-
Audrey Tang: Very happy to be joining you,
-
and good local time, everyone.
-
David Biello: So, tell us about --
-
Sorry to --
-
Tell us about digital tools and COVID.
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AT: Sure.
-
Yeah, I'm really happy to share with you
-
how Taiwan successfully
countered the COVID
-
using the power
of digital democracy tools.
-
As we know, democracy improves
as more people participate.
-
And digital technology remains one
of the best ways to improve participation,
-
as long as the focus
is on finding common ground,
-
that is to say, prosocial media
instead of antisocial media.
-
And there's three key ideas
that I would like to share today
-
about digital democracy
that is fast, fair and fun.
-
First about the fast part.
-
Whereas many jurisdictions began
countering coronavirus only this year,
-
Taiwan started last year.
-
Last December, when Dr. Li Wenliang,
the PRC whistleblower,
-
posted that there are new SARS cases,
-
he got inquiries
and eventually punishments
-
from PRC police institutions.
-
But at the same time,
-
the Taiwan equivalent
of Reddit, the Ptt board,
-
has someone called nomorepipe
-
reposting Dr. Li Wenliang's
whistleblowing.
-
And our medical officers
immediately noticed this post
-
and issued an order that says
-
all passengers flying in
from Wuhan to Taiwan
-
need to start health inspections
the very next day,
-
which is the first day of January.
-
And this says to me two things.
-
First, the civil society
trusts the government enough
-
to talk about possible
new SARS outbreaks in the public forum.
-
And the government trusts citizens enough
-
to take it seriously and treat it
as if SARS has happened again,
-
something we've always
been preparing for, since 2003.
-
And because of this open civil society,
-
according to the CIVICUS Monitor
after the Sunflower Occupy,
-
Taiwan is now the most open society
in the whole of Asia.
-
We enjoy the same freedom
of speech, of assembly,
-
[unclear] as other liberal democracies,
-
but with the emphasis
on keeping an open mind
-
to novel ideas from the society.
-
And that is why our schools
and businesses still remain open today,
-
there was no lockdown,
-
it's been a month
with no local confirmed cases.
-
So the fast part.
-
Every day, our Central Epidemic
Command Center, or CECC,
-
holds a press conference,
which is always livestreamed,
-
and we work with the journalists,
-
they answer all the questions
from the journalists,
-
and whenever there's a new idea
coming in from the social sector,
-
anyone can pick up
their phone and call 1922
-
and tell that idea to the CECC.
-
For example, there was one day in April
-
where a young boy has said
he doesn't want to go to school
-
because his school mates may laugh at him
-
because all he had is a pink medical mask.
-
The very next day,
-
everybody in the CECC press conference
started wearing pink medical masks,
-
making sure that everybody learns
about gender mainstreaming.
-
And so this kind of rapid response system
-
builds trust between the government
and the civil society.
-
And the second focus is fairness.
-
Making sure everybody can use
their national health insurance card
-
to collect masks from nearby pharmacies,
-
not only do we publish the stock level
of masks of all pharmacies,
-
6,000 of them,
-
we publish it every 30 seconds.
-
That's why our civic hackers,
our civil engineers in the digital space,
-
built more than 100 tools
that enable people to view a map,
-
or people with blindness
who talk to chat bots, voice assistants,
-
all of them can get the same
inclusive access to information
-
about which pharmacies near them
still have masks.
-
And because the national
health insurance single payer
-
is more than 99.9 percent
of health coverage,
-
people who show any symptoms
-
will then be able to take
the medical mask,
-
go to a local clinic,
-
knowing fully that they will
get treated fairly
-
without incurring any financial burden.
-
And so people designed a dashboard
-
that lets everybody see
our supply is indeed growing,
-
and whether there's over- or undersupply,
-
so that we codesign
this distribution system
-
with the pharmacies,
with the whole of society.
-
So based on this analysis,
-
we show that there was
a peak at 70 percent,
-
and that remaining 20 percent of people
were often young, work very long hours,
-
when they go off work,
the pharmacies also went off work,
-
and so we work with convenience stores
-
so that everybody can collect
their mask anytime,
-
24 hours a day.
-
So we ensure fairness of all kinds,
-
based on the digital democracy's feedback.
-
And finally, I would like to acknowledge
that this is a very stressful time.
-
People feel anxious, outraged,
-
there's a lot of panic buying,
-
a lot of conspiracy theories
in all economies.
-
And in Taiwan,
-
our counter-disinformation
strategy is very simple.
-
It's called "humor over rumor."
-
So when there was a panic buying
of tissue paper, for example,
-
there was a rumor that says,
-
"Oh, we're ramping up mass production,
-
it's the same material as tissue papers,
-
and so we'll run out
of tissue paper soon."
-
And our premier showed
a very memetic picture
-
that I simply have to share with you.
-
In very large print,
-
he shows his bottom,
-
wiggling it a little bit,
-
and then the large print says
-
"Each of us only have
one pair of buttocks."
-
And of course, the serious table shows
-
that tissue paper came
from South American materials,
-
and medical masks
come from domestic materials,
-
and there's no way that ramping up
production of one
-
will hurt the production of the other.
-
And so that went absolutely viral.
-
And because of that,
the panic buying died down
-
in a day or two.
-
And finally, we found out the person
who spread the rumor in the first place
-
was the tissue paper reseller.
-
And this is not just
a single shock point in social media.
