Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s get started.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Today, we’d like to draw from Audrey’s past interviews that we know of, and we want to dive deep into discussions.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s set the premise for the first question. This is what we read in one of your interviews, and this was a response from Audrey to the question, were there oppositions, especially from the senior generation, when you were first brought into cabinet?

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let me just read this out loud for the audience. What Audrey said was, “I am working with the government, not for the government. I’m merely a channel between generations, sectors, and cultures.” Given that, let’s move on to the question itself.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: We want to ask about your position and role. When we hear minister in Japan, it would seem like a person at the top of the hierarchy of the government, very high up, so, in a sense, unreachable. However, when we look at what you said, it seems very different. You’re a different kind of minister.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: We’re curious to know why you use the word “with,” that you’re working with the government, and you said that you are the channel, your role is a channel. Could you describe to us how you see your position and your role?

Audrey Tang: Certainly. Very happy to participate in this deep dive. I will first say that I usually say I’m a lower-case minister. In the English language, a upper-case Minister corresponds to the Japanese idea of daijin, which is a state official of the high rank, but a lower-case minister is just a advocate.

Audrey Tang: In a lower-case minister role, anyone can be a lower-case minister, and this corresponds to the Mandarin idea of my actual position, which is called shùwèi zhèngwěi, a delegate for digital that is plural because shùwèi in Mandarin also means plural, many.

Audrey Tang: My answer to this question would be that I’m a channel in the sense that we are in a chat room channel. I merely provide a space for the various different positions to find its common values, and it’s not about me. It’s about the space that I help make.

Audrey Tang: Just one example, every day, I work in a way that is radically transparent, so this interview is also being filmed and will be published on the Internet Creative Commons, enabling anyone, including hip hop singers, to remix. This enabled everyone to look through the various visits with me other people’s positions from a safe distance to find their common values.

Audrey Tang: This is opposed to traditional offices where it’s closed-door meeting or it’s not transparent, so that people will feel siloed from each other. For me, radical transparency is at the root. That’s it.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you so much for your answer. The uppercase versus lowercase example is really easy to understand. Thank you. Building on that, I have an additional question. You mentioned channel or a chat room. You’re providing space for people to come and discuss. How is that possible, do you think?

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: One, you mentioned that you have radical transparency. However, how did the government first, say, allow you or let you have this radical transparency? How did that happen?

Audrey Tang: Back in 2014, we invited ourselves in when we occupied a parliament. It started as a protest on the street for the Cross-Strait Service and Trade Agreement that was not deliberated substantially by the parliament. People occupied the parliament to do the MPs’ work for them in a rightfully transparent fashion.

Audrey Tang: Many demonstrations were about shouting, about getting the ideas across. However, the Occupy, end of 2014, is about a demonstration of listening, of how we can listen at scale with half a million people on the street and many more online to get a set of consensus around the CSSTA.

Audrey Tang: After the Occupy at the end of 2014, all the mayors that supported the open government vision, regardless of their political party, gets elected. People who didn’t, didn’t get elected. That become a new political norm. We, the facilitators and people who helped the Occupy, gets invited to the cabinet as reverse mentors to the cabinet.

Audrey Tang: In a sense, my position here is just continuing the work that I worked as a reverse mentor starting at the end of 2014, as well as the municipal work, for example, by the Tainan City Mayor, Lai Ching-te, later our Premier, or the Taipei City Mayor, Ko Wen-je. They were also advocates of open government. It’s not just about me, it’s about a new political norm in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: I’ve distill it down to three factors – the fast, fair, and fun. On the first factor, for example, every Wednesday, anyone can come to my office and talk about anything. They don’t even need to book my time. If they have an idea, within the next week, that become new policy, and I will let them know.

Audrey Tang: For example, our recent stimulus package did not have a option where you can get cash from ATM, but because someone visited me and said, “Why don’t you just give people money through the ATM,” that’s become now a option. People understand when they have a good idea, it’d just take a week or even just a few days before it become policy.

