Audrey Tang: Can you see and hear me?

Franci Demšar: I can see you, hear you. Do you see me?

Audrey Tang: Excellent.

Franci Demšar: Yeah, good. OK. Thank you for this opportunity to have this meeting. I am glad that we have this meeting. May be few words about me, so that you will know I written something but I am physicist. I have my PhD from magnetic resonance imaging, spent two years in the United States as well. Then, I spent few years in Science like, 15 years and moved to administration.

Franci Demšar: I was State Secretary for Science and Technology, then Minister of Defense for a while, Ambassador to Russia. Most like 10 years, I was Director of Slovenian Research Agency, the agency which is financing science. Now I’m in charge of Slovenian Accreditation Agency, which is accredited universities’ faculties, evaluating them. That’s like a few words.

Franci Demšar: In connection to transparency, I feel like when I moved to science, I was under the impression that it’s very hard to get a project. You just don’t know where to apply, what to do, too complicated, informations were not available. When I started this post, I made the system which was transparent. Even though I didn’t know it’s transparent, I tried it to be transparent.

Franci Demšar: Then, years went by. One of the ways of transparency was that every scientist when he applies for the project, he has to put the references from national reference system, which gets data from Web of Science. Those which are not in Web of Science, put it in that system, not write it in the application, but get it from that system, which everybody sees.

Franci Demšar: When everybody sees they change, they behave differently and so on, so forth. After 10 years, a coworker of mine shown me an interesting data and then I started to think about transparency. He showed me that the number of publications were increasing in Slovenia after a span of several years. It started to increase with a rate twice as that.

Franci Demšar: I had no idea what’s that. Then, I look what has changed in this year. The only thing I could account of I then compared to other countries, it happened in two other European countries, but they gave much more money to research, which is then they could hire more. We didn’t, unfortunately. [laughs]

Franci Demšar: The only thing I could account was transparency. Researchers were starting to look at each other, and habilitation procedures changed. All the system changed. Then, I compared this to how much this would account in money.

Franci Demšar: It came out hundreds of millions and few billions euros for a small country of Slovenia which is normally you here you are a small country. We are small. We have two millions. You are 23 or so. A lot of money. Then, I started to think about transparency from different aspects.

Franci Demšar: I summarized that for transparency three things are important. First, transparency of results so that you count certain system where you can see which are the results of different activities. Then, the transparency of procedure. That was second one. The third one was transparency of money, of course, of financial transparency.

Franci Demšar: Financial transparency, procedures, and result. Then, I was starting to think about writing a book. I’ve written a book on transparency. It was well received in Slovenia. In this book, I was thinking of expanding transparency not just to science management but the whole society.

Franci Demšar: I was thinking that these three principles can be used for making transparent the whole society and having it better. Then I said, it would be nice to write this book not just for Slovenian audience but for international audience. I’ve shown it to a friend of mine who is in international publishing business.

Franci Demšar: He has read and he said, “Well, I don’t think it’s really interesting. I don’t know if the word is really interesting how Slovenian science was managed.” If you could make it more general. Then I came to an idea, and in this draft of my book, it’s subtitled, transparency, lessons from science.

Franci Demšar: I was thinking, “Is there anything in the history of mankind which was developing according to the principles of transparency?” My idea in the book is that that’s exactly how science was developed. 350 years ago, they developed this system of scientific journals, which in every article, it has to be written, which are the references, which are the methods you use.

Franci Demšar: Procedure is very clearly defined. It’s abbreviation, IMMRD, in the introduction, material, methods, results, discussion. Procedures are clear. Results are clear. Everybody can see results that are in, for instance, they were in libraries than Internet. It’s the system when you have to write material and methods.

Franci Demšar: My idea is, again, wouldn’t it be nice if there would be a way how all the activities in the society would be governed in the same way as sciences it’s being made according to these three principles. I written this draft and then I didn’t publish it.

