Damon Wilson: I’m Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President the Atlantic Council.

Damon Wilson: For those of you who are joining us virtually from Taiwan and across Asia, thank you for tuning in this evening for today’s discussion, which is being hosted by our Asia Security Initiative, part of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Damon Wilson: It’s 9:00 AM in Washington, 9:00 PM in Taipei. Today we are honored to be hosting Taiwan’s Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, for an inside look at her government’s internationally-lauded response to COVID-19. Mr. Tang, welcome back to the Atlantic Council.

Audrey Tang: Hello. Very happy to be virtually here and good local time everywhere.

Damon Wilson: Thank you so much. We’re looking at striking data behind Taiwan’s coronavirus response. One number has jumped out to me in particular, 81. At its closest point, Taiwan is just 81 miles from China. Despite being on the literal front lines of the early outbreak, Taiwan has managed to keep its number of domestic cases below 500.

Damon Wilson: With coordinated measures taken by Taiwan’s government, in spite not being part of the World Health Organization, have made the island one of the greatest success stories of this global pandemic. We’re eager to hear more from Minister Tang about our lessons learned in the battle against COVID-19.

Damon Wilson: It also strikes me that the importance of Taiwan’s success story goes beyond the critical public health lessons that it provides. At a time when authoritarian regimes around the world point to outbreaks in the United States and Europe as false evidence of democracy’s fundamental weaknesses, Taiwan has demonstrated how democracies can leverage core strengths.

Damon Wilson: Including transparency and public trust to provide international aid and coordinate an effective global response alongside the US and its democratic allies and partners. Taiwan has donated millions of masks to parts of the world hit hardest by COVID-19. The Taiwanese research institutions continue to partner on the development of new tests and treatments for the virus.

Damon Wilson: Here at the Atlantic Council, we recognize that securing the post-COVID-19 world isn’t about getting back to where we were before the pandemic. Instead, we’re working to identify, understand, and amplify the kinds of innovative measures we’ve seen in places like Taiwan that will help the United States and its allies and partners move forward to a rules-based international order that is more resilient and coordinated than before.

Damon Wilson: To that end, we’re especially excited to be hosting Minister Tang, who has played a key role in Taiwan’s effort, leverage information technology and digital democracy to launch innovative apps, platforms, and policies in the fight against COVID-19.

Damon Wilson: The minister’s been a guest of our Asia Initiative, our Cyber Statecraft Initiative, our Digital Forensics Research Lab programs in the past, and we’re delighted to have you join us again, this time virtually.

Damon Wilson: Since joining the Executive Yuan in August of 2016 as Digital Minister, Minister Tang has spearheaded Taiwan’s efforts to increase public participation and policy making through digital platforms and has overseen measures to spur the growth of tech startups.

Damon Wilson: Prior to joining the Taiwanese government, Minister Tang has been a prominent member of the online collective G-0-V, g0v, a group of digital activists that sought to introduce Internet governance and bring transparency to Taiwanese government’s work.

Damon Wilson: Her activism has seen her serve as consultant to the Taiwanese government’s project vTaiwan, a digital platform that invites citizens to participate in policy making. A self-taught programmer, she dropped out of school at the age of 14 and started her own IT company at the age of 19.

Damon Wilson: She also served as an advisor to Apple’s projects on artificial intelligence, spending significant time in Silicon Valley. Thank you again for joining us this morning in Washington, this evening in Taipei. With that, I’d like to turn things over to today’s moderator.

Damon Wilson: Amy Mackinnon is a staff writer at “Foreign Policy” and host of Foreign Policy’s weekly coronavirus podcast, which is called “Don’t Touch Your Face,” one of the best names in the podcast industry out there. Amy, we’re delighted to have you as moderator for today’s discussion.

Damon Wilson: I also just want to give a shout out to our team, to Miyeon Oh, Barry Pavel, and James Hildebrand for making today possible. Amy, over to you.

