now and then.

Shuyang Lin: Like five centimeter every year.

Audrey Tang: Something like that. It is true. It’s been like that for the past four million years. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: That’s not what I meant though, but I like that...

Audrey Tang: It’s what I meant.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, oh.

Shuyang Lin: You were so happy about it.

Manuel Edghill: I’m was getting pumped here.

Shuyang Lin: ...not trying to disappoint you, not for this meeting.

Audrey Tang: It is a pretty physical statement, saying that we’re inching towards the sky. It means that we are not competing with anybody else.

Manuel Edghill: OK, how can we be more unique? Do we have a way of creating this unique Taiwan tech hub?

Audrey Tang: Sure, yes.

Manuel Edghill: OK. How are we going to do that?

Audrey Tang: How are we going to do that? By just doing innovative stuff. In the government, we’re trying to find out ‑‑ we have this kind of Agile governance ‑‑ what kind of existing regulations serve no purpose but to block people’s own innovating.

Audrey Tang: Then we’re assessing them on vTaiwan and other platforms, so that we can get everybody a new version that everybody can live with and is somewhat better than the previous version. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Then we do that every time there is someone that says we should review that revision again. This is a recurrent process.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: We did that for many things.

Audrey Tang: We’re currently doing this for the securitization of intangible assets, which means that if some company secures a contract with the government, say, that they are going to supply renewable energy for the next 20 years, they could use this government contract to get some loan from a bank, without getting some cars or houses or whatever as tangible assets. That used to be the only thing that could be securitized.

Audrey Tang: There’s many little, small things like this. Each one, taken together, gets us a better innovative environment.

Manuel Edghill: OK, so how would you, as in the office of the Digital Ministry, like to create that bridge? You mentioned one of the things you’d like to talk about is creating that bridge to the international community. Do you see certain strategies of doing that?

Audrey Tang: So far, we’ve just been documenting the tools, the rules, the playbooks, that we’ve been doing. They’re very hard at work on this website. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: You mean vTaiwan?

Audrey Tang: No. PDIS. [pulls up PDIS.tw website and projects its on the wall]

Manuel Edghill: What does PDIS stand for?

Audrey Tang: Public Digital Innovation Space.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: But if you look at a website you would think it’s public digital innovation service, which works too.

Manuel Edghill: I see.

Audrey Tang: It lists our...

Manuel Edghill: [reads from landing page] "We incubate and facilitate public digital innovation and service."

Audrey Tang: Right, and then it highlights...

Shuyang Lin: That’s where we need your input.

Audrey Tang: That’s the kind of initiatives we’re doing, and if you click "More about PDIS" it shows some backlogs of whatever we did. We have interviews, and then there is also a page that describes the tools that we use for our everyday work.

Manuel Edghill: Right, you have that Virtual...

Audrey Tang: ...Reality stuff.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, it’s kind of like that "Black Mirror" episode, the one where they...

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, I saw that.

Manuel Edghill: Everybody has an avatar, and they vote. (laughs).

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I saw that.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, see someone, vote someone.

Audrey Tang: Right, exactly. We’re all fans of Black Mirror here.

Manuel Edghill: Don’t watch that if you want to sleep. It’s horrible.

Audrey Tang: In any case...

Audrey Tang: Moving right on.

Audrey Tang: Basically, like our counterparts in other places ‑‑ you mentioned Singapore ‑‑ there’s a Singapore government agency, that is the Singapore GDS, which is I think a hundred people now? More people than us, though we’re getting there.

Audrey Tang: In any case, there’s counterparts like our office all around the world. There is GDS in the UK. There is USDS in the US. There is one in Australia, I think. There is one in Italy.

Audrey Tang: In many cases, what we’re doing here is just to document the kind of tools that we borrowed from other public sector innovative labs, and also sometimes the private sector, (laughs) then document how we’re adapting it for our purposes, and then share it at the end. We attend international conferences and...

Shuyang Lin: See if anyone has a tool that we can adapt.

Manuel Edghill: I’m not here representing the private sector...

Audrey Tang: Oh, sure, but if you have some tricks that we can adopt in our daily work, just add it here [addresses the site], and we’ll give it a try.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: What we are trying to do here is to basically be a meme.

Manuel Edghill: That’s what you practice here?

Audrey Tang: Right, exactly. Be a meme, that is to say to spread ideas that’re worth spreading.

Manuel Edghill: Like TED?

Audrey Tang: Sure, with ideas that we hope are worth spreading and...

Manuel Edghill: That’s our motto, "ideas hopefully worth spreading."

Audrey Tang: We spread hopeful ideas.

Manuel Edghill: "Ideas hopefully worth spreading - Digital Ministry of Taiwan." I get it. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: "Hopeful ideas, worth spreading." In any case, what we are aiming to do here is to get each ministry to assign a participation officer. Then we work with POs to empower them to face the cyberspace, to face this kind of civic engagement, also to empower them so they get versed into these kind of data tools that we use.

Audrey Tang: Now whether they spread these ideas into their ministries isn’t really our call, but at least...

Manuel Edghill: At least they’re there and...

Audrey Tang: ...they’re there, they’re public, and there is some cross-ministry collaboration. That’s what we’re doing this year. There’s not much space left, but that’s what we’ve been doing.

Manuel Edghill: You have two weeks to finish this up [referencing to the end of the year coming in 2 weeks].

Audrey Tang: Yeah. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: So this is something that the ministry will be making public and creating...

Audrey Tang: Holding workshops and whatever.

Manuel Edghill: Who will be in charge of that?

Audrey Tang: Everybody.

Manuel Edghill: Everybody here?

Shuyang Lin: Everybody here.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, pretty much.

Manuel Edghill: Really? But if everybody’s in charge, then no one is in charge.

Audrey Tang: Really?

Shuyang Lin: I think it’s the reverse. No one in charge and then everybody’s in charge.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK.

Audrey Tang: Everyone here is pretty much self‑recharging. We’re on renewable energy.

Shuyang Lin: Now we’re just recharging.

Manuel Edghill: It’s like some kind of blockchain thing [Ethereum], it is self‑funding.

Audrey Tang: Exactly, exactly.

Manuel Edghill: By the way you met with Vitalik Buterin. That guy is insane. He’s wonderful.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: Are you trying to use some kind of blockchain technology to put behind...

Audrey Tang: What?

Manuel Edghill: ...vTaiwan for example, or creating some kind of more...

Shuyang Lin: We’re rethinking the new website of vTaiwan, and for that I’d like to hear more input from you as well. So you just...

Audrey Tang: Stumbled upon this.

Shuyang Lin: You understand the structure of vTaiwan, but you haven’t use it personally?

Manuel Edghill: But it’s in Chinese. I had to fumble my way through it.

Audrey Tang: That’s something we’re working on, also.

Shuyang Lin: And you understand Chinese?

Manuel Edghill: I don’t. I understand context, which is great because Chinese is very contextual. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: Seriously? So you read Chinese...

Manuel Edghill: I don’t.

Audrey Tang: ...as if it’s contextual pictographs?

Manuel Edghill: That’s right.

Audrey Tang: Ah, very handy on a menu.

Manuel Edghill: Right. (laughs) That’s a way that we can figure out the UX. Even if the people don’t really understand, at least you could...

Audrey Tang: ...see those icons. See, that’s why icons are very important.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: She makes all our icons.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK.

Shuyang Lin: No, I didn’t. Don’t put that on me.

Audrey Tang: She made the new ones.

Manuel Edghill: Hey, it got me this far.

Shuyang Lin: She made the old ones.

Audrey Tang: I made the old ones. Yes, that’s it...