-
Every single day,
-
the daily press conference gets translated
-
by the spokesdog of the Ministry
of Health and Welfare,
-
that translated a lot of things.
-
For example, our physical distancing
is phrased as saying
-
"If you are outdoors,
you need to keep two dog-lengths away,
-
if you are indoor,
three dog-lengths away," and so on.
-
And hand sanitation rules, and so on.
-
So because all this goes viral,
-
we make sure that the factual humor
spreads faster than rumor.
-
And they serve as a vaccine,
as inoculation,
-
so that when people see
the conspiracy theories,
-
the R0 value of that will be below one,
-
meaning that those ideas will not spread.
-
And so I only have
this five-minute briefing,
-
the rest of it will be driven
by your Q and A,
-
but please feel free to read more
-
about Taiwan's
counter-coronavirus strategy,
-
at taiwancanhelp.us.
-
Thank you.
-
DB: That's incredible.
-
And I love this "humor versus rumor."
-
The problem here in the US, perhaps,
-
is that the rumors seem to travel
faster than any response,
-
whether humorous or not.
-
How do you defeat that aspect in Taiwan?
-
AT: Yeah, we found that, of course,
-
humor implicitly means
there is a sublimation
-
of upsetness, of outrage.
-
And so as you see, for example,
in our premier's example,
-
he makes fun of himself.
-
He doesn't make a joke
at the expense of other people.
-
And this was the key.
-
Because people think it hilarious,
-
they share it,
-
but with no malicious or toxic intentions.
-
People remember the actual payload,
-
that table about materials
used to produce masks,
-
much more easily.
-
If they make a joke
that excludes parts of the society,
-
of course, that part of society
will feel outraged
-
and we will end up
creating more divisiveness,
-
rather than prosocial behavior.
-
So the humor at no expense,
-
not excluding any part of society,
-
I think that was the key.
-
DB: It's also incredible
-
because Taiwan has such close ties
to the origin point of this.
-
AT: PRC, yes.
-
DB: The mainland.
-
So given those close economic ties,
-
how do you survive
that kind of disruption?
-
AT: Yeah, I mean, at this moment,
-
it's been almost a month now
with no local confirmed cases,
-
so we're doing fine.
-
And what we are doing, essentially,
-
is just to respond faster
than pretty much anyone.
-
We started responding last year,
-
whereas pretty much everybody else
started responding this year.
-
We tried to warn the world
last year, but, anyway.
-
So in any case,
-
the point here is
that if you start early enough,
-
you get to make sure
that the border control
-
is the main point where you quarantine
all the returning residents and so on,
-
instead of waiting until
the community spread stage,
-
where even more human-right
invading techniques
-
would probably have to be deployed
one way or the other.
-
And so in Taiwan, we've not declared
an emergency situation.
-
We're firmly under the constitutional law.
-
Because of that, every measure
the administration is taking
-
is also applicable
in non-coronavirus times.
-
And this forces us to innovate.
-
Much as the idea of
"we are an open liberal democracy"
-
prevented us from doing takedowns.
-
And therefore, we have to innovate
of humor versus rumor,
-
because the easy path,
the takedown of online speech,
-
is not accessible to us.
-
Our design criteria,
which is no lockdowns,
-
also prevented us
from doing any, you know,
-
very invasive privacy encroaching
response system.
-
So we have to innovate at the border,
-
and make sure that we have
a sufficient number of, for example,
-
quarantine hotels
or the so-called "digital fences,"
-
where your phone is basically connected
to the nearby telecoms,
-
and they make sure that if they go out
of the 15-meter or so radius,
-
an SMS is sent to the local
household managers or police and so on.
-
But because we focus
all these measures at the border,
-
the vast majority of people
live a normal life.
-
DB: Let's talk about that a little bit.
-
So walk me through the digital tools
-
and how they were applied to COVID.
-
AT: Yes.
-
So there's three parts
that I just outlined.
-
The first one is the collective
intelligence system.
-
Through online spaces
-
that we design to be devoid
of Reply buttons,
-
because we see that,
when there's Reply buttons,
-
people focus on each other's
face part, not the book part,
-
and without "Reply" buttons,
-
you can get collective intelligence
-
working out their rough consensus
of where the direction is going
-
with the response strategies.
-
So we use a lot of new technologies,
-
such as Polis,
-
which is essentially a forum
that lets you upvote and downvote
-
each other's feelings,
-
but with real-time clustering,
-
so that if you go to cohack.tw,
-
you see six such conversations,
-
talking about how to protect
the most vulnerable people,
-
how to make a smooth transition,
-
how to make a fair
distribution of supplies and so on.
-
And people are free to voice their ideas,
-
and upvote and downvote
each other's ideas.
-
But the trick is that we show people
the main divisive points,
-
and the main consensual points,
-
and we respond only to the ideas
-
that can convince
all the different opinion groups.
-
So people are encouraged
to post more eclectic, more nuanced ideas
-
and they discover,
at the end of this consultation,
-
that everybody, actually,
agrees with most things,
-
with most of their neighbors
on most of the issues.
-
And that is what we call
the social mandate,
-
or the democratic mandate,
-
that then informs our development
of the counter-coronavirus strategy
-
and helping the world with such tools.
-
And so this is the first part,
-
it's called listening at scale
for rough consensus.