Franci Demšar: Then you came along. [laughs] Months or two months ago, I was watching TV, and it was on Taiwan. It was mentioning what you’re doing. It’s struck me because in a way, my book is a little outdated. It’s nothing about social media, but the principles I think are OK.

Franci Demšar: When I listened how you cope with these fake news, putting references exactly the way as science was doing with journals. On top of this, what is the exponential curve doubling time which is…In the book, I was thinking, it would be nice of putting these principles into the Constitution. I haven’t succeeded.

Franci Demšar: You succeeded in putting that broadband Internet is in constitution. I said it would be really nice to tell you all this, and maybe you would be interested. If you would be interested, maybe you could read the draft of the book, it’s not a long one. It short one, 100 or 80 pages. Maybe if you would be interested, you can write a foreword or a chapter or give me some suggestions, I don’t know.

Franci Demšar: We can publish it together and make this transparency more popular not just in my mind and what I succeeded in my country or what you succeeded but broader in this world. That’s…

Audrey Tang: Thank you. I’m really happy to take a look at the draft. I have read a little bit in preparation of this meeting the 2013 paper that you published, where you argued, is not just that publishing makes the researchers more pro social, but also the librarians, the people who maintain such records are given a higher esteem by the society and by themselves and by bookkeepers of this public record.

Audrey Tang: This is really something I agree on because I’d call myself a public servant of the public service. Most of my transparency efforts is there to increase the esteem of career public service, reduce their risk, and also save them time.

Audrey Tang: This angle of very pragmatic, profound public service view of transparency as I’ve seen on your 2013 paper. This is an angle that I completely agree on and I would love to review the draft.

Franci Demšar: Nice. Maybe since we have some time. Maybe if you can tell me, what did you achieve in Taiwan? What were your achievement in transparency? What are the problems which you face and maybe you can…?

Audrey Tang: Definitely. In Taiwan, when we have published our national action plans for both open parliament and the open government.

Audrey Tang: The main achievement is that this is not a partisan issue now, or rather the four major parties in Taiwan compete to be more transparent than the others, which is really good competition. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Before in Taiwan people were having a lot of doubts especially within the public service. They were afraid that by making the process transparent that the result they’re OK but the process transparent, they were afraid that the risk will be magnified by media or social media.

Audrey Tang: There were afraid that people would take a draft and then put undue pressure on it and on the usual responses from the career public service.

Audrey Tang: We structured our way of radical transparency on two very important principles. The first is that it’s by voluntary association. I’m not telling the ministry of defense that they have to publish their records. [laughs] I am, “Where does the submarines dock at the next day?” We’re not forcing anyone to do this.

Audrey Tang: We’re still just saying all the ministry who want to experiment with working out loud can send secondments to my office, as well as fill the participatory team from what we call participation’s office and network within their ministry. It’s completely voluntary. This is the first thing.

Audrey Tang: The second thing is that this entire transparency is not live streaming. Just like our conversation right now, we will make a video if you’re OK, but if you don’t, prepare a video. We can also do a transcript.

Audrey Tang: It’s at the level of comfort of all the participants that’s when people, for example, cite some stories of their friends and acquaintances that have not cleared for publication. They can always go back and either take that part away from the video or to edit the transcript, to make it non-identifying.

Audrey Tang: The point is that radical transparency is at the root like by default, but it doesn’t mean that we live stream everything. There is still a chance for people to go over it, proofread, and edit it a little bit to reduce the risks.

Audrey Tang: With these two principles, we’ve succeeded in convincing over the course of five years or so the public service that is actually saving their time because people don’t have to call them to ask about the context over and over again. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: The entire context is out there. It’s easily discoverable by investigative journalists and search engines alike and also it is a real time saver. It’s not just about reducing risk, it’s makes sure that state when they have a meeting, they don’t have to re explain to their subordinates what actually transpire in that meeting.

Audrey Tang: All their subordinates can just read the proceeding, the context of the full meeting transcript in order to understand why the decision is arrived at this way, instead of having to reinterpret in their head, which may or may not actually work.