Manuel Edghill: It’s OK. It got me this far to understanding that entire thing in Chinese. Anyway, are you guys trying to do something with Ethereum? What’s going on with that?

Audrey Tang: If you are, then we are.

Manuel Edghill: If I am, then you are?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: I’m not.

Audrey Tang: Then not for now. Sorry.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, come on. You’re much more technically savvy on this than I am.

Audrey Tang: It’s true.

Manuel Edghill: It is true, yes. (laughs) Don’t rub it in.

Audrey Tang: What I’m saying is that although I am technically capable of running a blockchain, whatever, I’m not seeing anything in the vTaiwan process that would benefit from a distributive ledger at this point. I’m sure that there will be in the future, if somebody cares enough to do it.

Manuel Edghill: To try to figure something out?

Audrey Tang: Right. This is the idea that you have three or more parties, and neither trusts each other enough to put their ledgers in the same place.

Manuel Edghill: I don’t know if this is even technically possible, but again we are brainstorming. This is why I wanted to do coffee, really relax. One of the debates that you had with David from Uber...

Audrey Tang: David Plouffe.

Manuel Edghill: That’s right.

Audrey Tang: Nice guy.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, he’s great.

Manuel Edghill: ...was that he said, "So you want the government to have the control of the policymaking over Uber?" That’s one of his side comments.

Audrey Tang: No, we were talking about the car dispatch. I was talking about how we’re building an API standard so that everybody who has an e‑fleet car can put it on an open exchange, of sorts. In fact, the Ministry of Transport is working on what they call the PTX, the Public Transport Exchange, for something like that, where they share the open data on the traffic data.

Audrey Tang: You can consume it very easily to do your own traffic analysis and service...

Manuel Edghill: I understand what you meant. I think maybe the communication did not go through, and then he was like, "Wait, so you want the..."

Audrey Tang: The government controlling the entire...

Manuel Edghill: "...the platform?"

Audrey Tang: Right, traffic platform. I was like, "No, I want everybody to share it."

Manuel Edghill: I think that’s where one of the trickeries of communication went through there. But, that got me to thinking. What if that is controlled in the...

Audrey Tang: Cloud.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, like in an Ethereum fork. I don’t know. Would that be even possible?

Audrey Tang: Maybe. It is a very interesting thought. Let’s see.

Manuel Edghill: Then it will be self‑governing.

Audrey Tang: It’s true. Currently, the airlines, the buses, the city bus here, the inner city bus, registers through machine‑to‑machine interfaces to the Ministry of Transport. What you’re essentially saying is that, "Well, we use blockchain to collaborate with different storage." [ pulls up https://ptx.transportdata.tw/PTX ]

Manuel Edghill: That’s right.

Audrey Tang: I’m sure it’s technically possible, yes.

Manuel Edghill: Would that be beneficial? Would that help? Uber wouldn’t be concerning that it’s a government‑regulated platform, because they’ve never been...

Audrey Tang: That would be entirely dependent on how the blockchain code is written. The fact that it’s a blockchain doesn’t mean that it’s decentralized. It only means it’s multi‑central, that the initial agreed‑upon rules that can be enforced independently.

Audrey Tang: Still, there has to be some initial rules, and who gets those rules is...I’m all for redundant backups of these kind of data. Granted, that means that somebody would want to host their own part of this replication. In fact, PTX is already open data.

Audrey Tang: By the license, there is nothing preventing you, for example, from starting a blockchain that stores these data, or even makes this without the data. It’s entirely allowed. The fact that there’s nobody doing this probably says that it’s us not knowing sufficient people.

Audrey Tang: There’s probably already people doing this. They are just not registering themselves or let us in. I’m sure that there’s already plenty of people making use of these data.

Manuel Edghill: Is the ministry open to having outsiders from Taiwan creating these type of apps for the Taiwanese government, to be used in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Not at all. It’s just fine. I work with the Ministry of Education’s Creative Commons data. The largest consumer of that data happens to be Pleco.

Manuel Edghill: The Chinese learning app. I have it. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: I’m sure you have it. Everybody has it. We did get useful feedback from Pleco, so I’m sure there’s already these kind of collaborations also in other domains. It’s just that I know dictionaries better.

Audrey Tang: You have good ideas. Go ahead and we’ll try and create it.

Manuel Edghill: (laughs) You mentioned in the email that you wanted to figure out how we could bridge the international community.

Audrey Tang: Certainly. Now that you know we have a website, it’s a pretty well‑kept secret. We’ve not been advertising it.

Manuel Edghill: PDIS?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, pdis.tw, which...

Manuel Edghill: With an O, not a zero this time. [referencing g0v.tw site]

Audrey Tang: It’s just pdis.tw, which automatically expands to this pdis.nat.gov.tw, meaning the national government.

Manuel Edghill: PDIS.nat.gov.tw.

Audrey Tang: That part is optional. You can just write pdis.tw, and it will get you there. This is just to say that we’re still a government agency, of sorts.

Manuel Edghill: I understand.

Audrey Tang: In any case, the entire content here is amenable to change. If you find a better way to say something, or you want to see a new page, or whatever, just post it on the forum, and it will be done. There’s a forum talk.pdis.tw, which expands to talk.pdis.nat.gov.tw.

Audrey Tang: Now that you know the pattern, you can fill in the rest of them. Then you will see a category here that says "PDIS site". You will see pretty much the entire website here, what we do, how we work.

Manuel Edghill: This [site] is in English... and this is...that one [clicks link on PDIS.tw category "PDIS site" that opens to another page]

Audrey Tang: This is basically just a link to a speech that I gave. If you see “track”, this is basically a chronological log of what everybody in the office, but mostly me...

Manuel Edghill: Are you @chlai? Is that you?

Audrey Tang: @chlai is somebody else.

Shuyang Lin: @chlai is there...[points to outside of office]

Audrey Tang: Smart Lai is @chlai.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK.

Shuyang Lin: We have 17 people.

Manuel Edghill: 17 people are doing this?

Shuyang Lin: 16, now 17.

Manuel Edghill: Where are they? Are they remote, or do they all fit in this office?

Shuyang Lin: They’re here and upstairs on the third floor.

Audrey Tang: On the third floor. There’s nine people up, and seven here ‑‑ counting you, eight.

Shuyang Lin: Join us!

Manuel Edghill: Yeah!

Audrey Tang: If you register for an account in this forum, you can basically just look here, and then you will see the entire website, actually. This is my talk. Basically, they just transcribed this, added some photos ‑‑ I don’t remember putting this in, then switched to, "Let’s all keep listening to each other. Thank you for listening," and changed that to, "Thank you for reading," which breaks the rhyme. I think it’s more fitting for a website. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: In any case, this ends up here. If you click this [click through flow of PDIS.tw site revisions]

Manuel Edghill: I see. Whatever is there in that admin...

Audrey Tang: It’s displayed here. At the moment, it’s instant. You will be...

Manuel Edghill: It’s instant? If there’s a bunch errors like there...

Audrey Tang: Right, then you will see a lot of errors...

Manuel Edghill: You’re testing in prod, basically?

Audrey Tang: That is correct.

Audrey Tang: Soon, we will have a better pipeline where it was pre‑rendered.

Manuel Edghill: That’s so good. I see.

Audrey Tang: If you happen to not speak English, then you can switch to other languages, like Spanish.

Manuel Edghill: Where’s the Spanish? Let’s see the Spanish.

Audrey Tang: You speak Spanish?

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, I speak Spanish.

Audrey Tang: Oh, that’s great. There’s also Catalan, which is different.

Manuel Edghill: ]Reads spanish text of PDIS site] That’s not bad. Is this Google just translating?