-
The second part I already covered
is the distribute ledger,
-
where everybody can go
to a nearby pharmacy,
-
present their NHI card,
buy nine masks, or 10 if you're a child,
-
and see the stock level
of that pharmacy on their phone
-
actually decreasing by nine or 10
in a couple of minutes.
-
And if they grow by nine or 10,
-
of course, you call the 1922,
-
and report something fishy is going on.
-
But this is participatory accountability.
-
This is published every 30 seconds.
-
So everybody holds each other accountable,
-
and that massively increases trust.
-
And finally, the third one,
the humor versus rumor,
-
I think the important thing to see here
-
is that wherever there's a trending
disinformation or conspiracy theory,
-
you respond to it with a humorous package
-
within two hours.
-
We have discovered,
if we respond within two hours,
-
then more people see the vaccination
than the conspiracy theory.
-
But if you respond four hours
or a day afterwards,
-
then that's a lost cause.
-
You can't really counter that
using humor anymore,
-
you have to invite the person
who spread those messages
-
into cocreation workshops.
-
But we're OK with that too.
-
DB: Your speed is incredible.
-
I see Whitney has joined us
with some questions.
-
Whitney Pennigton Rogers: That's right,
-
we have a few coming in already
from the audience.
-
Hi there, Audrey.
-
And we'll start with one
from our community member Michael Backes.
-
He asks how long has humor
versus rumor been a strategy
-
that you've implemented.
-
Excuse me.
-
"How long has humor versus rumor
strategy been implemented?
-
Were comedians consulted
to make the humor?"
-
AT: Yes, definitely.
-
Comedians are our most
cherished colleagues.
-
And each and every ministry has a team
of what we call participation officers
-
in charge of engaging
with trending topics.
-
And it's a more than 100
people-strong team now.
-
We meet every month
and also every couple of weeks
-
on specific topics.
-
It's been like that since late 2016,
-
but it's not until our previous
spokesperson, Kolas Yotaka,
-
joined about a year and a half ago,
-
do the professional comedians
get to the team.
-
Previously, this was more about inviting
the people who post, you know,
-
quotes like "Our tax filing system
is explosively hostile,"
-
and gets trending,
-
and previously, the POs
just invited those people.
-
Everybody who complains
-
about the finance minister's
tax-filing experience
-
gets invited to the cocreation
of that tax filing experience.
-
So previously, it was that.
-
But Kolas Yotaka and the premier
Su Tseng-chang said,
-
wouldn't it be much better
and reach more people
-
if we add some dogs to it
or cat's pictures to it?
-
And that's been around
for a year and a half.
-
WPR: Definitely, I think it makes
a lot of difference, just even seeing them
-
without being part
of the thought process behind that.
-
And we have another question here
from G. Ryan Ansin.
-
He asks, "What would you rank
the level of trust
-
your community had before the pandemic,
-
in order for the government
to have a chance
-
at properly controlling this crisis?"
-
AT: I would say that a community
trusts each other.
-
And that is the main point
of digital democracy.
-
This is not about people
trusting the government more.
-
This is about the government
trusting the citizens more,
-
making the state transparent
to the citizen,
-
not the citizen transparent to the state,
-
which would be some other regime.
-
So making the state
transparent to the citizens
-
doesn't always elicit more trust,
-
because you may see something wrong,
something missing,
-
something exclusively hostile
to its user experience,
-
an so on, of the state.
-
So it doesn't necessarily lead
to more trust from the government.
-
Sorry, from the citizen to the government.
-
But it always leads to more trust
between the social sector stakeholders.
-
So I would say the level of trust
between the people
-
who are working on, for example,
-
medical officers,
-
and people who are working
with the pandemic responses,
-
people who manufacture medical masks,
-
and so on,
-
all these people,
-
the trust level between them is very high.
-
And not necessarily
they trust the government.
-
But we don't need that
for a successful response.
-
If you ask a random person on the street,
-
they will say Taiwan is performing so well
because of the people.
-
When the CECC tells us to wear the mask,
-
we wear the mask.
-
When the CECC tells us not to wear a mask,
-
like, if you are keeping
physical distance,
-
we wear a mask anyway.
-
And so because of that,
-
I think it's the social sector's trust
between those different stakeholders
-
that's the key to the response.
-
WPR: I will come back shortly
with more questions,
-
but I'll leave you guys
to continue your conversation.
-
AT: Awesome.
-
DB: Well, clearly,
part of that trust in government
-
was maybe not there in 2014
during the Sunflower Movement.
-
So talk to me about that
-
and how that led to this,
kind of, digital transformation.
-
AT: Indeed.
-
Before March 2014, if you asked
a random person on the street in Taiwan,
-
like, whether it's possible
for a minister -- that's me --
-
to have their office in a park,
literally a park,
-
anyone can walk in and talk to me
for 40 minutes at a time,
-
I'm currently in that park,
the Social Innovation Lab,
-
they would say that this is crazy, right?
-
No public officials work like that.
-
But that was because on March 18, 2014,
-
hundreds of young activists,
most of them college students,
-
occupied the legislature
-
to express their profound opposition
to a trade pact with Beijing
-
under consideration,
-
and the secretive manner in which
it was pushed through the parliament
-
by Kuomintang,
the ruling party at the time.
-
And so the protesters
demanded, very simply,
-
that the pact be scraped,
-
and the government to institute
a more transparent ratification process.
-
And that drew widespread public support.
