I see.
Right, but then there is something missing between providing the facts and letting people decide, which is making people actually use the facts.
But you’re currently providing infrastructures for direct decisions.
It seems that there’s concerns and there are ideas that this radical open government might also result in chaos. Do you see that?
I see. I guess my point is, what if popular decisions are being made? I guess as an anarchist you can’t say a lot about this. At the same time, I would be so worried, and I would feel like that there has to be more than just the right ...
That’s even grimmer.
Is that not true?
I feel like, what if we open source or have a collaborative approach to our constitution? I’m beginning to understand that most Taiwanese people think that capital punishment is something legitimate or to be desired?
I guess what I’m trying to get at is, of course your agenda has to be focused on what the digital minister can do and what your open space can do, about the general public and multi stakeholders. I fully understand that, but coming from the civic tech sector, and ...
And vice versa. [laughs]
Does that worry you sometimes?
You’re opening up a lot of ways, communication channels for citizens. It’s really different as to what kind of things are being said, what kind of things are being decided on.
There is this mantra of open development, of collaboration which, I guess, we are showing this right now. It’s more about the form more than the content of the policies.
One of the questions I’ve been thinking about myself a little bit recently, also in light of political events around the globe is, what kind of a value statement does civic tech come with? Obviously we all come from an open-source culture.
That’s fascinating.
It seems like it’s not just a tool to them. They actually use that as policy driving.
Yeah. You can see that. It’s almost every day.
What happens to those comments? Do you have people read through them? What can you expect as a comment thread? What kind of feedback will you be getting?
You also have the regulations from the government, like publicly where you can comment on them. I saw that earlier.
I guess that was the thought of g0v.
You can just employ directly.
OK. [laughs] That’s good.
Not at all?
How does it feel? Are you regretting it?
You really are pioneers in this government. How does it feel? [laughs] You’re getting a lot of attention, obviously, from the international standpoint and open government people. At the same time there is, I bet, a lot of pressure from Taiwan itself for what kind of things you’re about to ...
Right. All of it.
Yeah. I’m well acquainted with that.
Or, for that matter, gets a picture of it. [laughs]
[laughs] Are you kidding me?
That’s what I’m saying. It’s still very different to me compared to other government agencies that are doing this sort of work. You are adding this additional, I want to say more radical approach to it. That’s something we’ve not seen before.
That’s one step further than the traditional understanding of this process.
If you click "more about transparency," it actually talks not just standards in the process, but actually procurement and how to make all the validation, promotion and support, so that when people make information systems, the common APIs are built in by default. All they have to do is check ...
Exactly. Transparency is like, "This is what we have and also what we don’t have." We make it bare, and then we systematically create ways for public servants to make this available without spending extra time doing transparency stuff, which was the main roadblock. Preferably, their own workflow tool captures ...
Right. But I think there’s also something about the participation and the accountability part that is more about the two-way communication.
Well, it’s the transparency part, but also, it’s very much one-way communication. It’s saying, "Here, here’s all my data." Then you have the part where you say, "Here’s my digital services, I’m building better websites, better services."
It’s about having a g0v approach, but really having an open community that participants. I think there’s a bit of a difference there. One is a one-way communication: I’m opening up my government in terms of the data.
I think there’s a difference there. There’s a difference between the mission and these three things. What is the traditional digital transformation part? You build a platform, you build standards, and then you have digital services, but I think accountability, transparency and participation are more about real open government in ...
What’s the overall agenda of this open space? Is it to have some sort of digital transformation of the government, just in a very general sense?
Your role is just to provide an open space to explore.
Exactly.
Oh, I don’t know. There are a couple of reasons I could think of.
You have about 50 people.
I guess that’s my first question. How do you think your approach is different than the ones we know about like 18F or GDS?
I have for a couple of weeks now, and it’s been really amazing. I feel like I’ve learned a lot. I was expecting to learn more about the projects here, and instead, I really learned more about community management, about the whole approach, which is so very different, really inspiring ...
That’s good, I guess. I don’t know if you know the purpose of my visit here. I’m on an exchange program currently, by Code for All and then Open Knowledge Germany, trying to learn what’s going on in civic tech in Taiwan. Of course, I’d be amiss if I don’t ...
OK, got it. Cool. Does that happen a lot?
It looked like it was about zoning and I read something about marines, something about AIT...
Yeah, I heard about that.
The pension reform.