Audrey Tang: This is Google, yes. So we also have the Spanish website.

Manuel Edghill: Very good. Let’s do "the business talk". What is the marketing strategy behind the Digital Ministry of Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: That’s a very good question. It’s a question that we expected you to ask.

Audrey Tang: No, seriously. We don’t yet have a strategy. We give some international talks. She gave, what, two...? [Points to Shuyang]

Shuyang Lin: Two.

Audrey Tang: ...just this year. After coming into office, I gave maybe four or five to our international counterparts.

Manuel Edghill: You did one with Blaise?

Audrey Tang: Yes, that was earlier though.

Manuel Edghill: With the eye thing. It has the eye, retina, face recognition?

Audrey Tang: That was in January. That was before I was a minister. I was just a random speaker at that point. Then I gave his talk in Mix Taiwan in the Ministry of Economy, talking about the artificial intelligence stuff.

Audrey Tang: Thanks, Blaise, if you’re watching, for these slides.

Audrey Tang: In any case, what we’ve been doing mostly, using this website [points to PDIS.tw] , is just to bring it to our international counterparts, and say, "This is roughly what we’re doing." It’s a conversation‑starter so far, but it could do much more.

Shuyang Lin: What do you think?

Audrey Tang: What do you think?

Manuel Edghill: What do I think about the...?

Audrey Tang: The digital communications strategy.

Manuel Edghill: Wow, all right. I was ready to ask it, but I’m not so sure to answer that question right now.

Shuyang Lin: For example...

Audrey Tang: Take your time.

Shuyang Lin: You can tell us anytime.

Audrey Tang: We have a Twitter account, but we’re not using it at the moment.

Manuel Edghill: The Digital Ministry of Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: No, we call it Taiwan PDIS.

Shuyang Lin: @TaiwanPDIS.

Manuel Edghill: How come you call it that?

Audrey Tang: Because it’s the Public Digital Innovation Space. If you have any suggestions, we can switch.

Manuel Edghill: That "digital minister" name has so much punch. I’m talking branding here, like hardcore...

Audrey Tang: That’s great. Go ahead, yes. I totally agree. Go ahead.

Manuel Edghill: A digital minister, everybody in the planet knows what that represents.

Audrey Tang: Maybe not everyone.

Manuel Edghill: You are a minister.

Shuyang Lin: This one is "Taiwan’s Digital Minster."

Manuel Edghill: Yes, you are the minister, therefore you have some political weight behind, you have some clout. You have a team. You have some kind of power, and you’re in digital... You are in tech. So you don’t have to educate. You don’t have to spend any time, effort, money in reeducating the people.

Manuel Edghill: You read it, and you already know what that is. "Digital minister? Oh, yeah, OK." - P‑D‑I‑S is like, "Oh, P, P‑D‑I, P, OK. P‑D‑I‑S, what does it stand for? P‑DIS? Is it P‑DIS or PDIS?"

Audrey Tang: P-DIS.

Manuel Edghill: Exactly. You have to have this debate. "Oh, and the website is pdis.tw, OK, well, it will redirect you to the nat.gov...forget it"

Shuyang Lin: What about the GDS in the UK?

Audrey Tang: Or the USDS?

Manuel Edghill: USDS?

Audrey Tang: The US Digital Service.

Shuyang Lin: If we want to be a counterpart of them.

Manuel Edghill: For example, you could have the name ‑‑ let’s take Twitter ‑‑ be "digital minister," and then the "@pdis" a the handle. Whatever.

Audrey Tang: Ah, very clever.

Manuel Edghill: Your handle will always be the same, but this handle represents a connection to the digital minister, or the Ministry of Taiwan. By doing that, you’re already educating the people. "Oh, Digital Ministry of Taiwan? Yeah, I know exactly what that is. Oh, PDIS? OK, I’ll look it up." Obviously, it’s the Digital Ministry of Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: That’s great, except we’re not really a ministry, but yes, otherwise it’s...

Manuel Edghill: It says minister on the top.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but not ministry.

Shuyang Lin: We’re not a ministry.

Manuel Edghill: Is this some political stuff? I’m getting confused.

Audrey Tang: No, in Taiwan there’s ministers with portfolio. They are ministers with ministries. I am a minister without portfolio, meaning a minister without a ministry. There’s no digital ministry, which is why I’m a minister without portfolio who works with 16 people somehow. Anyway. We’re just magical.

Manuel Edghill: You have no ministry of 17 people?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, a virtual team here...

Manuel Edghill: See, that goes back to that whole movement that you’re starting here. You are building your portfolio.

Audrey Tang: That’s true. Well, the team is building their own portfolio, and they’re just working with me. In any case, yes, it is true. It is fair, if you call it a portfolio of some sort. I do agree that, of course, “digital minister” itself carries much more explanatory power than minister or whatever.

Manuel Edghill: That’s the first thing I can see.

Audrey Tang: Yay! That sounds very good.

Shuyang Lin: Put it on the issue cards.

Manuel Edghill: So things like that... To me, it was a bit hard to find out what you were talking about [in reference to YouTube videos and online articles].

Audrey Tang: That’s true.

Manuel Edghill: A basic way is to link… from the doc… you know that I’m a big fan of linking - I don’t know if you remember when I replied with the doc corrections, I had a bunch of links to outside sources, like, "Please link to article that you’re referring to, so that somebody could easily know what it is that you’re talking about."

Manuel Edghill: One key thing is the ministry talks about very important stuff. If you don’t understand, you lose it.

Audrey Tang: That’s true.

Manuel Edghill: While you guys are doing that presentation, and since this is all digital, you can upload it. Things that we talk about, perhaps put the links in the YouTube description, or talk about it in the articles themselves. Link to the outside. That also will help in the SEO, right?

Audrey Tang: Yes. Always think of the SEO. That’s right.

Audrey Tang: It’s affinity, OK.

Manuel Edghill: Also, I wrote one of the ‑‑ going back to SEO ‑‑ I write Audrey Tang, and there’s 10,000 Audrey Tangs, actually.

Audrey Tang: It’s not a very SEO‑friendly name.

Manuel Edghill: If you put all the stuff in there, you put digital ministry...

Shuyang Lin: Then if you put another keyword ‑‑hacker.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK. I’m trying to be the end user. The one that you guys want to influence the most is not hacker, right?

Audrey Tang: If you search for Audrey Tang, I think, I’m probably the first five pages.

Manuel Edghill: You’re up there.

Audrey Tang: It’s not that hard to find.

Manuel Edghill: It’s not hard. I did find you after...

Shuyang Lin: Digital Minister of Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Taiwan? Maybe you’re going to my Wikipedia page. No, it’s the QZ page. Obviously not going there. Seems they have better SEO.

Manuel Edghill: It’s OK.

Audrey Tang: We’ll crack on.

Manuel Edghill: Anyway, brainstorming over coffee here. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: It’s good.

Manuel Edghill: Things of that nature.

Audrey Tang: Somehow getting people googling, "Digital minister of Taiwan," end up in our PDIS page. This is great.

Manuel Edghill: That would be one thing. It goes back to what it is that you want to achieve as a ministry. What do you want? For example, in a business, I want clicks on the call to action ‑‑ buy, trial, download. What do you want me to do as a user, or as a person engaged in your ministry? What would you like? Do you have an idea?

Manuel Edghill: I see that Audrey is already...

Audrey Tang: ...very much getting you to do our work.

Shuyang Lin: That was the version we were always thinking about trying.

Manuel Edghill: You don’t have a mission?

Shuyang Lin: I think the mission is quite clear on the website.

Audrey Tang: The mission is quite clear.

Manuel Edghill: What’s that?