-
It ended a little more
than three weeks later,
-
after the government promised and agreed
-
on the four demands [unclear]
of legislative oversight.
-
A poll released after the occupation
-
showed that more than 75 percent
remained dissatisfied
-
with the ruling government,
-
illustrating the crisis of trust
that was caused by a trade deal dispute.
-
And to heal this rift
and communicate better
-
with everyday citizens,
-
the administration reached out
to the people who supported the occupiers,
-
for example, the g0v community,
-
which has been seeking
to improve government transparency
-
through the creation of open-source tools.
-
And so, Jaclyn Tsai,
a government minister at the time,
-
attended our hackathon
-
and proposed the establishment
of novel platforms
-
with the online community
to exchange policy ideas.
-
And an experiment was born called vTaiwan,
-
that pioneerly used tools such as Polis,
-
that allows for "agree" or "disagree"
with no Reply button,
-
that gets people's rough consensus
on issues such as crowdfunding,
-
equity-based crowdfunding, to be precise,
-
teleworking and many other
cyber-related legislation,
-
of which there is no existing
unions or associations.
-
And it proved to be very successful.
-
They solved the Uber problem, for example,
-
and by now, you can call an Uber --
-
I just called an Uber this week --
-
but in any case,
they are operating as taxis.
-
They set up a local
taxi company called Q Taxi,
-
and that was because on the platform,
people cared about insurance,
-
they care about registration,
-
they care about all the sort of,
protection of the passengers, and so on.
-
So we changed the taxi regulations,
-
and now Uber is just another taxi company
-
along with the other co-ops.
-
DB: So you're actually, in a way,
-
crowdsourcing laws
that, well, then become laws.
-
AT: Yeah, learn more at crowd.law.
-
It's a real website.
-
DB: So, some might say
that this seems easier,
-
because Taiwan is an island,
-
that maybe helps you control COVID,
-
helps promote social cohesion,
-
maybe it's a smaller country than some.
-
Do you think that this could be
scaled beyond Taiwan?
-
AT: Well, first of all,
-
23 million people
is still quite some people.
-
It's not a city,
-
as some usually say, you know,
"Taiwan is a city-state."
-
Well, 23 million people,
not quite a city-state.
-
And what I'm trying to get at,
-
is that the high population density
and a variety of cultures --
-
we have more than 20 national languages --
-
doesn't necessarily lead
to social cohesion, as you said.
-
Rather, I think, this is the humbleness
of all the ministers
-
in the counter-coronavirus response.
-
They all took on an attitude
of "So we learned about SARS" --
-
many of them were in charge
of the SARS back then,
-
but that was classical epidemiology.
-
This is SARS 2.0,
it has different characteristics.
-
And the tools that we use
are very different,
-
because of the digital transformation.
-
And so we are in it to learn
together with the citizens.
-
Our vice president at the time,
-
Dr. Chen Chien-jen, an academician,
-
literally wrote the textbook
on epidemiology.
-
However, he still says,
-
"You know, what I'm going to do
is record an online MOOC,
-
a crash course on epidemiology,
-
that shares with,
-
I think, more than 20,00 people
enrolled the first day,
-
I was among them,
-
to learn about important ideas,
-
like the R0 and the basic transmission
-
and how the various
different measures work,
-
and then they asked people to innovate.
-
If you think of a new way
that the vice president did not think of,
-
just call 1922,
-
and your idea will become
the next day's press conference.
-
And this is this colearning strategy,
-
I think, that more than anything
enabled the social cohesion,
-
as you speak.
-
But this is more of a robust
civil society than the uniformity.
-
There's no uniformity at all in Taiwan,
-
everybody is entitled to their ideas,
-
and all the social innovations,
-
ranging from using
a traditional rice cooker
-
to revitalize, to disinfect the mask,
-
to pink medical mask, and so on,
-
there's all variety
of very interesting ideas
-
that get amplified
by the daily press conference.
-
DB: That's beautiful.
-
Now -- oh, Whitney is back,
-
so I will let her ask the next question.
-
WPR: Sure, we're having
some more questions come in.
-
One from our community member Aria Bendix.
-
Aria asked, "How do you ensure
that digital campaigns act quickly
-
without sacrificing accuracy?
-
In the US, there was a fear
of inciting panic about COVID-19
-
in early January."
-
AT: This is a great question.
-
So most of the scientific ideas
about the COVID are evolving, right?
-
The efficacy of masks, for example,
is a very good example,
-
because the different characteristics
of previous respiratory diseases
-
respond differently to the facial mask.
-
And so, our digital campaigns
-
focus on the idea of getting
the rough consensus through.
-
So basically, it's a reflection
of the society,
-
through Polis, through Slido,
through the joint platform,
-
the various tools
that vTaiwan has prototyped,
-
we know that people are feeling
a rough consensus about things
-
and we're responding
to the society, saying,
-
"This is what you all feel
-
and this is what we're doing
to respond to your feelings.
-
And the scientific consensus
is still developing,
-
but we know, for example,
-
people feel that wearing a mask
mostly protects you,
-
because it reminds you
to not touch your face
-
and wash your hands properly."
-
And these, regardless of everything else,
-
are the two things
that everybody agrees with.
-
So we just capitalize on that and say,
-
"OK, wash your hands properly,
-
and don't touch your face,
-
and wearing a mask reminds you of that."
-
And that lets us cut through
-
the kind of, very ideologically
charged debates
-
and focus on what people
generally resonate with one another.