Franci Demšar: I thought you record and then publish everything which wouldn’t be that nice as what you do that you ask them and do some editing. It’s all the conversations of all ministers and all the heads of offices are published or just a certain part?

Audrey Tang: Right. As I mentioned this is voluntary. We do not force anyone other than myself, other ministers to adopt this method but many of them do, especially when there’s a public interest to do so.

Audrey Tang: In a sense, what I’m offering is a prototype. A system that would allow people to look at how much time it would save and how much risk they will reduce if they adopt such a system.

Audrey Tang: This within the administrative branch I must say is still only used when there is multiple stakeholders. Usually when a minister talk to their ranks like within the same ministry or the same agency then they don’t usually publish this internal discussion.

Audrey Tang: The real use is because I’m a minister at large, meaning that I work across ministerial boundaries. When two or more ministries talk about an emergent issue while they by definition take different viewpoints and then the full context become important and we start doing the radical transparency for these cases.

Audrey Tang: If you look at the SayIt Website where I publish all the transcripts, you will find the vast majority of which are cross ministry, inter agency issues. Where people find it much more likely that people will take a look at it from different perspectives and therefore a full context is very valuable.

Franci Demšar: The other thing is about this fake news monitoring. Can you explain me a little bit on how you do it?

Audrey Tang: Sure. Yeah. In Taiwan, we don’t usually use the F word [laughs] because in Taiwan, the Mandarin word for news and the Mandarin word for journalism share this same route. If we say “fake news” it looks like we’re accusing journalists of doing fake reporting which I don’t want to do because both of my parents are journalists. Now…

Audrey Tang: …in Taiwan we say the infodemic or that this is information crisis meaning that it is intentional, untrue, harmful information. All of these three must be met in order for it to get this real-time clarification and response and public notice treatment.

Audrey Tang: If it’s not satisfying all three criteria, then it’s not disinformation and therefore within the purview of freedom of speech in Taiwan. According to the CIVICUS Monitor human rights monitor group, it’s the only place in Asia where it’s completely open when it comes to the human rights situation and freedom of assembly and such.

Audrey Tang: Our way of notice and public notice basically means that whenever we’d be picked, there is a trending disinformation with a high R value, as I mentioned, a high replicating value, that’s to say it’s going viral. Then we allocate the participation offices or other fast response teams from within the ministries to respond to it, to this viral meme, usually a very funny one.

Audrey Tang: That’s the clarification, includes the original conspiracy theory of disinformation as a payload but add a funny frame around it. It’s a little bit like how to make a vaccine. You take a little bit of a virus, deactivate it, and then surround it with something that provokes the immune system. After people laughed about something, we call it humor over rumor, that’s much less likely that there will just share in the mood of revenge or outrage or discrimination.

Franci Demšar: How many people is involved in monitoring this, putting this?

Audrey Tang: A lot of people. In Taiwan, we use what we call crowdsourcing, or people volunteering to monitor such things and it’s very easy. All they need to do is to forward such information on their chat rooms or whatever to a bot.

Audrey Tang: Actually more than one bots, there’s three leading chatbots from our leading antivirus company, from a startup company that have filters and solicit cause, as well as the G0V (G zero V) community. These three different bots, you can forward to either one, and then all of them will be contributed to a public transparent dashboard, where people can see very clearly which ones are trending.

Audrey Tang: The numbers on the dashboard, of course, varies depending on what every case situation is like, but let me just quickly check the latest numbers. On fact check, the Line Fact-Checker…currently as of today, there is more than 450,000 reports and resulting in more than 100,000 unique disinformations being identified, so it’s a large number.

Audrey Tang: It’s definitely not government employees, it’s rather the people, the people who are like flagging incoming emails as spams, who wants to get clarifications, participate in such a volunteer method.

Franci Demšar: It works?

Audrey Tang: Of course, it works. I like to say that we’ve countered the pandemic, so far with no lockdown, and countered the infodemic with no takedown because the response of such humor over rumor is not a takedown. It is rather a public notice. It’s funny.