Audrey Tang: We incubate and facilitate public digital innovations…

Manuel Edghill: Oh, it’s in Español. (Spanish words) Oh, this is wrong. Anyway, see, this is the thing with Google. Sometimes it doesn’t get the context right.

Shuyang Lin: You can also say it’s a very broad mission. We don’t really have a call to action.

Manuel Edghill: This could be a vision. A vision stays forever.

Audrey Tang: A mission changes every quarter.

Manuel Edghill: There you go. Come on, put your business hat on. A vision is forever. A vision is why I am here, because I agree with the vision that you are portraying. At least, I don’t know that is in‑depth, obviously. Maybe you have some plans that I don’t know about.

Audrey Tang: No, we don’t.

Shuyang Lin: No.

Manuel Edghill: From what I’ve read and what I’ve seen for your guys’ talks. There is a vision there for a more transparent government, a more tech‑savvy populace, scalable, open technology sharing, idea sharing. That’s the vision, but missions are short term tasks, and achievables. (laughs) Why are you so excited?

Audrey Tang: Let’s say we review our missions every quarter.

Manuel Edghill: It doesn’t have to be every quarter. It doesn’t have to be every quarter.

Shuyang Lin: It happens quite randomly.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK. This is a well‑known...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, this is a well‑known...

Manuel Edghill: Not the safest thing to do...

Audrey Tang: It’s a well‑known phenomenon.

Manuel Edghill: The mission, you put the time [refering to time of completion].

Manuel Edghill: Audrey put "quarter" there, but it’s up to you guys.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, it’s closer here.

Manuel Edghill: The mission is what drives towards that vision. What is your mission? It’s still a little...

Audrey Tang: I think their mission individually is due end of this month, I don’t know yet.

Shuyang Lin: We don’t really have that hard a deadline. I’m thinking about the topic of civic participation, as we have in Taiwan enjoyed right now. We have already sprung from this...

Audrey Tang: ...collaborative community with the private sector and the civil society.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Called g0v, right?

Manuel Edghill: Yeah. Also, one thing, since you bring this up, I have no idea how to get to that site.

Audrey Tang: You mean g0v?

Manuel Edghill: Yes. How do I get to that site?

Audrey Tang: It’s just g0v.

Manuel Edghill: That’s it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. Did you Google for g0v?

Shuyang Lin: G‑0‑V.

Audrey Tang: Then you get it.

Manuel Edghill: You see what you’re doing? You said, "Gov zero." I googled G‑O‑V‑Z‑E‑R‑O, or "G‑O‑V, dot, number zero".

Audrey Tang: Like this? [pulls up google and searches G-O-V zero]

Shuyang Lin: You can bring that up.

Audrey Tang: No, it doesn’t.

Manuel Edghill: I tried so many different ways.

Shuyang Lin: With a dash?

Audrey Tang: It’s terrible SEO on our part.

Manuel Edghill: I spent maybe two minutes, but I was like, "OK, I’ll just ask her, because I don’t..." Here’s the thing. You talked about it a lot, but there’s no single link anywhere to it where you talked about it.

Audrey Tang: Granted.

Manuel Edghill: Right? (laughs)

Shuyang Lin: So nice to have you here.

Audrey Tang: It’s so nice to have you here.

Shuyang Lin: Do you want to say something?

Manuel Edghill: Little things like this will create a ripple effect on your international perception. People will start noticing, and be like, "Oh, hey, what’s going on in Taiwan?"

Audrey Tang: By the way, if you look at the g0v.asia page, instead of linking to the mostly Chinese page.

Manuel Edghill: You have to stop saying "gov-zero" in your chat, because it’s not “gov0”.

Audrey Tang: It’s hard say G‑zero‑V all the time.

Manuel Edghill: G‑0‑V, Just say G‑0‑V. It’s not hard.

Audrey Tang: Trying saying that 10 times.

Manuel Edghill: G‑0‑V G‑0‑V G‑0‑V.

Audrey Tang: All right.

Manuel Edghill: G‑ling‑V, yeah? G‑0‑V? [reference to "ling" being "zero" in Mandarin]

Shuyang Lin: We say G‑ling‑V, and then for media, they start to remember the pronunciation of G‑ling‑V instead of gov-zero.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, I understand.

Audrey Tang: Then you have another problem, because they would type G‑L‑I‑N, or something like that.

Manuel Edghill: See, we have to work on your branding here. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: It’s true.

Manuel Edghill: I think it’s catchy, G‑0‑V. It’s kinds hackery, G‑0‑V.

Audrey Tang: Well, it says "hack democracy." If you look at this landing page, what does it say to you?

Manuel Edghill: [reading g0v.asia landing page] "Ask not why nobody is doing this. You are the nobody." Ow.

Manuel Edghill: That’s harsh. Jesus Christ.

Audrey Tang: It says you’re a nobody.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: That’s offending, isn’t it?

Manuel Edghill: Yeah. I don’t want to be on this site.

Audrey Tang: Too bad.

Manuel Edghill: Is this public?

Audrey Tang: This is public.

Audrey Tang: I don’t know. I didn’t write this.

Shuyang Lin: I don’t know, (laughs) but that’s like a wiki page there.

Audrey Tang: From grassroots, meaning it’s bottom up, basically.

Manuel Edghill: Then just put that.

Audrey Tang: Ah, OK. It’s re‑writable, so we’ll go and change it. "From grassroots," change that to “bottom up”. Keeps growing. It keeps growing.

Manuel Edghill: All right. You have to get that “nobody” out, that’s under the... [reference to g0v.asia slogan]

Audrey Tang: That is too offensive?

Manuel Edghill: It’s not too offensive, because we all have thick skin. It’s just the first thing when you land. [reference to first thing seen when visitor enters landing page]

Shuyang Lin: How would you rephrase that?

Manuel Edghill: You land on the site, and then you get punched in the face. It’s not the nicest welcoming.

Audrey Tang: How would that work better?

Manuel Edghill: "Ask not why..."

Audrey Tang: "You’re that somebody"?

Manuel Edghill: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: "You’re that somebody"?

Manuel Edghill: Why don’t we say, "Don’t ask why..." [starts to brainstorm messages on notebook]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it doesn’t work.

Manuel Edghill: There is this paint that you could paint over, and it makes your walls a dry eraser (whiteboard). Did you know this? [pointing to the wall of the office]

Audrey Tang: That’s exactly what we did here.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, this is what you could do here? You can...

Audrey Tang: Yes, yes.

Manuel Edghill: Oh!

Audrey Tang: That’s exactly what we did to this wall.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah? Oh, fantastic. Where’s the pen?

Audrey Tang: Well...

Manuel Edghill: If we’re going to brainstorm stuff, we could just...

Audrey Tang: But you can also write it on the iPad here...

Manuel Edghill: I could. I’ll also do it here.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, and then we’ll all see your writing, but then it’s easy.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, OK.

Audrey Tang: Then you can keep the screenshot. Or you can write on the wall.

Manuel Edghill: No.

Shuyang Lin: I didn’t know that.

Audrey Tang: There’s an eraser in the other room.

Shuyang Lin: You can write on it with a marker? [pointing to the wall]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we can write with a marker.

Manuel Edghill: We can write here on the marker. Oh, that’s fantastic. Anyway whatever. Where was I?

Audrey Tang: “Ask not why nobody is doing this. You’re that nobody.”

Manuel Edghill: Ask not...all right. (laughs) "Don’t ask why.... Don’t ask why..." What is the page that you have up here? Let’s just center on that. Can we write on top of this? [pointing to projected website on the wall]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we can. We’re fine.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, What kind? Oh, yeah you copied.