-
And that's how we act quickly
without sacrificing scientific accuracy.
-
WPR: And this next question
sort of feels connected to this as well.
-
It's a question from an anonymous
community member.
-
"Pragmatically, do you think
any of your policies
-
could be applied in the United States
under the current Trump administration?"
-
AT: Quite a few, actually.
-
We work with many states
in the US and abroad
-
on what we call "epicenter
to epicenter diplomacy." (Laughs)
-
So what we're doing essentially is,
-
for example,
there was a chat bot in Taiwan
-
that lets you, but especially
people under home quarantine,
-
to ask the chat bot anything.
-
And if there is a scientific adviser
-
who already wrote
a frequently asked question,
-
the chat bot just responds with that,
-
but otherwise, they will call
the science advisory board
-
and write an accessible response to that,
-
and the spokesdog would translate that
into a cute dog meme.
-
And so this feedback cycle
-
of people very easily accessing,
finding, and asking a scientist,
-
and an open API
that allows for voice assistance
-
and other third-party developers
to get through it,
-
resonates with many US states,
-
and I think many of them
are implementing it.
-
And before the World Health Assembly,
I think three days before,
-
we held a 14 countries
[unclear] lateral meeting,
-
kind of, pre-WHA,
-
where we shared many small,
like, quick wins like this.
-
And I think many jurisdictions
took some of that,
-
including the humor versus rumor.
-
Many of them said
-
that they're going to recruit
comedians now.
-
WPR: (Laughs) I love that.
-
DB: I hope so.
-
WPR: I hope so too.
-
And we have one more question,
which is actually a follow-up,
-
from Michael Backes,
who asked a question earlier.
-
"Does the Ministry plan
to publish their plans in a white paper?"
-
Sounds like you're already sharing
your plans with folks,
-
but do you have a plan
to put it out on paper?
-
AT: Of course.
-
Yeah, and multiple white papers.
-
So if you go to taiwancanhelp.us,
-
that is where most of our strategy is,
-
and that website is actually
crowdsourced as well,
-
and it shows that more
than five million now, I think,
-
medical masks donated
to the humanitarian aid.
-
It's also crowdsourced.
-
People who have some masks in their homes,
-
who did not collect the rationed masks,
-
they can use an app, say,
-
"I want to dedicate this
to international humanitarian aid,"
-
and half of them choose
to publish their names,
-
so you can also see the names
of people who participated in this.
-
And there's also
an "Ask Taiwan Anything" website,
-
(Laughs)
-
at fightcovid.edu.tw,
-
that outlines, in white paper form,
all the response strategies,
-
so check those out.
-
WPR: Great.
-
Well, I will disappear and be back
later with some other questions.
-
DB: A blizzard
of white papers, if you will.
-
I'd like to turn the focus
on you a little bit.
-
How does a conservative anarchist
become a digital minister?
-
AT: Yeah, by occupying
the parliament, and through that.
-
(Laughs)
-
More interestingly,
-
I would say that I go
working with the government,
-
but never for the government.
-
And I work with the people,
not for the people.
-
I'm like this Lagrange point
-
between the people's
movements on one side
-
and the government on the other side.
-
Sometimes right in the middle,
-
trying to do some coach
or translation work.
-
Sometimes in a kind of triangle point,
-
trying to supply both sides with tools
for prosocial communication.
-
But always with this idea
-
of getting the shared values
out of different positions,
-
out of varied positions.
-
Because all too often,
-
democracy is built as a showdown
between opposing values.
-
But in the pandemic, in the infodemic,
-
in climate change,
-
in many of those structural issues,
-
the virus or carbon dioxide
doesn't sit down and negotiate with you.
-
It's a structural issue
that requires common values
-
built out of different positions.
-
And so that is why my working principle
is radical transparency.
-
Every conversation, including this one,
-
is on the record,
-
including the internal
meetings that I hold.
-
So you can see all the different
meeting transcripts
-
in my YouTube channel,
in the SayIt platform,
-
where people can see,
after I became digital minister,
-
I held 1,300 meetings
with more than 5,000 speakers,
-
with more than 260,000 utterances.
-
And every one of them has a URL
-
that becomes a social object
that people can have a conversation on.
-
And because of that,
-
for example, when Uber's David Plouffe
visited me to lobby for Uber,
-
because of radical transparency,
-
he is very much aware of that,
-
and so he made all the arguments
based on public good,
-
based on sustainability,
and things like that,
-
because he knows that the other sides
would see his positions
-
very clearly and transparently.
-
So that encourages people
to add on each other's argument,
-
instead of attacking each other's person,
-
you know, credits and things like that.
-
And so I think that, more than anything,
-
is the main principle of conserving
the anarchism of the internet,
-
which is about, you know,
-
nobody can force anyone
to hook to the internet,
-
or to adhere to a new internet protocol.
-
Everything has to be done
using rough consensus and running code.
-
DB: I wish you had more counterparts
all around the world.
-
Maybe you wish you had more
counterparts all around the world.
-
AT: That's why these ideas
are worth spreading.
-
DB: There you go.
-
So one of the challenges that might arise
with some of these digital tools
-
is access.
-
How do you approach that part of it
-
for folks maybe who don't have
the best broadband connection
-
or the latest mobile phone
or whatever it might be that's required?