Audrey Tang: To be precise, starting next Wednesday, if you go outdoor instead of on the ecommerce, if you go outdoor and spend ¥10,000, you can go to the nearby ATM in another week to get back the cash, about two-thirds of that back. That’s how we deliver the stimulus package.

Audrey Tang: Or if you do not prefer ATM, you can also pre-order a paper stimulus voucher and also collect it starting next Wednesday, 24 hours a day in a nearby convenience store. What I’m getting to is that it’s the technology adapting to people. It’s not asking people to adapt to technology. This is what I mean by fairness.

Audrey Tang: All of it is delivered in a way that is very joyous, that is to say makes people feel joy and fun when they see the communications and so on. As you can see, it’s very ceremonial. That is, again, why people would like to spread the message. Instead of waiting for the government to tell them how to spread the message, everybody can remix and create their own viral videos to explain how the policy works.

Audrey Tang: If you go to the stimulus voucher websites, 3000.gov.tw, at the end of the website, it says, “Every single thing you see here is open data.” You can even find a GitHub repository if you want to help translating or modifying it. That makes it even more fun, because our service delivery enables more creativity for the whole society. That’s my answer.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you very much. Especially around the second point on fairness, we have follow-up questions later. Let’s draw on that when we come to that question, too.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s turn the microphone to Mr. Seki. He is the representative of Code for Japan. We see that what Mr. Seki does is similar to what you do, Audrey, in Japan. Let’s draw from his ideas on what could be good points in Japan and what issues that Japan might be having.

Hal Seki: Code for Japan started in 2013. We were inspired by what damage and then how resilient we were after the Eastern Japanese earthquake that hit Japan. We are a civic tech community working on G0v.

Hal Seki: We can see that there are similarities and also differences in how we see this civic tech in Japan and Taiwan. I especially want to just draw on the differences, for example, in Japan. This somewhat works well in Japan, is that the community are dispersed. We have a broader geography. There are local communities that work well within Code for Japan.

Hal Seki: The issue or something that we still have to work on is around the political influence. For example, you mentioned whether it be uppercase or lowercase minister, we, in the whole of Code of Japan, there aren’t many people who can imagine that someone who is really good at technology can come into cabinet.

Hal Seki: We’re still grassroots. We don’t see that bridge from the grassroots to the mainstream or political influence.

Hal Seki: Related to that, from my perspective, I think that civilians or individuals who are really deeply in tech don’t really have that jump through the boundary of communicating to government or saying something themselves being within the government. We still can’t really see that. I think that’s something we still need to work on.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you, Mr. Seki, for your comment. For myself, what I hear from Audrey is just I am just in awe. Like, “Oh, wow, that is happening.” I am really pleased, too, to hear for Mr. Seki that we can look forward to a future like what Audrey did, because there are civilians.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Code for Japan is really deeply rooted in tech. If they can become more aware of what they can do, I think that could become a good outcome. I’m getting courage from this discussion. Thank you.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s move on to the next question. From the next questions, it will be around data. For the second question, the premise or the reference that we want to use is this. Audrey, you mentioned this movement back in your answer for the first question, the Sunflower Student Movement. This is what you said.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let me just read this out loud. “The people discovered that demonstrations and protests are not riots or acts of destruction, but actions that show that people have opinions. Politics progresses because people participate.” With comparison to what you said, this is the second question around give and take of data, who owns and who uses data.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: When we look at the interaction between government and people, it’s important that the organization who uses data return benefits to those who provided the data, meaning the regular people out there.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: However, in many cases, we see issues, or it’s very difficult to define what benefit can be to these people, and also how to deliver the benefits. In terms of politics, I have a feeling that people who provide data have the awareness or intention that they want the data to be used in their benefit. However, data itself, it doesn’t have intentions. How do we balance that?

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: In terms of politics and data, people who are aggregating that needs to listen to the people and understand the wants or the needs of the people and give back. However, how would that be possible? What do you think is the critical point for this utilization of data from the government?