Amy Mackinnon: Thank you very much for that introduction, Damon. I am so excited to be here. I feel like on the podcast and every day, like a lot of us, I just feel like I’m reading about everything that has gone wrong with the coronavirus response around the world.

Amy Mackinnon: It just feels like bad news after bad news. I am very excited to get the opportunity to spotlight a good news story in the fight against coronavirus for a change.

Amy Mackinnon: As you mentioned in your opening remarks there, given Taiwan’s proximity to China and the high amount of travel between the two countries, researchers at John Hopkins had initially estimated that Taiwan would have the second most amount of cases of COVID-19 in the world outside of mainland China. Clearly, that’s not the case.

Amy Mackinnon: In fact, Taiwan is now one of the global success stories when it comes to their coronavirus response, proving that early intervention, smart and innovative leadership, and steps that they took early on in the outbreak were able to produce a markedly different outcome.

Amy Mackinnon: Now as countries in Europe and the states across the United States look to reopen their economies, there is a lot that we can learn from Taiwan’s experience. Actually, before I will dive into questions, I just want to flag that we’re taking questions from the audience as well.

Amy Mackinnon: You can submit your questions via Twitter using the handle @ACScowcroft or in the comment section of Facebook and YouTube live streams, wherever you may be watching. Without further ado, I shall turn to Minister Tang. Thank you so much for joining us. Just to kick us off, can you just give us an overview of where things stand now in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: Yes. I’m very happy to be joining all of you. Currently, Taiwan feels calm, and also there’s recently a case where we introduced an app that allows people to purchase, preorder a rationed mask.

Audrey Tang: For people who have not collected their rationed mask, which is 9 medical mask every two weeks if you’re an adult and 10 if you’re a child, you can choose to dedicate the ones you have not collected to international community in need. In just two days, there’s more than two million face masks dedicated by Taiwanese citizens, in just a couple days since we launched this feature.

Audrey Tang: This shows that there’s been 100 days since we launched the Central Epidemic Command Center, or the CECC. For 16 consecutive days, there’s no local cases confirmed. We are now in the stage where people are feeling generous.

Amy Mackinnon: Wow. That’s incredible. Congratulations. We feel a long way off from that moment here in Washington DC. Before we talk about the current coronavirus outbreak, I want to talk about previous coronavirus. How did the SARS outbreak of 2003 lay the foundations for Taiwan’s response to this outbreak?

Audrey Tang: That’s an excellent question. Ever since the 2003 SARS epidemic, we’ve been reviewing the things that we did not do well. For example, there were no Central Epidemic Command Center that I just mentioned. There was a very confusing, what does the local municipalities do? What do the national government do? The chain of command is very much chaotic back in the SARS days.

Audrey Tang: I think everybody in Taiwan who are above 30 years old remembers how chaotic it was. We decided that 37 people died for that is 37 people too many. It was a particularly traumatic episode where we had to basically barricade an entire hospital without any warning or about the extension of time of which they will be barricaded and so on. Because of this, I would say it’s almost like an inoculation.

Audrey Tang: The whole society mobilized at this time because we’ve been consistently practicing as a society, not just from the government, what to do if SARS happened again. When last year, the last day of last year, last December, when Dr. Li Wenliang, the PRC whistleblower, posted that there are new SARS cases on the social media in the PRC, whereas many jurisdictions began countering and taking that into notice only this year.

Audrey Tang: We started last year because our local equivalent of Reddit, the PTT Board, as somebody re-posting that, and the head of CDC immediately noted this post and issued an order that says all passengers flying from Wuhan to Taiwan need to start health inspection the very next day. That is the first day of 2020. That’s as if SARS has happened all over again. We’ve been practicing that for the past 17 years.

Amy Mackinnon: Could you just tell that story of how, because I just think it’s fascinating, how local version of effectively Reddit played this huge role in triggering this fantastic response. Just walk me through what happened on that evening of December 31st in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure. It’s actually very early morning in December 31st. It was…

Audrey Tang: It’s about the same hour, actually, that Dr. Li Wenliang would be questioned by his institution. A few days later, he would be basically punished by the local police station. What happened in Taiwan is that the head of CDC immediately noticed the post which was by someone with the nickname nomorepipe, and it includes the full Li Wenliang whistle-blowing account.