-
AT: Well, anywhere in Taiwan,
-
even on the top of Taiwan,
almost 4,000 meters high,
-
the Saviah, or the Jade Mountain,
-
you're guaranteed to have
10 megabits per second
-
over 4G or fiber or cable,
-
with just 16 US dollars
a month, an unlimited plan.
-
And actually, on the top
of the mountain, it's faster,
-
fewer people use that bandwidth.
-
And if you don't, it's my fault.
-
It's personally my fault.
-
In Taiwan, we have broadband
as a human right.
-
And so when we're deploying 5G,
-
we're looking at places
where the 4G has the weakest signal,
-
and we begin with those places
in our 5G deployment.
-
And only by deploying broadband
as a human right
-
can we say that this is for everybody.
-
That digital democracy
actually strengthens democracy.
-
Otherwise, we would be excluding
parts of the society.
-
And this also applies to, for example,
-
you can go to a local
digital opportunity center
-
to rent a tablet that's guaranteed
-
to be manufactured
in the past three years,
-
and things like that,
-
to enable, also,
the different digital access
-
by the digital opportunity centers,
universities and schools,
-
and public libraries, very important.
-
And if people who prefer to talk
in their town hall,
-
I personally go to that town hall
with a 360 recorder,
-
and livestream that to Taipei
and to other municipalities,
-
where the central government's
public servants can join
-
in a connected room style,
-
but listening to the local people
who set the agenda.
-
So people still do face-to-face meetings,
-
we're not doing this
to replace face-to-face meetings.
-
We're bringing more stakeholders
-
from central government
in the local town halls,
-
and we're amplifying their voices
-
by making sure the transcripts,
the mind maps, and things like that
-
are spread through
the internet in real time,
-
but we don't ever ask the elderly to, say,
-
"Oh, you have to learn typing,
otherwise you don't do democracy."
-
It's not our style.
-
But that requires broadband.
-
Because if you don't have broadband,
but only a very limited bandwidth,
-
you are forced to use
text-based communication.
-
DB: That's right.
-
Well, with access, of course,
-
comes access for folks
who maybe will misuse the platform.
-
You talked a little bit
about disinformation
-
and using humor to beat rumor.
-
But sometimes, disinformation
is more weaponized.
-
How do you combat those kinds
of attacks, really?
-
AT: Right, so you mean
malinformation, then.
-
So essentially, information designed
to cause intentional public harm.
-
And that's no laughing matter.
-
So for that, we have an idea called
"notice and public notice."
-
So this is a Reuters photo,
-
and I will read the original caption.
-
The original caption says
-
"A teenage extradition bill
protester in Hong Kong
-
is seen during a march to demand democracy
and political reform in Hong Kong."
-
OK, a very neutral title by the Reuters.
-
But there was a spreading
of a malinformation
-
back last November,
-
just leading to our presidential election,
-
that shows something else entirely.
-
This is the same photo -- that says
-
"This 13-year-old thug bought new iPhones,
-
game consoles and brand-name sports shoes,
-
and recruiting his brothers
to murder police
-
and collect 200,000 dollars."
-
And this, of course, is a weapon
designed to sow discord,
-
and to elicit in Taiwan's voters
a kind of distaste for Hong Kong.
-
And because they know
that this is the main issue.
-
And had we resorted to takedowns,
-
that will not work,
-
because that would only
evoke more outrage.
-
So we didn't do a takedown.
-
Instead, we worked with the fact checkers
-
and professional journalists
-
to attribute this original message
back to the first day that it was posted.
-
And it came from Zhongyang Zhengfawei.
-
That is the main political and legal unit
of the central party,
-
in the Central Communist Party, in CCP.
-
And we know that it's their Weibo account
that first did this new caption.
-
So we sent out a public notice
-
and with the partners
in social media companies,
-
pretty much all of them,
-
they just put this very small reminder
-
next to each time that this is shared
with the wrong caption,
-
that says "This actually came
from the central propaganda unit
-
of the CCP.
-
Click here to learn more.
To learn about the whole story."
-
And that, we found, that has worked,
-
because people understand
this is then not a news material.
-
This is rather an appropriation
of Reuters' news material
-
and a copyright infringement
-
and I think that's part of the [unclear].
-
In any case, the point
is that when people understand
-
that this is an intentional narrative,
-
they won't just randomly share it.
-
They may share it,
but with a comment that says
-
"This is what the Zhongyang Zhengfawei
is trying to do to our democracy."
-
DB: Seems like some
of the global social media companies
-
could learn something
from notice and public notice.
-
AT: Public notice, that's right.
-
DB: What advice would you have
-
for the Twitters and Facebooks
and LINEs and WhatsApps,
-
and you name it, of the world?
-
AT: Yeah.
-
So, just before our election,
-
we said to all of them
-
that we're not making a law
to kind of punish them.
-
However, we're sharing
this very simple fact
-
that there is this norm in Taiwan
-
that we even have a separate branch
of the government,
-
the control branch,
-
that published the campaign
donation and expense.
-
And it just so occurred to us
-
that in the previous election,
the mayoral one,
-
there was a lot of candidates
-
that did not include
any social media advertisements
-
in their expense to the Control Yuan.
-
And so essentially, that means
that there is a separate amount
-
of political donation and expense
that evades public scrutiny.
-
And our Control Yuan
published their numbers
-
in raw data form,
-
[unclear] they're not statistics,
-
but individual records
of who donated for what cause,
-
when, where,
-
and investigative journalists
are very happy,
-
because they can then make
investigative reports
-
about the connections
between the candidates
-
and the people who fund them.