Audrey Tang: You take a screen shot, switch it back, and then you paste it here. Easy‑peasy.

Manuel Edghill: "Ask not why..."

Audrey Tang: Minimize it.

Manuel Edghill: "Ask not why nobody’s doing this. You are the nobody, exclamation point." [reading over website banner]

Shuyang Lin: (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: OK, the point that you want to say is, "stop...

Audrey Tang: "Stop pointing fingers."

Manuel Edghill: "Stop pointing fingers. Do something yourself."

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Manuel Edghill: You could do something yourself... If you want change, you could do it yourself.

Audrey Tang: Exactly, and this is a translation from Mandarin, 你就是「沒有人」, which rhymes very well in Mandarin, but obviously not in English...

Manuel Edghill: Is it harsh in Mandarin?

Shuyang Lin: No.

Audrey Tang: Not at all.

Shuyang Lin: Because in Mandarin 沒有人 is not a very harsh word...

Manuel Edghill: Oh.

Audrey Tang: It doesn’t have that....

Manuel Edghill: It doesn’t have that cultural stigma of "You’re nobody."

Audrey Tang: Right, exactly.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: "Of no importance or authority," it doesn’t connote that.

Manuel Edghill: Got it.

Shuyang Lin: I’m "沒有人", it’s OK.

Manuel Edghill: Really!?

Audrey Tang: "Nobody," in English, carries another layer of meaning, which is unfortunate.

Manuel Edghill: It’s very contextual, you see?

Audrey Tang: It’s very contextual. By the way it’s now changed. It says “from the bottom up" [Referencing to intro text of g0v.asia text revision website]

Manuel Edghill: OK. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: Thank you very much.

Manuel Edghill: (laughs) Yes.

Audrey Tang: I did credit you for it.

Manuel Edghill: All right, yes, please.

Manuel Edghill: OK, I could dwell on this or we could brainstorm more if you want now. Let’s just go through this. So the point of this G‑0‑V...

Audrey Tang: It’s a community where everybody can join. There’s weekly, monthly, and bi‑monthly hackathons. - The university collaborations that we’re doing in the vTaiwan project gets done in such gatherings.

Manuel Edghill: I have a question.

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Not to nobody.

Manuel Edghill: Do we really want to do...I’m just...

Audrey Tang: Sure, I don’t know. If you think "nothing" is lost and...

Manuel Edghill: "g0v is a decentralized civic tech community." [reading from g0v.asia intro text]

Audrey Tang: It sounds academic. I think that was the...

Manuel Edghill: It sounds too academic?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it sounds too academic. If you take some time to read through it maybe, but we need a catchy slogan.

Manuel Edghill: OK - you want catchy a slogan of some sort.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: All right, let me dwell on it. I’ll take that as my action item from the meeting. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: Is there any other action?

Manuel Edghill: OK, we’re digressing. I’m still trying to figure out the missions here. You said one of the missions was clear here, so where is the mission?

Audrey Tang: It’s part of that civic participation. The part of, "build tech solutions for citizens in public affairs." By the way, it doesn’t say grassroots now. If you just refresh, it says “from the bottom up.” [pointing to projected website on wall]

Manuel Edghill: "g0v is a decentralized civic tech community from Taiwan. We advocate transparency of information and build tech solutions for citizens to participate in public affairs from the bottom up." [reading from g0v.asia’s revised intro text]

Audrey Tang: The next page is somewhere between a vision and a mission.

Manuel Edghill: That’s fine.

Audrey Tang: That’s what she’s talking about.

Manuel Edghill: Do we want...? Yeah, we do want to say "Taiwan", because we want to put Taiwan on the map. How come it’s .asia not .tw? [pointing out to intro text of g0v.asia]

Audrey Tang: Because the g0v.tw site was in Chinese.

Manuel Edghill: I see.

Audrey Tang: There’s also the English version, but still most of the pictures are in Chinese, if I’m not mistaken. Click English...Still it’s pretty Chinese‑ish.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, but these are a completely different UI here.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but if you click "About", you get to see mostly the same words. There’s even a manifesto.

Manuel Edghill: Liquid Democracy?

Audrey Tang: Says we are "sanguine" about it.

Manuel Edghill: What’s sanguine?

Audrey Tang: Means that’s full of blood.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, Jesus.

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: Put "passionate" instead. ...That’s something, not the worst. [pointing to "sanguine" in the text of the website]

Audrey Tang: I didn’t do this one. What I did was I end up registering the separate domain and put some more effective English text here. Then...

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, and a much better UI/UX.

Audrey Tang: Somebody else carried on. I didn’t put a graph here. That somebody also put the "Be a nobody" thing here. They obviously like the pun, but there it is also kind of aggressive.

Manuel Edghill: It is.

Audrey Tang: It shows some...

Manuel Edghill: Are we going to transfer the UI from the English to the Taiwanese site?

Audrey Tang: I don’t think so.

Shuyang Lin: I don’t think so.

Manuel Edghill: Why not?

Shuyang Lin: We are not running the website on our own. Actually, it’s a community website.

Audrey Tang: We can do that also, but not before discussions. There’s plenty of projects here, but then, as you can see, is mostly in Chinese. For someone who’s not versed in Chinese, all these are just pretty pictures.

Manuel Edghill: Is our goal to put exactly what we have in this Taiwanese website into the international website?

Audrey Tang: That would be useful.

Manuel Edghill: That’s a goal we want to do?

Audrey Tang: that would be useful. If you are signing up, then I’d certainly not say no.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but this has the gist of information of what the community is about.

Manuel Edghill: What is the plan to let people know about this site? Do we have a...

Shuyang Lin: Actually, I didn’t know this site before.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, no? (laughs)

Audrey Tang: It’s not very well-known...

Manuel Edghill: Even within your non‑portfolio ministry?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, exactly.

Shuyang Lin: Even working with her, I didn’t know this.

Manuel Edghill: Surprise! You have more work.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah!

Audrey Tang: You were talking about this, and I completely agree, that whenever I mentioned g0v, I should put some link to an English speaking audience. I should at least add this.

Manuel Edghill: Not necessarily English, but at least add that one. [referencing to add a link to at least g0v.asia page]

Audrey Tang: At least add that one, which is exactly what I’ll do. Now it says...

Manuel Edghill: Did you give me a...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I did. I gave you credit in the commit log.

Manuel Edghill: (laughs).

Audrey Tang: "From grassroots to bottom up, as per..."

Manuel Edghill: Thank you, thank you. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: G‑zero‑V, can you say G‑zero‑V?

Audrey Tang: G‑zero‑V. It’s kind of hard.

Manuel Edghill: G‑zero‑V.

Shuyang Lin: G‑zero‑V.

Audrey Tang: Because it’s two consonants, GZ in the beginning. Somebody would hear G‑zero‑V or something like that.

Shuyang Lin: G‑zero‑V.

Manuel Edghill: The Z is a little hard?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: G‑zero‑V. You think it doesn’t work? Why don’t we create a slide on your decks with those things then? Then you don’t have to say anything?

Audrey Tang: That’s great.

Manuel Edghill: Would that be better?

Shuyang Lin: Yes.

Audrey Tang: Agreed.

Manuel Edghill: When you’re doing presentations...

Audrey Tang: We’ll end with the link here.

Manuel Edghill: Just say, "OK, thank you blah, blah, blah. Here’s what you need to know." Thank you.

Audrey Tang: A summary slide.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, I would do that.

Manuel Edghill: All right.

Shuyang Lin: How about vTaiwan.tw, what do think about this website or maybe you don’t really read?

Manuel Edghill: To me, it was...