Audrey Tang: This, to me, says two things. First, the civil society trusts the government enough to talk about possible near SARS outbreaks in the public forum. The second is that the government trusts the citizen enough to take it seriously and treat it as if SARS has happened over again, something we’ve always been preparing since 2003.

Audrey Tang: Because of this open civil society – according to the CIVICUS Monitor, Taiwan is the most open society in the whole of Asia – we emphasize opening our mind to new, novel ideas like first as an advanced collective-intelligence warning system.

Amy Mackinnon: Where did things go from there? You got winds that there was this possibly another SARS outbreak or this new pneumonia spreading in Wuhan. What were the next steps which the government took?

Audrey Tang: The setting up of the Central Epidemic Command Center, the CECC, is really the most important part. The CECC is an organization with a full authority as authorized by the Act that has been revised by the legislature after SARS so that I think it was in January ‘20s where they started their daily press conferences. Every daily press conferences are live streamed.

Audrey Tang: We work with the journalist community. The idea is that the press conference is not a one-sided conversation. It’s basically ask me anything so that the Minister of Health and Welfare answer all the question from all the journalists until they run out of questions, which is also live streamed.

Audrey Tang: Because of this, whenever there is new ideas coming from the civil society, there was a phone line, still is a phone line called 1922. People can just pick up their phone, call 1922, and tell the idea to the CECC, establishing a bi-directional connection between a civil society and a response system.

Amy Mackinnon: Has that yielded any ideas from civil society that have been implemented?

Audrey Tang: For example, there was one day in April where a young boy that said that they don’t want to go to school because his schoolmates may laugh at him for wearing a pink medical mask.

Audrey Tang: The very next day on the press conference, everybody in the CECC, including the Minister of Health and Welfare, started wearing pink medical mask, making sure that everybody learns about gender mainstreaming, which is also a social innovation.

Audrey Tang: This kind of fast response builds trust between the government and a civil society because people can feel that their ideas is being taken into account in the 24-hour cycle.

Amy Mackinnon: Tell me about the role that technology and software has played in your coronavirus response here.

Audrey Tang: The main idea, the focus, is fairness. For example, when we ramped up the facial mask production, making sure that everybody can use their National Health Insurance card to collect a mask from nearby pharmacies, not only do we publish the stock level of all the pharmacies as other countries with an FOIA would do, but we publish it every three minutes, which is very different.

Audrey Tang: In most government bureaucracies, we publish at the end of the day because you want somebody looking at the numbers to make sure that it hasn’t gone horribly wrong, or wrong by orders of magnitude, or things like that. We connect directly to NHI, the National Health Insurance system to open data.

Audrey Tang: Everybody in the world has access to all the stock level almost like a distributor ledger every three minutes. That’s why g0v and many community contributors builds more than 130 tools that enable people who prefer view maps to view where are the nearest pharmacy that still have this medical mask in stock.

Audrey Tang: People with blindness can look at a table or hear from the voice assistance, or people who are using will need to enter into an encrypted system called Line. It’s like WhatsApp. There’s also a bot that is very popular, often can get the same inclusive access to the information about which pharmacist near them still do have the mask.

Audrey Tang: Because Taiwan has more than 99.99 percent of health coverage, people who show any symptom will then be able to take the medical mask, go to a local clinic, knowing that they will get treated fairly without incurring any financial burden. That enabled people to make the decisions that are pro-social out of selfish reasons. This is the incentive design that technology have enabled.

Amy Mackinnon: One of the key strategies which we’ve seen used over and over again in countries that have successfully managed to handle their outbreaks has been contact tracing. How did you go about doing that in Taiwan? What role did technology play in that?

Audrey Tang: The contact-tracing technologies in Taiwan is based on classical contact tracing, interviews and so on. We put special care on the port control. Because we’re basically a bunch of islands, there’s no way to accidentally stumble on Taiwan. You probably have to arrive through an airport or a seaport.