-
But they cannot work
with the same material
-
from the global social media companies.
-
So I said, "Look, this is very simple.
-
This is the social norm here,
-
I don't really care
about other jurisdictions.
-
You either adhere to the social norm
that is set by the Control Yuan
-
and the investigative journalists,
-
or maybe you will face social sanctions.
-
And this is not the government mandate,
-
but it's the people fed up with,
you know, black box,
-
and that's part of the Sunflower
Occupy's demands, also.
-
And so Facebook actually published
in the Ad Library,
-
I think at that time,
one of the fastest response strategies,
-
where everybody who has
basically any dark pattern advertisement
-
will get revealed very quickly,
-
and investigative journalists
work with the local civic technologists
-
to make sure that if anybody dare to use
social media in such a divisive way,
-
within an hour, there will be
a report out condemning that.
-
So nobody tried that during
the previous presidential election season.
-
DB: So change is possible.
-
AT: Mhm.
-
WPR: Hey there, we have
some more questions from the community.
-
There is an anonymous one
-
that says, "I believe Taiwan
is outside WHO entirely
-
and has a 130-part preparation program --
-
developed entirely on its own --
-
to what extent does it credit
its preparation
-
to building its own system?"
-
AT: Well, a little bit, I guess.
-
We tried to warn the WHO,
-
but at that point --
-
we are not totally outside,
we have limited scientific access.
-
But we do not have any ministerial access.
-
And this is very different, right?
-
If you only have limited
scientific access,
-
unless the other side's top epidemiologist
happens to be the vice president,
-
like in Taiwan's case,
-
they don't always do
the storytelling well enough
-
to translate that into political action
as our vice president did, right?
-
So the lack of ministerial
access, I think,
-
is to the detriment
of the global community,
-
because otherwise,
people could have responded as we did
-
in the first day of January,
-
instead of having to wait for weeks
-
before the WHO declared
that this is something,
-
that there's definitely
human to human transmission,
-
that you should inspect people
coming in from Wuhan,
-
which they eventually did,
-
but that's already two weeks
or three weeks after what we did.
-
WPR: Makes a lot of sense.
-
DB: More scientists
and technologists in politics.
-
That sounds like that's the answer.
-
AT: Yeah.
-
WPR: And then we have another
question here from Kamal Srinivasan
-
about your reopening strategy.
-
"How are you enabling restaurants
and retailers to open safely in Taiwan?"
-
AT: Oh, they never closed, so ... (Laughs)
-
WPR: Oh!
-
AT: Yeah, they never closed,
-
there was no lockdown,
there was no closure.
-
We just said a very simple thing
in the CECC press conference,
-
that there's going to be
physical distancing.
-
You maintain one and a half meters indoors
-
or wear a mask.
-
And that's it.
-
And so there are some restaurants
that put up, I guess, red curtains,
-
some put very cute teddy bears
and so on, on the chairs,
-
to make sure that people spread evenly,
-
some installed see-through
glass or plastic walls
-
between the seats.
-
There's various social
innovations happening around.
-
And I think the only shops
that got closed for a while,
-
because they could not innovate
quick enough to respond to these rules,
-
was the intimate escort bars.
-
But eventually,
even they invented new ways,
-
by handing out these caps
that are plastic shielding,
-
but still leaves room
for drinking behind it.
-
And so they opened
with that social innovation.
-
DB: That's amazing.
-
WPR: It is, yeah, it's a lot to learn
from your strategies there.
-
Thank you, I'll be back towards the end
with some final questions.
-
DB: I'm very happy to hear
that the restaurants were not closed down,
-
because I think Taipei
has some of the best food in the world
-
of any city that I've visited,
-
so, you know, kudos to you for that.
-
So the big concern when it comes
to using digital tools for COVID
-
or using digital tools for democracy
-
is always privacy.
-
You've talked about that a little bit,
-
but I'm sure the citizens of Taiwan
-
are perhaps equally concerned
about their privacy,
-
especially given the geopolitical context.
-
AT: Definitely.
-
DB: So how do you cope with those demands?
-
AT: Yeah, we design
with not only defensive strategy,
-
like minimization of data collection,
-
but also proactive measures,
-
such as privacy-enhancing technologies.
-
One of the top teams
that emerged out of our cohack,
-
the TW response from the Polis,
-
how to make contact tracing easier,
-
focused not on the contact tracers,
-
not on the medical officers,
but on the person.
-
So they basically said,
"OK, you have a phone,
-
you can record your temperatures,
-
you can record your whereabouts
and things like that,
-
but that is strictly in your phone.
-
It doesn't even use Bluetooth.
-
So there's no transmission.
-
Technology uses open-source,
-
you can check it,
you can use it in airplane mode.
-
And when the contact tracer
eventually tells you
-
that you are part of a high-risk group,
-
and they really want your contact history,
-
this tool can then generate
a single-use URL
-
that only contains
the precise information,
-
anonymized,
-
that the contact tracers want.
-
But it will not,
like in a traditional interview,
-
let you ask --
-
they ask a question, they only want
to know your whereabouts,
-
but you answer with such accuracy
-
that you end up compromising
other people's privacy.
-
So basically, this is about designing
-
with an aim to enhance
other people's privacy,
-
because personal data
is never truly personal.