Shuyang Lin: What is an amazing part for you and what is the part that you think could be improved?

Manuel Edghill: Where did it go? [referring to the projected website switching to a blank canvas]

Audrey Tang: That was mine. That was the slide. That was based on Blaise’s slides, by the way. I will take this style from this, and then the content from this, and then the style transfers. [referring to projected slides of Blaise Aguirre from a previous talk]

Manuel Edghill: Oh.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s very useful. Then probably you can free associate over...[referring to projected slides from revised Blaise Aguirre’s talk on image association]

Manuel Edghill: Right, isn’t that insane, the video? Do you have that video? Jesus. That is crazy. Isn’t that insane?

Shuyang Lin: This one? [referring to video from Blaise’s slides]

Audrey Tang: This is a computer free associating on images [referencing video playing on projector]

Manuel Edghill: ...So vTaiwan.

Audrey Tang: vTaiwan, yes.

Manuel Edghill: One thing that I found on the UX, I don’t understand what...

Shuyang Lin: This icon?

Manuel Edghill: I’m just going with UX here. Even if I don’t understand what that is on the top there, why is Airbnb and Uber there? Are these topics popular? [referring to right menu bar on site]

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: I see. The top one says "topics" in Chinese?

Audrey Tang: Well it says it’s preliminary idea assessment. The second gray bar says "under discussion."

Manuel Edghill: OK, so each of those icons is a topic?

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Manuel Edghill: I understand. Because I didn’t get it, but again, I don’t read Chinese. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get it.

Audrey Tang: No, I think it’s because our UX needs improvement.

Manuel Edghill: You could say that. I don’t want to say that. (laughs)

Audrey Tang: That’s why we’re here... That’s why we were here.

Manuel Edghill: All right, then yes the UX...

Shuyang Lin: ...the UX sucks. (laughs)

Manuel Edghill: How about some tabs? An easier way to figure this out is tabs.

Shuyang Lin: Tabs?

Manuel Edghill: You could translate the tabs using Google again, because these are hard‑coded [referring to current text no prone to automatic google translation]

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Manuel Edghill: Whatever language, whatever I read this...correct me if I’m wrong, it’ll be great if Tanzania or any other place gets to see this stuff and then, "Look what Taiwan is doing. Maybe we could do something like that." Isn’t that the purpose?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Manuel Edghill: Is the mission to spread the word on what we’re doing here?

Audrey Tang: The mission is to spread missions.

Manuel Edghill: That’s right. It’s an infinite zooming mission. [referencing video from Blaise’s presentation]

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Manuel Edghill: To me, this is very focused on Taiwan, and even more so because not all Taiwanese people know this.

Audrey Tang: It’s true. Including the Airbnb and Uber, there’s thousands, but it still thousands is a small population...

Manuel Edghill: We’re 27 million, thereabouts.

Audrey Tang: True.

Manuel Edghill: Maybe tabs are a more efficient way of translating to any kind of language. When you have the PDIS, P‑DIS.

Audrey Tang: Yes. All right.

Manuel Edghill: Something like that?

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Shuyang Lin: Why the topics are on the major landing page?

Audrey Tang: What’s the logic? Why these four here and the others are here? [refereing to vTaiwan’s menu hierarchy]

Manuel Edghill: Sure.

Audrey Tang: Because they’re progressing through some steps, but it’s not being made clear that it’s progressing through those steps. Well, I already started fix this step, but we have yet to implement everything.

Manuel Edghill: That’s fine. I understand. That’s key though. When you asked me about what was amazing. It’s amazing that this is all online and I can read it. That is pretty amazing. But it doesn’t tell me what the benefit of this is. I need to find it out for myself. "Business here": Don’t ever let your customer...

Shuyang Lin: Figure out on their own.

Manuel Edghill: ...Try to figure out what the point of your product is.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I see that now.

Manuel Edghill: That’s where we imagine more improvement will be?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure.

Manuel Edghill: Do you agree?

Audrey Tang: I do.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it is too visionary and not sufficiently missionary.

Manuel Edghill: It is - "Who will be reading this?" and figure it out from their point of view.

Audrey Tang: Usually stakeholders, people who have something to lose or to gain from the proposed regulation or change.

Manuel Edghill: Are these people tech-savvy? Try to figure out the user persona.

Audrey Tang: The thing with vTaiwan is that its primary users, aside from the Uber and Airbnb cases, which is kind of an experiment on our side, are mostly people who are lawyers, accountants, professional people who are well versed in using tech to argue their cases.

Audrey Tang: What we’re are trying to do here is to get all the stakeholders’ sides not represented, but at least on board with what we’re going to change maybe 30 days or 60 days down the line, and then to voice their concerns. It’s true that in another iteration we had an email box here that let people simply click to fire off an email, that asked...

Manuel Edghill: To who?

Audrey Tang: To the public, that at lists publicly their ideas about this regulation.

Manuel Edghill: You mean fire up a comment?

Audrey Tang: Right, that’s the idea, but using whatever the email client prefer. Literally to...

Manuel Edghill: Where will that email be posted?

Audrey Tang: It will be posted on the talk.vtaiwan.tw board. It’s like a posting board, but public. [projects talk.vtaiwan.tw website]

Audrey Tang: Then of course we also distill it into chunks, aspects of this regulation. This is about securitization of intangible assets. This talked about what’s the current problem with the currency securitization. When you’re trying to secure a loan, what’s preventing you.

Audrey Tang: Whether it’s sufficient to just register on the company law or website, rather than having some public servant processing your loans ‑‑ sorry, securitization applicants ‑‑ and so on. This basically distills this proposed law change into four or so aspects. In each aspect, you can... [referring to flow of talk.vtaiwan.tw]

Manuel Edghill: You can comment.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you can click it, and then you can see what’s the existing people’s thoughts on it. Like Jalin says that. RonKuo says that. If it needs some explanatory or expository material, then within seven days the ministry in charge of this has to come here and replay to you as a part of the planning process.

Audrey Tang: Part of the thing that’s highlighted, seen in this design, is that any comments that’s constructive here will be part of the agenda and the face‑to‑face deliberation that this live‑streamed 30 days every month. This is basically crowdsourcing the agenda of the face‑to‑face deliberation.

Manuel Edghill: OK, I see.

Audrey Tang: That’s the reason.

Manuel Edghill: All right - so what you just said is what...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, should go the front page.

Audrey Tang: Yes and that’s part of her design. It makes it clear, abundantly, the front page, that this is going to TV and whatever...

Manuel Edghill: You know what would be cool if you want to get people engaged? Have a countdown there.

Audrey Tang: A countdown?

Manuel Edghill: It could be something fun, well, engaging. Not necessarily fun, but at least people are like, "Oh, we really have to get people on this thing." [referring to time running out to pass the agenda]

Audrey Tang: It says there’s 22 days left and there’s going to be a face‑to‑face deliberation when this runs all the way to the right.

Manuel Edghill: Is that at the bottom? It’s all the way at bottom. [pointing to vTaiwan’s front page on a cetain topic]

Audrey Tang: It’s not at the bottom.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, I thought...

Audrey Tang: It’s the page where it came. Oh, you mean the front page like here? We need to have a countdown right here alongside every slide?

Manuel Edghill: It’s not necessarily a slide.

Audrey Tang: It’s part of the design, also.

Manuel Edghill: It’s just on every discussion.

Audrey Tang: That’s part of the new design, also.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, it’s all these blocks here. We refer to crowdsourcing websites [referring to benchmarking UI/UX from crowdsourcing sites]

Manuel Edghill: Right, I was just going to say that, because we’re doing crowdsourcing agenda.

Audrey Tang: Policy...