Audrey Tang: At the port level, we make sure that people who return from a high-risk area, the entire plane, all the passengers and the itself goes into a centralized quarantine. If it’s coming from a lower-risk place, people who show any symptom, of course, they’ll get quarantined and treated. The people without symptoms are still home quarantined in their homes.

Audrey Tang: If they do not live in a home with plenty of rooms so that they can keep a social distance with other people or if they live with vulnerable people, we also have staying places so that they can stay there for 14 days and get compensated about US $33 a day for their efforts or 1,000 times that fine if they do escape the home currently.

Amy Mackinnon: Wow. How has the population responded to this contact tracing?

Audrey Tang: The population really insisted to play a co-detective role. There’s a lot of people calling 1922 about the suspected cases, suspected symptoms, and things like that. We have to massively assign a lot of staff to answer those calls, to triage those calls, and so on. It’s really effective.

Audrey Tang: Also, because of the digital fence, it’s based on the idea that for the 14 days of the home quarantine, people who are attached to their phones anyway cannot [laughs] move outside of the digital fence. Otherwise, a automatic SMS is sent to the local household managers and the police.

Audrey Tang: Their neighbors also help enforcing, essentially, the digital fence for the 14 days and making sure that they get plenty of video calls like we do now to make sure that they are still around and also their mental health is being taken care of.

Amy Mackinnon: Have there been any concerns about privacy and surveillance? I know that’s an issue that’s been raised here when we’re talking about contact tracing apps and tracing people who may have the virus.

Audrey Tang: We’ve not launched any contact tracing apps. There’s no…

Amy Mackinnon: Sorry. I mean things like the digital fence, has that raised any concerns about…

Audrey Tang: Of course, it is surveillance. Of course, it is an intrusion on human rights and privacy during those 14 days. That is because we do have the constitutional ruling dating back from the SARS days.

Audrey Tang: After we look at the barricading of the hospital, the Constitutional Court found that it is not unconstitutional, but if you can replace it with something better, something that had a fixed lens of termination, that has a fully informed process, and that is less intrusive than a physical barricade, then by all means, use that instead of a physical barricade.

Audrey Tang: Because of that constitutional ruling, I think over 91 percent of people do approve of the CECC responses. I’m not pretending the 9 percent who do not agree, do not exist, but there is constitutional basis for this digital fence that we’ve been building.

Amy Mackinnon: I understand that you were able to merge citizen health data from insurance databases with immigration and customs information to create this big data set. Could you talk a little bit more about that, explain how that works?

Audrey Tang: That was actually only in the early days, where there’s still high-risk areas in the world and lower-risk areas in the world, as I just mentioned. After a while, the CECC just decided that everywhere else on earth is high-risk.

Audrey Tang: The immigration database is no longer very useful because we banned all the incoming flights anyway, other than returning citizens. All of them go into home quarantine and so on. It was a very early intervention that made these contributions in the early days, but it’s not on our minds very much anymore.

Amy Mackinnon: Great. I just want pause here and remind people that we are taking questions from the audience. We have seen a couple come in on the side here. If anybody is watching out there and wants to send in a question for the minister, you can do that on Twitter using the handle @ACScowcroft, or in the comment section of Facebook, and the YouTube live streams, whichever you’re watching.

Amy Mackinnon: I’m going to turn now actually to a question, which was sent in ahead of time from, Tina Chang from Voice of America. Tina has asked whether you could talk about the conflict between civil society and the government on privacy and transparency about when each would need new information from the other side to effectively contain the spread of the virus. How are you managing this conflict?

Audrey Tang: I do not quite understand that question, to be very honest with you. I understand it as, for example, people who are panic buying would think that the government is withholding information. For example, the tissue papers, when people went to panic buying tissue papers.

Audrey Tang: It was a persistent rumor that says, “The medical mask is made out of same material as tissue papers, and so we’re going to run out of tissue paper soon,” and everybody went panic buying.

