Taiwan is a very unique place. I see Taiwan has a lot of innovation, on civic legislation, and social media, because it is very tightly bound. Pretty much everybody is online, everybody understands more or less the same language, so it’s very easy for ideas to spread, and to experiment.

The political climate after the Sunflower Movement also has changed. Just today, we have a new Prime Minister, Simon Chang, who was a Google engineer. He actually knows a lot about open data, and the open culture. He’s not shy from just delegating all the government’s data, and its power, and everything previously invested, to the public and to the civil society.

The other unique thing about Taiwan, is a collective priority of rebuilding strong mutual trust between the government and the civil society. This is something that I think a lot of European nations, especially people who worry about the private sector having too much control of the government, could perhaps look into, and then have more conversations with Taiwan for this kind of collaboration.

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