-
It's always social,
it's always intersectional.
-
If I take a selfie at a party,
-
I inadvertently also take
pretty much everybody else's
-
who are in the picture, the surroundings,
the ambiance, and so on,
-
and if I upload it to a cloud service,
-
then I actually decimate
the bargaining power,
-
the negotiation power
of everybody around me,
-
because then their data
is part of the cloud,
-
and the cloud doesn't have to
compensate them
-
or get their agreement for it.
-
And so only by designing the tools
-
with privacy enhancing
as a positive value,
-
and not enhancing only
the person's own privacy,
-
just like a medical mask, it protects you,
-
but mostly it also protects others, right?
-
So if we design tools using that idea,
-
and always open-source
and with an open API,
-
then we're in a much better shape
-
than in centralized or so-called
cloud-based services.
-
DB: Well, you're clearly
living in the future,
-
and I guess that's quite literal,
-
in the sense of,
it's tomorrow morning there.
-
AT: Twelve hours.
-
DB: Yes.
-
Tell me, what do you see in the future?
-
What comes next?
-
AT: Yes, so I see the coronavirus
as a great amplifier.
-
If you start with
an authoritarian society,
-
the coronavirus,
with all its lockdowns and so on,
-
has the potential of making it
even a more totalitarian society.
-
If people place their trust, however,
-
on the social sector,
-
on the ingenuity of social innovators,
-
then the pandemic, as in Taiwan,
-
actually strengthens our democracy,
-
so that people feel, truly,
that everybody can think of something
-
that improves the welfare
of not just Taiwan,
-
but pretty much everybody
else in the world.
-
And so, my point here
-
is that the great amplifier
comes if no matter you want it or not,
-
but the society, what they can do,
is do what Taiwan did after SARS.
-
In 2003, when SARS came,
-
we had to shut down an entire hospital,
-
barricading it with no definite
termination date.
-
It was very traumatic,
-
everybody above the age of 30
remembers how traumatic it was.
-
The municipalities
-
and the central government
were saying very different things,
-
and that is why after SARS,
-
the constitutional courts
charged the legislature
-
to set up the system as you see today,
-
and also that is why,
-
when people responding
to that crisis back in 2003
-
built this very robust response system
that there's early drills.
-
So just as the Sunflower Occupy,
-
because of the crisis in trust
let us build new tools
-
that put trust first,
-
I think the coronavirus is the chance
for everybody who have survived
-
through the first wave
-
to settle on a new set of norms
that will reinforce your founding values,
-
instead of taking on alien values
in the name of survival.
-
DB: Yeah, let's hope so,
-
and let's hope the rest of the world
is as prepared as Taiwan
-
the next time around.
-
When it comes to digital
democracy, though,
-
and digital citizenship,
-
where do you see that going,
-
both in Taiwan and maybe
in the rest of the world?
-
AT: Well, I have my job description here,
-
which I will read to you.
-
It's literally my job description
and the answer to that question.
-
And so, here goes.
-
When we see the internet of things,
-
let's make it 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.
-
And whenever we hear
the singularity is near,
-
let us always remember
-
the plurality is here.
-
Thank you for listening.
-
DB: Wow.
-
I have to give that a little clap,
-
that was beautiful.
-
(Laughs)
-
Quite a job description too.
-
So, conservative anarchist,
-
digital minister,
and with that job description --
-
that's pretty impressive.
-
AT: A poetician, yes.
-
DB (Laughs)
-
So I struggle to imagine
-
an adoption of these techniques in the US,
-
and that may be my pessimism weighing in.
-
But what words of hope do you have
for the US, as we cope with COVID?
-
AT: Well, as I mentioned,
during SARS in Taiwan,
-
nobody imagined we could have
CECC and a cute spokesdog.
-
Before the Sunflower movement,
during a large protest,
-
there was, I think, half a million
people on the street, and many more.
-
Nobody thought that we could have
a collective intelligence system
-
that puts open government data
-
as a way to rebuild citizen participation.
-
And so, never lose hope.
-
As my favorite singer, Leonard Cohen --
a poet, also -- is fond of saying,
-
"Ring the bells that still can ring
-
and forget any perfect offering.
-
There is a crack in everything
and that is how the light gets in."
-
WPR: Wow.
-
WPR: That's so beautiful,
-
and it feels like such a great message
to, sort of, leave the audience with,
-
and sharing the sentiment
-
that everyone seems to be so grateful
for what you've shared, Audrey,
-
and all the great information
and insight into Taiwan's strategies.
-
AT: Thank you.
-
WPR: And David --
-
DB: I was just going to say,
thank you so much for that,
-
thank you for that beautiful
job description,
-
and for all the wisdom you shared
in rapid-fire fashion.
-
I think it wasn't just one idea
that you shared,
-
but maybe, I don't know, 20, 30, 40?
-
I lost count at some point.
-
AT: Well, it's called
Ideas Worth Spreading,
-
it's a plural form.
-
(Laughter)
-
DB: Very true.
-
Well, thank you so much for joining us.
-
WPR: Thank you, Audrey.
-
DB: And I wish you luck with everything.
-
AT: Thank you, and have a good local time.
-
Stay safe.
Shoko Takaki
4:39 - 4:41
"Oh, we're ramping up mass production, →Oh, we're ramping up mask production.
Shoko Takaki
10:26 - 10:27 such as Polis, →such as Pol.is