Audrey Tang: The conflict was between the government who want to get the information through that it is actually not the same material at all, and we’re not running out of tissue papers, and the civil society which think the government has something to hide. Is that what you’re understanding, too?

Amy Mackinnon: I think the question was a little bit unclear, but I think it was hitting on the point of civil society, government, and privacy and transparency.

Amy Mackinnon: Please, go ahead.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, our counter-disinformation strategy is based on this idea. It’s called humor over rumor. Very easy to remember. [laughs] When there was this panic buying of tissue papers, as I mentioned, the Premier, the Prime Minister essentially, was basically showing a very funny mimetic picture.

Audrey Tang: That’s our Premier, Su Tseng-chang, smiling happily, working with the convenience stores. You can see him here. He posted this on social media, which is his bottom wiggling a little bit actually, and says in very large font that “We only have one pair of buttocks each.”

Audrey Tang: Meaning that we don’t need to panic buy tissue papers, and then a very clear table that shows that materials of medical masks come from Taiwan and the tissue paper material came from South America, and so on. It’s an informative infographic with a extremely funny mimetic packaging. This went absolutely viral.

Audrey Tang: Because of that, the panic buying of tissue papers actually died down within a day or two. Finally, we found out the person who spread the rumor was a tissue paper reseller.

Amy Mackinnon: [laughs] It’s interesting. Have you seen any disinformation about the virus or about Taiwan’s response to the virus coming from other countries?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, certainly. There was a persistent disinformation about Taiwan, for example, gets zero cases because we do not do tests or things like that. Of course, it’s not true. We do a lot of tests. We’re using RT-PCR predominantly as other jurisdictions.

Audrey Tang: The great thing in Taiwan is that when people question this kind of things, they are guaranteed to get a response, and education in epidemiology really, with our CECC commander, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, Chen Shih-chung.

Audrey Tang: After he gives his lecture, all the journalists can ask questions. He always take on the role of a student also learning about this new epidemic, because it was not SARS. It’s not the same as SARS. This is actually much more complicated than SARS.

Audrey Tang: He always take a very humble attitude and say, “We’re all in this together. We need to learn from each other. If you have anything that I have not thought of, please let me know and call 1922.” That humble position basically increased the trust of the lessons and lectures that he’s getting. It also helps the minister’s spokes dog. This is literally our social distancing meme.

Audrey Tang: If you’re outdoor, it’s two dogs. If you’re indoor, that’s three. It’s reminding you to not sneeze, I guess, with your mouth uncovered. There’s a lot of funny dog pictures. Wherever the CECC daily press conference is done, it gets translated into the dog CEO, the Zongchai, quickly, including hand sanitation rules and pre-orders and so on. That all go viral.

Audrey Tang: We make sure that our humor, our factual humor, spreads faster than rumor.

Amy Mackinnon: That’s fantastic. Changing tack slightly a little bit, I’ve seen a lot of headlines in the past couple of weeks about Taiwan sending masks internationally to other countries. A lot of journalists have used the phrase, “Mask diplomacy.”

Amy Mackinnon: I’m wondering, given the very contrasting ways in which China and Taiwan have handled this, especially China in the early days covering up the outbreak, not being fully forthcoming about what was going on, Taiwan, on the other hand, sending shipments of masks internationally.

Amy Mackinnon: How do you think this is going to change Taiwan standing both with major world players, such as the United States, but also within international institutions like the World Health Organization?

Audrey Tang: There’s quite a few trending websites about Taiwan. There’s taiwancanhelp.us, or taiwancanhelp.us, and taiwancanhelp.com.tw, which respectively tells, from a civil society point of view, the timeline, as well as Taiwan’s, contributions.