Manuel Edghill: They spend millions of dollars in UI/UX. Just use their UI, open source of course.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, and it’s open source.

Audrey Tang: It is open source.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, so we don’t have to rack our brains to try to reinvent the wheel.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, so put a countdown that when it runs through the right, we have a TV show.

Audrey Tang: That sounds good.

Shuyang Lin: I’m not sure if we can say we’re a TV show.

Audrey Tang: I’m pretty sure the new design is coded out. It’s just not populated.

Manuel Edghill: You don’t have the mock‑up?

Audrey Tang: We do have a mock‑up.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, but I couldn’t open it.

Manuel Edghill: He’s got it. Wow, look at that page. [new vTaiwan landing page is shown on Marc’s laptop as PDF/image]

Shuyang Lin: That’s the one.

Manuel Edghill: You have airplay?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, you can airplay it.

Shuyang Lin: Awesome.

Audrey Tang: [speaking Mandarin] OK, we’re asking to airplay it.

Manuel Edghill: I understood that one.

Audrey Tang: OK, then you understood all of this. That’s all of it.

Manuel Edghill: Nice photo. By the way, you guys should have a professional photographer here to take pictures. [referring to banner in new vTaiwan mock-up]

Audrey Tang: We actually do. We have a professional photographer upstairs, but then we’re not putting him to much use.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, put him to use. - What goes in here? [referring to upper banner of new vTaiwan] - Do you guys have a proper site,"digital ministry"?

Audrey Tang: That’s the PDIS website.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: But it needs better photos. I get this much.

Audrey Tang: It’s true.

Shuyang Lin: The idea is, on the upper part, on this banner, you’ll see a few key topics we’re talking about. Where the...

Audrey Tang: Right. Basically each of them represents a topic under discussion.

Manuel Edghill: These are each of the topics? [referring to lower part of site with several images]

Audrey Tang: Right.

Manuel Edghill: I understand.

Audrey Tang: Basically it’s like most crowdfunding websites, and this says, by the time, 30 days later in Taiwan, this ministry will have a live-streamed deliberation with crowdsourced agenda and participants.

Manuel Edghill: Is it important to the viewer to see who introduced this? [referring to particular issue presented up for debate]

Audrey Tang: Which ministry? Why not?

Manuel Edghill: No, I mean like the person; or no?

Shuyang Lin: A person...

Manuel Edghill: Is it?

Audrey Tang: It’s a very good point. If we get all the ministers record or at least take a photo for their face online, I’m sure they will increase people’s willingness to participate. Sure, why not? It’s a good idea.

Manuel Edghill: It’s just a suggestion.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, why do you think so?

Manuel Edghill: Well just personification of an idea.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, better than puppies.

Manuel Edghill: Sure.

Manuel Edghill: People engage more with a person than a concept, abstract.

Shuyang Lin: Who are the people they are talking about.

Audrey Tang: Right, so we can get Professor 朱德芳’s photo from her intro on the Company Act rewrite.

Manuel Edghill: Even if there’s not a photo, at least the name. There it just shows the ministry, right? [referring to current UI]

Audrey Tang: It just shows the ministry. That’s right.

Manuel Edghill: Couldn’t it be...

Audrey Tang: The minister’s name, why not? Yeah, “the minister wants to have a chat with you.” It sounds good.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Audrey Tang: That’s great.

Manuel Edghill: That’s why I’m here, to help you out. (laughs)

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, we were originally just thinking about how the viewers can actually relate to these topics.

Audrey Tang: Engage more.

Shuyang Lin: Actually be more familiar with who are the people actually talking about this topic.

Manuel Edghill: Right.

Shuyang Lin: It’s like talking to people in person. If you know how they look like or how they talk, then you actually have more...

Manuel Edghill: ...in common to talk about.

Manuel Edghill: If you get to talk and you get to know the person, then you have a better chance of creating constructive criticism.

Audrey Tang: Previously during, for example, the Uber discussion, we did have everybody’s faces next to the words they said.

Manuel Edghill: I’m not saying necessarily the faces. It’s just more of personifying it with a name, but yeah, faces obviously are a plus.

Audrey Tang: So we’re already doing this, but we should do it more, especially on the proposal itself, not just the transcripts.

Manuel Edghill: Right... In the meantime: You were in Europe?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I was in Europe.

Manuel Edghill: Where did you go?

Audrey Tang: Madrid, London, Paris.

Manuel Edghill: Nice, did you like Madrid? How was that?

Audrey Tang: It was very good. It was the kind of city I’ve seen in the occupy literatures. Now it’s post-occupy, but anyway. It’s one of the major cities in Europe for civic engagement.

Manuel Edghill: Are you going to go to Iceland?

Audrey Tang: Maybe my robotic double will do.

Manuel Edghill: OK.

Audrey Tang: I sent my robotic double to Madrid a week before.

Manuel Edghill: Is it a physical robot or is it a virtual robot?

Audrey Tang: It’s a physical robot.

Manuel Edghill: Do you have a photo of that?

Audrey Tang: They call it Galatea, which is a very romantic name, the sculpture that actually can come alive. So, it was pretty good. I don’t have a photo here. I’m sure I have a photo somewhere.

Manuel Edghill: The robot is...

Audrey Tang: Re-presenting me.

Manuel Edghill: Right.

Manuel Edghill: So you can be replaced by a robot. Is that what you’re saying?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. This is what this robot looks like.

Manuel Edghill: Is it on YouTube?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s on YouTube. It’s called “virtual reality for civic deliberation,” where I talk about...

Manuel Edghill: Maybe you should move it here. This is on medium.com?

Audrey Tang: This is on medium, and it is also on YouTube. Then this is the robot. I was having a chat with...

Manuel Edghill: You dressed it up?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, they dress it up, literally.

Manuel Edghill: Can I see it?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it rotates and circles...

Manuel Edghill: You’re talking? I’m guessing it’s projecting your face?

Audrey Tang: Right, and this is 360 camera outside. You can watch the VR replay. This is Pablo Soto, a city council member. It’s pretty nice.

Manuel Edghill: Who made it?

Audrey Tang: Local hackers.

Manuel Edghill: Really? That’s great.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, they did it with what they call a turtlebot. All right, so we got a...

Manuel Edghill: Are we in?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we’re in.

Manuel Edghill: All right.

Shuyang Lin: This is a mock‑up of...

Audrey Tang: Of the next generation of vTaiwan.tw.

Shuyang Lin: Yes, topic here in big groups and topics.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, so these are the topics?

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: Are these the top hottest topics? How are you going to dictate what goes up in the banner?

Audrey Tang: Probably the newest. The one that’s up...

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, that is under discussion, with a status of "under discussion," and something like, "It’s already delivered to the parliament.” There’s some explanations of what you can do in different stages.

Audrey Tang: If it’s delivered to the executive yuan meeting, then why is it in the banner?

Shuyang Lin: If people really care about this topic, they want to know the outcome.

Audrey Tang: But then it’s not the newest.

Shuyang Lin: It’s on one level.

Audrey Tang: It is true that we only have two active topics. Then it describes those three stages.

Manuel Edghill: There’s search by topic I assume - the topic that I’m interested on there?

Audrey Tang: The kinds of topics, I’ll say, yeah.

Manuel Edghill: Can I search for a person? I don’t know what the name is (of the topic), but I know that Audrey Tang is...or I know that.

Audrey Tang: We can pass some search suggestions here.

Shuyang Lin: And your topics.

Audrey Tang: And how many days are left. But it doesn’t show a photo of a person.

Manuel Edghill: No, you don’t have to go for it.

Audrey Tang: No, I think it helps.