Audrey Tang: Before we talk about data, let’s talk about labor. Before the invention of unions and cooperatives, there were once many centuries ago, a few centuries ago, where the capitalists were seen only as aggregators of labor.

Audrey Tang: Each employee at that point, there were no ideas about knowledge management or knowledge worker. Each employee is treated more or less interchangeable with any other employee.

Audrey Tang: That is to say people become reified, become like a object, because they were traded only by the dollar value of their labor without thinking about how social innovation, that is to say innovation organization can enable people to work better together as a organization instead of as atomized individuals.

Audrey Tang: As you can see, when people intentionally provide opinion, that’s your graphic on the right, people understand they’re participating in the democracy. On the other hand, if people are just being monitored or surveilled, they’re not in a democracy. They could be in a totalitarian regime.

Audrey Tang: For an organization to engage people, there are two main ways, just like knowledge management ideas, two main ways to improve the relationship. One is about accountability. Explaining automatically to everyone who trusted you with their data how this data are being used, and answer to each and every question from them, including updating, deleting, and otherwise making use of the data.

Audrey Tang: The second thing, in addition to accountability, is to make sure that people retain governance, retain control on the ultimate value of the data. For example, if someone provides data per se, I do not want this data to be used in such and such purposes, there need to be a way that’s as easy for them to do that for opt out as for opting in.

Audrey Tang: This is, when applied to labor, very intuitive. Nobody now think a company only as labor aggregator. We think that data is going to be very much the same kind of labor-based organization types that enable noble ways of collaboration that will also need the same kind of shift in mindset. That’s my answer.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you very much for your response. The analogy of labor is just spot-on. We want to add a question to that. For example, in Japan, we have this word or a movement that is around revolution of work. It’s not just people going into work and then just working without thinking anything or just doing what the company tells them to do.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Each one of us are becoming more aware of what is work, how do we want to work, or what’s the healthy relationship between a company and a person that works there. That’s been the premise in Japan.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: The reason for that movement is that people can gather information from anywhere from friends or from the international community and look at other examples and say, “Oh, this is what’s happening in other worlds. Why don’t we do that?” Or, “If we change our work style into something different, this would be the outcome. Why don’t we try that?”

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: That mind shift is going on because of the available information. That would be good into data, the world of data as well. Not just the organization that aggregates data would be aware of that, but the people who are providing data are becoming aware of how the data is getting used.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: This is a question to you, Audrey. If this mind shift in the data world is to happen more easily or with more impact, what do you think is the key? Or, what do you do in your line of work so that people can be more aware of how their data is used?

Audrey Tang: On the two pillars of accountability and participatory governance, I will first talk about accountability. In Taiwan, there’s millions of people who have downloaded an app. It’s called 健保快易通 or the national health insurance app. I will call it the NHI app. Millions of people, four or five million, have used the My Health Bank function within the NHI app.

Audrey Tang: Even though your dentist may not be able to see your health records when you, for example, did your health check with your cooperative or company, or that your smart home appliances may report some numbers for your health monitoring that is accessible only to your family members or so on, everything can be aggregated, but only the person themselves can see it on the health bank app.

Audrey Tang: For example, and this is a funny example, when people check their health bank, because they can see all the X-ray or CT scan, they can even download the image. They can also see the declaration of symptoms from their old doctor visits.

Audrey Tang: There’s someone who gets diagnosed of nose allergy, which is with the code 98, but some person has their doctor key it in as 99 for unknown reason. They can challenge that diagnosis very easily and correct the typos made by the doctor.

Audrey Tang: Under participatory governance, I’m going to use a light-hearted example, which is people who have not collected the rationed mask, they can share their uncollected quota to dedicate their uncollected mask to people, for example, in Japan for international help.

Audrey Tang: You can already see almost of 700,000 people have now dedicated more than five million medical masks in this link that I just provided at taiwancanhelp.com.tw.