Franci Demšar: Where did you find people who can find humor in different situations?

Audrey Tang: We just hire professional comedians to train their public service in the art of “The Onion” or something like that. But it’s important that we make fun of ourselves or make fun of things but we’re not making fun of other people. It’s not the kind of satire that attacks people or exclude people. This is all in good fun, meaning that it’s not harming anyone or excluding anyone.

Franci Demšar: Excellent. Was it hard to achieve this goal to put in your constitution that broadband Internet is public right?

Audrey Tang: It’s not that difficult because our constitutional amendment already prescribes many things such as universal health care or universal basic education and things like that. The right of communication is already part of our constitutionally gaurded right.

Audrey Tang: Indeed, when I was a young teenager, we already have phone booth as a human rights in rural places, and later on Internet as human right. Seen from that perspective, broadband as a human rights is just a latest extension of the constitutional principles of universal access of communication, healthcare, and learning.

Franci Demšar: One more question. COVID, you’re so successful. Which are the most important measures you take?

Audrey Tang: The most important is definitely the use of mask and hand sanitizers. In Taiwan, the masks have evolved to be a form of self expression. [laughs] A lot of designs of the mask each public events, large ones have their own mask designs in Taiwan. Our compliance rate for hand washing and mask wearing is above 90 percent as we speak now, which is very important because in response to the variants…we’re now dealing with the Alpha variants…we no longer can just rest on the three quarters rule, which was the previous year’s rule of three quarters people wearing mask and washing hands, and our value would be below one.

Audrey Tang: Our value of the Alpha variant is higher. We need to achieve more than 90 percent. We did achieve that and today, were looking at single digits, sorry, double digits, for a while now. We’d probably continue this trend to manage our first wave without much vaccination. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: We are still rolling out early vaccinations. Our vaccination rate is low. It’s probably all up to the mask use and hand sanitization.

Franci Demšar: Besides masks and control of the airport, do you use information technology in any way or…?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. We have multiple contact tracing assistive methods. For example, there is a check-in system where people use their phones to scan QR code at each venue. The QR code results to an SMS.

Audrey Tang: You don’t have to install any app, any built in camera will do. It would just send an SMS to your telecom operator, which stores for 28 days the records.

Audrey Tang: Things like that preserves privacy because people store the information only on the places where they already trust. There is no way to abuse it for advertisement or commercial purposes.

Franci Demšar: For us, it’s pretty hard to convince public that the government is not watching you when those kinds of applications were used. They don’t believe an explanation that the application is such, that it cannot be misused.

Audrey Tang: We have the same challenge, of course. Everybody is having the same challenge. Our heuristic is to only to use data collection points that was already there before the pandemic.

Audrey Tang: We don’t invent new ways of collecting data. We don’t, for example, use your Bluetooth dongles or things like that. We instead just rely on plain SMS. This not having to install any app is actually crucial because then people with even feature phones, with no cameras, they can still manually type the 15 digits location code, to 1922, the toll free SMS, to complete the check in.

Audrey Tang: Therefore, rest assured that there will be no extra audit needed for the extra app.

Franci Demšar: That’s good. That’s interesting. I agree.

Franci Demšar: OK. We are so efficient that I don’t have anymore questions. Otherwise, I am very happy. I will send you my draft in a week or so. If you could look and respond to me, I would be really glad, too.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. Frances will assist in getting the kind of draft. I may contribute a forward. Maybe not a chapter, I don’t really have the time to write a chapter, [laughs] to be perfectly honest with you.

Franci Demšar: Yeah. I understand.

Audrey Tang: A forward may be possible and I will take a look.

Franci Demšar: I would be happy if in the forward would be “What’s your experiences are?” What you have explained to me that you would write it down, so it would have a value for you as well.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. Let’s work on it together. Thank you.

Franci Demšar: Thank you very much. It was really a pleasure to talk to you.

Audrey Tang: Thank you. Live long and prosper. Bye.

Franci Demšar: Bye.