Audrey Tang: Taiwancanhelp.com.tw says right now that in the past couple of days, we collected 2,282,000 masks from more than 261,000 dedicators and so on. It’s basically saying that this is not just about first track diplomacy. This is not just about our diplomats making sure that the people in need internationally get supplies from Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: This actually come from more than 200,000 in the past two days, and no doubt more tomorrow, citizens who voluntarily signified that they want to dedicate their uncollected masks to the international community. I think it would enhance not only the so-called first track diplomacy, but will also increase the people-to-people ties as well.

Amy Mackinnon: I think we had another question on that from someone watching. We have a question from Manik Mehta from the Taipei Times. Thank you, Manik. Manik asks, “Would the World Health Organization, which has systematically denied Taiwan direct access to its expertise, benefit from Taiwan’s handling of the coronavirus?”

Audrey Tang: As I mentioned, we began health inspection for flight passengers flying from Wuhan the very first day of this year. As of January 10th, I think, WHO did not recommend health inspection for flight passengers from Wuhan to its member countries. Had we have direct access to the minister’s level through the WHO, the entire world will gain 10 precious days because of our early warning.

Audrey Tang: We do have access to some of the scientific communities. Unless you happen to have, like our vice president, literally the person who wrote the textbook on epidemiology, who are both a scientist and also our vice president, the scientific access is not the same as ministerial access.

Amy Mackinnon: I understand. If anybody wants to send in questions, I would encourage you to do so. We have a further 15 minutes at the minister’s time. Please, if you’re on Facebook or YouTube, send it in the comments below, or if you’re on Twitter, send in your questions using the handle @ACScowcroft.

Amy Mackinnon: I’m going to go to another audience question now. It doesn’t say who the name is, but thank you for sending it in. The person asks, “Is there any direct communication between Mainland China, whether with Fujian authorities and medical professionals, or Beijing to coordinate the COVID-19 response?”

Audrey Tang: There were two experts from Taiwan that visited Wuhan on January the 12th to gather the information on the outbreak and control measures implemented in Wuhan. That’s well-documented. Other than that, I’m not aware of any direct communications.

Amy Mackinnon: Interesting. We have another question this time on vaccines. Somebody is asking, “Could you please tell us what is the progress regarding the process of vaccination-making in Taiwan and whether there are any clinical trials?”

Audrey Tang: We managed quite early to isolate virus strains from patients to synthesize the spike protein, a key material in vaccine development.

Audrey Tang: I’m not the Vice President — Chen Chien-jen — so I cannot comment too much on vaccines. Suffice it to say that we really want vaccines, because currently, we rely on the physical vaccine, that is the medical mask, but we all understand it doesn’t scale to the entire world. Only vaccines scale to the entire world.

Audrey Tang: There’s more and more medical masks being produced, and we’re also offering the medical masks voluntarily, as well as teaching other countries how to make the machine to make those medical masks. At the end of the day, it still takes a vaccine to completely end a epidemic. We are committing a lot of resource on it.

Audrey Tang: If you’re interested in what you can contribute, there is a website called                                                       cohack.tw                                                   that anybody from any place of the world can look at the six pillars of responses and see how the digital community can help as well the people who are doing vaccine research or people who are doing the frontline responses, and nurses as well, very important.

Amy Mackinnon: What was that website again? Just in case people…

Audrey Tang: It’s cohack.tw. C-O-H-A-C-K, like a hack, and then co, co as in collaboration but also as in coronavirus.

Amy Mackinnon: We have a question from Miyeon Oh with the Scowcroft Center Atlantic Council. She asks, “How can Taiwan strengthen cooperation with the US and its allies and partners during this crisis?”

Audrey Tang: We just had a virtual GCTF, the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, this morning Taipei time, last night your time. The GCTF, which is a small, minilateral, is always hosted by Japan, by the US, and by Taiwan in a way that shares our common concerns and our strengths. We invite the fourth or the fifth host countries based on the topic.

Audrey Tang: This morning’s virtual GCTF was precisely how we can apply resources to combat disinformation on COVID-19 and how to counter the infodemic so that people learn about good scientific facts instead of just rumors and conspiracy theories.