Audrey Tang: Using the same app as the app with the health bank, people can voluntarily exchange their uncollected mask quota for their right to display their name publicly, as I shared on the second link here. You can see 唐鳳 has dedicated 36 mask pieces. However, only six is from me, the other is by other people who share my name, like 唐鳳旻. That’s my example and my answer.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: The next question’s premise is this. When you were asked around the surveillance society, and we know that you mentioned that social sector should own data.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: The question we want to ask is this. Who should own data? The completeness of data or if data is collected in one place, it’s more efficient, you can do so much more. However, there’s also unfairness, meaning that place, that person, or that institution owns and inspects data.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: In order for government or anyone who collects data to avoid authoritarianism or to avoid abuse of use of data, what would be needed? We imagine that one of your response would be that the social sector should be in an important role. We also expect probably from what you said, accountability is a key point for this. Audrey, what do you think should happen in terms of centralizing and fairness of data?

Audrey Tang: I will, again, use labor as a example. Of course, before we have all these telecommunication technology, everybody working in the same place is more effective. Nobody will dispute it. However, there is a limit.

Audrey Tang: It’s not just, say, you put thousands of people in the same room, they will magically work better. Or, if everybody worked very long hours, 20 hours a day or 23 hours a day, they will work better. It’s not like that. In fact, if you only have volume and velocity, but if you don’t have veracity or quality, then it’s as good as, I don’t know, karoshi or something when it comes to labor.

Audrey Tang: Nowadays, we don’t think about just putting more people in the same large room anymore. We think about, as you have mentioned, a revolution in the mindset about labor so that people can work in a way that provides sustainability not only for their individual, but also sustainability for the organization.

Audrey Tang: Just as in the social innovations of crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, people working on this collaborative document and so on enabled a smarter way of working, so has recent social innovation enabled us to think beyond the exclusive control model of ownership of data.

Audrey Tang: For example, using the same National Health System, you can take your national health card to your nearby pharmacy and get the rationed masks. If you’re adult, then nine masks per two weeks. If you’re a child, then 10 masks per two week. Once you do so, you can see more than 100 applications.

Audrey Tang: The real-time stock level of the pharmacy actually would deplete by 9 or 10 when you make a purchase. It refreshes just after a few minutes. Because of that, it’s like a distributed ledger that makes everybody accountable to each other without a single centralized source of truth.

Audrey Tang: A distributed ledger is just one. We have distributed identity, federated learning, homomorphic encryption, a lot of new innovations that would enable new kinds of organization around data because of time. That’s my answer.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you, Audrey. Let’s turn the microphone to Mr. Seki. We also want to know about the Japanese situation of how the data is used. Also, the transparency and the healthy relationship is really important. How do you see this from a Japanese civic tech point of view?

Hal Seki: Thank you very much, Audrey. It was really easy to understand the two points. One, the accountability and what you expressed as political participation as your answer in the former question really sunk in, because what I feel is probably lacking in the Japanese civic tech community is the participation mindset.

Hal Seki: Because what I see in Japan is that personal information should be protected. It’s coupled with the notion of fear. If it’s not protected, it’s a problem. Or, if it’s not protected, it’s going to be abused. This notion of personal information and fear is really tied in.

Hal Seki: Through that, however, with this COVID-19 situation, people have realized that your personal information or privacy can be coupled well and work well with public health. For example, GPS tracking apps that would tell you that you might have been in contact with someone that has COVID-19. Your data can be used to protecting yourself.

Hal Seki: If you have the control to opt in or opt out of these services, that does benefit to you. From the discussion today, in Japan, there has been this My Number card, which is around your identity and technology. If we could engage more people to participate in this movement, more people would have this My Number card.