Manuel Edghill: Then, for example, what happened to the Uber and Airbnb topics?

Audrey Tang: It’ll be one of those small boxes.

Manuel Edghill: At the bottom?

Audrey Tang: At the bottom, that says it’s finished.

Manuel Edghill: Is that what that says at the bottom?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. It’s different stages.

Manuel Edghill: Oh, all right.

Audrey Tang: The new design is completely redone. Here, you will see that at the project is finished.

Shuyang Lin: Actually, you can just…

Audrey Tang: It’s saying that we should probably go back home soon‑ish.

Manuel Edghill: Is that what that means? They literally kick you out?

Audrey Tang: Mm‑hmm. They turn off air conditioning and everything. It’s true.

Shuyang Lin: Preliminary steps, and then here you have topics and categories, which are the key issues on this session.

Audrey Tang: Our archive and whatever.

Manuel Edghill: Are these tabs?

Shuyang Lin: Tabs of the stages.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but it doesn’t have "finished." I just noticed.

Audrey Tang: It says "under discussion", "other drafts", "about to begin", but no "result".

Manuel Edghill: Maybe we might want to put that there.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we might want to...

Manuel Edghill: I will make them big. Look at all this empty space. This is important.

Audrey Tang: And with icons, always.

Shuyang Lin: Here are topics, maybe under ministries, like education, labor, culture. or technology.

Manuel Edghill: Can it go here? These are the topics? [referring to bottom part of new mock-up]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, topic areas.

Manuel Edghill: OK, then introduce me. Or, if this stage is going to be forever long, why don’t we try to get some tab system under the main banner that will split this? All this are lazy-loaded, right? [pointing to long list of images/topics]

Audrey Tang: Yeah.

Manuel Edghill: (laughs) OK.

Shuyang Lin: Sure.

Manuel Edghill: I would imagine.

Shuyang Lin: Here is the manual.

Audrey Tang: How to leave useful comments. How to make use for contributions. Why are some comments marked, highlighted. That means that they entered the agenda.

Manuel Edghill: OK, so like a users’ manual here?

Audrey Tang: Right, and then you can also have a petition. This platform doesn’t do petitions, so we redirect them to another petition platform, where they can do a petition.

Shuyang Lin: It’s Join.gov.tw?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, if you petition, 5,000 people...

Manuel Edghill: This is a different website?

Audrey Tang: Platform, that’s right.

Manuel Edghill: I see.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we don’t do petitions in vTaiwan. We do it in Join.

Shuyang Lin: Here it talks about the purpose...

Audrey Tang: Why is vTaiwan useful? Why should you care? It’s basically the same text, but presented in a...

Manuel Edghill: What is the call to action? What do you me to do? Engage on this...

Audrey Tang: To subscribe to one of or more topic areas, so you know when there’s a live stream going on, or if there’s a resolution. Or if you care about one particular topic, then you go in and then...

Manuel Edghill: Can I sign up and get feedback? I don’t want to be coming back here all the time to see if my resolution that I’m involved with...

Shuyang Lin: Resolution notifications.

Manuel Edghill: Do I have a newsletter or sign‑up?

Audrey Tang: There was a monthly newsletter.

Manuel Edghill: Maybe like an RSS feed?

Audrey Tang: Sure. Currently there’s no sign‑up on the new UI. On the old UI, a soon as you leave a comment or you participate in any of those activities, and you consent to get your email shared with our monthly newsletter, there’s an opt‑in thing.

Audrey Tang: We’re still trying to figure out whether opting out is ethical, by default. They used to be opt‑in. The first time you’re leaving something, you consent it to, if you want, further newsletters from us.

Manuel Edghill: Well it’s much better, a huge improvement. [referring to new mockup]

Audrey Tang: It is a huge improvement.

Manuel Edghill: These are under review right? These are topics under review. Is that what that says here? [pointing to section of mock-up]

Audrey Tang: It says it’s "hot", but they have to be under this section.

Shuyang Lin: A feature.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, featured.

Manuel Edghill: All are able to link to Google Translate, automatically?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we will do that. Instead of English, you can translate to Spanish. It’s going to be Chinese by default, but with a Google Translate in English that you can translate to English or Spanish. If we’re going to flip it...

Manuel Edghill: I would put these bigger. I would create some divide between each section. Is that our logo, vTaiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, this is our logo: Two anarchies.

Manuel Edghill: All right. How come it’s V? Victory?

Audrey Tang: It used to mean virtual.

Manuel Edghill: Virtual, oh, OK.

Audrey Tang: Then it could be interpreted any which way now. It could be venture. It could be whatever.

Manuel Edghill: Virtual is OK. "Virtual", that would work. "Virtual crowdsourcing policy agenda". (laughs)

Audrey Tang: Virtually. This is going up next month or something.

Shuyang Lin: Yeah, we just heard about it.

Audrey Tang: We’ll see. With it, we have better engagement and more people wanting to leave their email so they receive our monthly newsletters. That’s the main idea.

Manuel Edghill: I’m just trying to figure out the more efficient way to do this, because if you have a picture for every...

Audrey Tang: Proposal.

Manuel Edghill: ...proposal, the idea is to be scalable. We have so many proposals here that everybody’s engaged in each aspect of politics, so you have to have somebody figuring out how are we going to scale up?

Audrey Tang: Well by having every ministry approve...

Manuel Edghill: "Please provide a photo for your proposal by 3:00 PM."

Audrey Tang: Well it’s similar. That’s part of their job training, though.

Manuel Edghill: Oh really?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, there’s three core skill sets we’re training. One is what we call translation, meaning translating hardcore proposal, legal text, into something people can understand. A logo and a photo is part of the translation.

Audrey Tang: The second is facilitation. It could be facilitating useful comments from online also face‑to‑face deliberation and consultation.

Audrey Tang: Finally, there’s recording which says you need to be accountable in publishing all the video and transcribe every course and every decision they make, and to build an audit trail with proper credit to who suggested the change.

Manuel Edghill: You’re giving credit to the...?

Shuyang Lin: The person who suggested the change.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah? How does that work? Through the system?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, through the system. You can see...

Manuel Edghill: Like a peer‑to‑peer rating kind of thing?

Audrey Tang: It’s not a peer‑to‑peer rating. It’s basically just a thank you, a due credit of sorts. It just says we thank these people for proposing this useful agenda.

Manuel Edghill: I understand. I had the wrong definition of "credit".

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah. Credit as in movie credits, not as in...

Manuel Edghill: I understand. I was like, "Oh, wow. It’s amazing." But no, you mean "transcribed by Manuel Edghill," that kind of credit. Well you have to remember the frame of mind I’m coming from here... [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Right.

Manuel Edghill: All right, different kind of credit. That’s perfect. All right, so how can I help?

Audrey Tang: You can help...

Shuyang Lin: The site and you can...

Manuel Edghill: Oh, translate. That’s easy.

Audrey Tang: You can work on the hard part, which is the marketing strategy. Pretty soon, by the end of the year, we’ll have some objectives or missions that we want to get across. Our English or our conversation ability may not be so good that people who look at this website and know immediately what our objectives for the quarter are.

Audrey Tang: That is something maybe you can help with by just focusing people who find out about PDIS. I’m pretty sure that they have to see "digital minister" somewhere on this page now. Aside from that...

Audrey Tang: ...better techs and photos, better copies and better call to action. Currently our call to action is mostly just linking to vTaiwan and "Join", but maybe we want to be more explicit.

Manuel Edghill: Yeah, goal, mission, vision, I don’t know. See yourself as, I know it sounds awkward, but as a business that’s trying to...

Audrey Tang: Yeah, a start‑up.