Audrey Tang: For example, the founder of PTT, the equivalent of Reddit, is currently running a nonprofit called AI Labs. He shared using sentiment analysis and text mining how people’s sentiment to each other are so that we can make sure that when we’re sending our messages, we hit the right emotional tone.

Audrey Tang: We actually allow a lot of remixes using Creative Commons so that people can really remix the memes so that it become more precise toward the target audiences that they want to inform. For example, the proper hand sanitation rules. There’s very easy to remember lyrics and like [non-English speech] , that tells you how to wash your hands properly and things like that.

Audrey Tang: There’s a lot of creativity and innovation across the board in the US, Taiwan, and now Japan co-created GCTPR forums.

Amy Mackinnon: That’s interesting. What has been the role of citizen hackers in this? I feel like you’ve mentioned that a lot. Hackers is not the right word, but citizen developers.

Audrey Tang: Civic hackers. We used to call the technologies that the civic hackers make civic tech, meaning that everybody can participate. This is the first time that they think that they’re actually civil engineers, as in like the pharmacy mask map that they produced is used by over half of the population, making it as much a infrastructure as roads and bridges.

Audrey Tang: They’re both civic tech technologists in the sense that everybody can participate in an open fashion, but also civil engineers in the sense that everybody is making full use of the code that they produced. I think it’s important not only as a data publishing tool, but also analysis as well.

Audrey Tang: There are people who make very professional dashboard that lets people see that, first, our supply is indeed growing, and also shows where in Taiwan do we have an oversupply or undersupply so that we can change the strategy with the pharmacies.

Audrey Tang: There’s several pharmacists are also coders, so that they can propose changes and receive supplies, as well as the ordering system and so on are all co-created with the whole of society approach.

Amy Mackinnon: Where does the funding come from when these apps are initially developed by citizens, not by the government?

Audrey Tang: The very first map made by Howard Wu is using the Google Place API. Within just a couple of short days, there’s a very large amount, like US$20k of usage fees, because of the use of the map API so that he could not continue running it out of his personal budget.

Audrey Tang: The National Center of High-Speed Computation at the moment is supplying most of the bandwidth of the civic hacker project. It’s publicly funded, I think, the world’s ‘20s fastest supercomputer and running on a very high-speed Internet connection. I still also want to thank Google for waiving the initial fees of that initial prototype.

Amy Mackinnon: We have another audience question from…I’m sorry if I’m going to pronounce your name wrong and Nieves Perez. Is Taiwan helping small countries around the world? If so, what type of cooperation or help are they giving?

Audrey Tang: The simplest is the medical mask. We’ve made many donations, dozens of millions, to countries suffering from the pandemic, and also especially for medical workers. There’s also personal protective equipment to Italy, ventilators to Prague, and many other countries as well. I think the main thing that we can share, aside from those medical supplies, is the Taiwan model.

Audrey Tang: How do this whole of society communication happens? Where do we do this incentive design, which is very interesting, about the mask being built as something that protects you because it reminds you not to touch your mouth and wash hands? It reminds you to wash your hands properly while it actually protects others.

Audrey Tang: There’s a social norm that even just a few people wearing mask in a large crowd can basically recommend other people to take care of themselves and to grow the mask culture from there. That is the kind of social incentive design that I’m also very happy to share with fellow citizens from across the world.

Amy Mackinnon: We have another question from Darby Sinclair, who says, “First of all, many congratulations to Taiwan for four days of zero cases.” Has it been four days or is it even longer?

Audrey Tang: It’s even longer for domestic cases, but there was a Navy ship. That counts as part of the territory, I guess, but not a part of the domestic island. It depends on how you count. Even including the Navy, it’s been four consecutive days.

Amy Mackinnon: Great. Anyway, back to Darby’s question. They’re asking, “What is the long-term approach for Taiwan to begin to reopen the country?”

Audrey Tang: Actually, we’re very open now.

Audrey Tang: We’re are all open. I’m not quite sure what else to open. I guess the main thing being discussed right now is to resume business flights. That’s for sure.