Hal Seki: My Number card is used by really few people currently. We have to think of how to communicate the benefits of data being used in a civic way and with transparency so that we can reap the benefits of data together.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you very much, both of you. We now are made aware of the issue of personal information that just gives you the type of fear, but then if we are able to communicate with more transparency and clarification that this could be used in a very beneficial way.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: With personal information, people might be embarrassed in some way to disclose some aspects of yourself. For example, I’ve gained weight recently is not something that I’m really proud of.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: However, if I know that I have control over what should be disclosed or what should be given in and what should not, or if I can opt in or opt out from a service. To know that something is beneficial to me, but also to the society is something that’s encouraging people for give personal data.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s move on to the next question and the premise is this. This is something that you mentioned, responding to a question around technology disparity or the gap issue between the senior and the young, or the urban and suburban areas.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let me read out loud, “that human need not accommodate to digital technology. Digital technology should be more humble. It should be for humans. We should make sure that people can benefit from technology.” Given this premise, let’s talk about data technology and how it can be humble or modest.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: This is a really important point, and probably related to what you mentioned as the fairness of data. I don’t think that anyone would deny this. However, myself included, when a person, when people hear data or technology, it can be a bit overwhelming. It’s a big word.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Some people may think that it’s magic, that it can solve all these things. Or, it could be a source of fear that say, “AI is going to take away my job,” type of fear. Some people might think blindly that technology is something that’s really, really important and it’s out of reach.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Our question is this to Audrey. When we have this overbearing mind, how are we to make possible that data and technology is used fairly by and to all people? How are we to think about it? How are we to realize this future?

Audrey Tang: A lot of this is about the stories we tell or about the language. Just to make sure that nobody confuse IT with the digital vision. This is my job description that I just pasted.

Audrey Tang: When we see the Internet of Things, let’s make the Internet of Beings. When we see virtual reality, let’s make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let’s make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let’s make it about human experience. When we hear the singularity is near, let’s remember the plurality is here.

Audrey Tang: The question, “Is AI going to take away my job?” goes away if you call it assistive intelligence, not artificial intelligence. If you have a human assistant or your secretary, you will, of course, trust them to align with your values, that’s participatory governance, and explain when they make a decision that seems to be in contradict of those values. That’s called accountability.

Audrey Tang: If your assistant don’t do that, you will fire the assistant. This is not about data and technologies being humble. That is just the consequence. The cost is that we insist on human dignity. If you insist on human dignity, the humbleness will follow.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you very much. That’s something we really need to think of, because as technology vendors, we tend to use big words and enforce that tech is great, but it’s not that.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Let’s move on to what Mr. Seki has to say around this overbearing language of technology and how we are to deal with it.

Hal Seki: With Code for Japan, we had that same issue, like words like open data or civic tech was new. Also, it didn’t sound very human. Because we are good with data or good with technology, we tend to want to solve everything in technology or with technology.

Hal Seki: However, we realized that that wouldn’t work on the ground. If you want to engage more people, for example, people in the government aren’t really around tech. They have an issue more. Not that they want to use open data. We stepped back and said, “What do we want to solve? Why are we doing this? Who are we serving?”

Hal Seki: If we found solutions in technology, we would do that. In that way, we would build trust and build something that actually people use. We started doing that from around four years ago when we realized that has become an issue.

Hal Seki: It’s not on tech first. It’s people first. Who are we serving? What issue are we tackling? We say this in Code for Japan that we think together and create together so that technology comes together with people.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: I want to ask an additional question to Audrey. I heard from somebody that we don’t call something that we were born with technology. For example, for myself, when I was born, telephones were already there. It came natural that it’s mean to do something. However, when we encounter something new as an adult, that would be overbearing, and we tend to overrate that.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: My question to you, Audrey, is this. How should we keep our mindsets in a neutral or a natural way even when we encounter new technology that might scare us in a way? How do we just plainly see it as a means to help ourselves?

Audrey Tang: When I was born in 1981, Taiwan was still under martial law. Taiwan would not get presidential election until ‘96 when I was 15 years old. I guess, for me, democracy is a technology. Even though I was not born in a democratic society, we can still help each other to build a democratic society. That is the main idea of fast, fair, and fun.