Amy Mackinnon: Did you ever have a full shutdown like we’ve seen in the US and Europe? No?

Audrey Tang: No, we’ve always been operating under normal legal system. We’ve not declared emergency situation. Because of that, many technological solutions in other jurisdiction that has invoked the emergency clauses in their constitutions so that the administration can do whatever and then legislation approves it afterwards, we’ve not had that.

Audrey Tang: Everything that we do need a legislature approval, which makes sure that all we do is constitutional within the normal law, not the emergency law. There were some constraints, of course, on the responses that we can do.

Audrey Tang: There’s also a special act that says that if there’s necessary measures, administratively, that doesn’t run afoul of other acts, the central CECC commander may also give orders to that effect. There’s not been a lot of orders.

Audrey Tang: The most recent controversial one, I think, was the closure, like not open for business, the places with drinks and dancers that people pay not for those drinks and performances, but rather for the intimate escorts. Those were closed down because there’s no feasible way to maintain social distance in such businesses. Other than that, everything like karaoke or whatever still remains open.

Amy Mackinnon: They’re open, but they have to implement social distancing. Is that…?

Audrey Tang: That’s right. If there’s no conceivable way to implement social distancing, that’s the narrow case where it got closed. Of course, there’s restaurants that invents transparent curtains between the tables like everywhere else. By and large, people are feeling calm and collected, and they still go to work, go to business, go to school as normal.

Amy Mackinnon: That’s fantastic. What advice do you have from your experience in Taiwan for policymakers, local and national level elsewhere around the world when they’re now looking to go ahead and reopen their economies? What needs to be done to contain further outbreak?

Audrey Tang: First of all, I think this whole of society approach really need to be emphasized, because it is not our vice presidents or our vice premier, who is a student of our vice president on public health, nor is our minister’s order that keeps Taiwan safe. It is the people who voluntarily actually reminded each other.

Audrey Tang: For example, our social distancing rule is actually keep a meter-and-a-half from each other indoors or wear a mask. People do a social distancing and wear a mask. They overdo what the social distancing recommendations are.

Audrey Tang: The interesting thing in this is because the people feel that the government is too lax, and people need to remind each other to keep each other safe, and just keep each other safe and learning together from each other. Even our vice president made a MOOC, a massive online open course, on Epidemiology 101, teaching R0 and everything to people. It’s been a hit.

Audrey Tang: It’s promoted by a lot of the very popular YouTubers in Taiwan. Just treating each other as co-learners in this, making sure that we learn together the science, the art, and the memes that keeps everybody safe, I think that is the most important message.

Amy Mackinnon: It sounds like trust has played a big role, though, in Taiwan’s ability to…

Audrey Tang: The government need to fully trust its citizens.

Amy Mackinnon: And vice versa, the citizens trust in the government as well.

Audrey Tang: 91 percent do, but yes.

Amy Mackinnon: That nine percent that don’t, what are their reservations about their response?

Audrey Tang: First of all, some of them worry that these norms will become part of the culture, that because if the vaccines maybe are delayed, we may have to live a year or so with such norms. Just like counterterrorism norms, sometimes the society living through those norms do not revert back to the old normal.

Audrey Tang: It is quite a privilege in Taiwan to have people who worry about these things, because there are a lot of places where there is no other resort than total lock down which, of course, infringes the privacies and the social freedoms even more. They do keep us honest. They do ask for accounts for everything that we do, because it’s under normal law and not emergency law.

Audrey Tang: I also think those nine percent that keeps us honest and accountable.

Amy Mackinnon: That’s great. We are just about to hit our 9:45 AM, for us at the very least, out time. I will leave it here. I know you’re busy and you have a lot on your plate. Just thank you so much for joining us. Do you want to offer any closing remarks before I sign us out?

Audrey Tang: No, but feel free to read more at                                                       TaiwanCanHelp.us                                                  . Thank you for listening.

Amy Mackinnon: Thank you very much for joining us. You take care.

Audrey Tang: Bye.

Amy Mackinnon: Thanks.