Audrey Tang: Because if this is new, people, of course, have fear, uncertainty, and doubt. However, fast, fair, and fun, to my experience, is a very effective way to turn those negative energy into co-creation energy.

Audrey Tang: My main advice would be just to take anything you’re afraid of, anything that seems strange to you, and see if you become curious in some part of it. Once you engage your curiosity and find a community like Code for Japan, that curiosity will vaccinate you against the outrage or fear.

Audrey Tang: If you have a community that share food together, and also share music together maybe, it’s easier to see that you can then share technology together. Rather than it being an oppressive tool, it will become something that, like a musical instrument, people can practice together. That’s my answer.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: We prepared some additional questions if we have time. Audrey, you just nailed it answering part of what we wanted to ask. Let me just draw that up. Let me set this premise. This was around the division of technology and how the society can be divided. It’s really long so I’m not going to read it.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: What struck me was the last line that you said that “I would fear a world where there is just the mainstream.” That struck me and got me thinking that if we are to build a community, it’s a comfort zone because we all think alike and we’re like-minded people. However, we need to use our curiosity and also courage so that we can keep getting better, in a sense. This is the question that we prepared.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Our question to you is, what is a good way to get out of one’s comfort zone? Also, I was intrigued about your mathematical theory of taking two people out of each community and let them exchange with each other. Why two and how does that work? What would your answer be to getting out of a comfort zone?

Audrey Tang: Let’s first look at the transcultural practice. It’s just like learning a human language or a computer language. Even if Java and JavaScript are completely different languages, learning one will make it easier for you to learn the other.

Audrey Tang: The point here being, it’s like language learning. Of course, the language you are born with, you probably did not remember how you learn it. For each language that you learn intentionally, it makes it easier for you to learn future languages.

Audrey Tang: If you are a programmer, the hardest part to becoming a programmer is now usually solved by things like Scratch, where you don’t have to learn any language, just some Lego blocks from some other kid. You change those Lego block to change its color, its music, or something, remixing each other’s work.

Audrey Tang: Just by remixing this culture is easier than if you have to start learning a new language from Scratch. Building on the Scratch language, you can then learn other computer languages. It’s a easy way to get out of one’s comfort zone. If you find something that’s useful to you, it’s already 90 percent there and you just have to learn the 10 percent to make it truly useful in your life.

Audrey Tang: Each of those communities that I referred to before served as hubs that connect people together in a small world network. Of course, there is already a established theory about network robustness. I will not quote the textbooks.

Audrey Tang: Please feel free to introduce the audience about network robustness and design. This applies to human network, as well as to computer networks. For a old but useful exposition on this, you can read Clay Shirky, “Here Comes Everybody.”

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: This was a response to what you mentioned around the situation of today, meaning the COVID-19 situation at the current moment is a great opportunity for governments to try out an experiment new technologies or methodologies.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: The reference here is that you mentioned that you don’t think that people will forget the positive side of what they experience with technology. Given that as a background, our request is that please give a message to the audience who are working with data or technology given the COVID-19 situation.

Audrey Tang: I will simply quote Leonard Cohen, my favorite poets in the first stanza of the song, “Anthem.”

Audrey Tang: The birds they sang at the break of day. “Start again,” I heard them say. “Don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.” Yeah, the wars, they will be fought again. The holy dove, she will be caught again. Bought and sold and bought again, the dove is never free.

Audrey Tang: Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering.

Audrey Tang: There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: That’s very inspiring.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you so much for your time, for the panelists for being with us together at this time to discuss this important message. We hope that the audience will learn something or be inspired so that they can do something important today.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: The recording is finished. Thank you very much again, Audrey. We have a great discussion today.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. It’s time for me to take some photos here. I will hang up here, but let’s keep connected.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Sure.

Audrey Tang: Bye.

Tsuyoshi Wakahara: Thank you, Audrey. Bye.

Hal Seki: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: Thank you for the interpretation. That was great. Thank you.

Eriko Sekiya: Thank you very much.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.