I’m the expert now on the visiting protocol.

Exactly, you’re the protocol expert. You’re probably the only person outside our office who has read through the whole thing. (laughs)

Yes, repeatedly.

Are you coffee’d out? No more coffee for you?

No, I’ve maximized my caffeine intake today.

No more people? That’s it?

Yes, one more, but I think he’s debugging. He’ll join later.

We’re all pretty curious how did you get interested in our...

Here’s the thing. I found a video of you.

On YouTube?

That’s right, or Facebook. It doesn’t matter. I was like, "All right, this is interesting. OK, Taiwan is doing something very cool." I read up on you more, and then something ticked, and I became excited. We share a lot of the values. That was what attracted me to email you. We believe in tech as way to create a more optimal government, civic duties that we have, responsibilities, building trust in the government.

Hi, come in. I was just getting started, how I got to stalk Audrey.

I just saw all these check marks, and I viewed it...You’re a lot more techy than I am, but we all did tech stuff and we usually go towards a vision, or we usually follow a leader that has the equal visions as you, for example, for a start.

When I started learning more and more and more of what you’re doing, I thought, "This person has a vision that I can relate to," and, "She’s probably going to need a lot of help." I don’t know how, I don’t know where, or how we could do something, but I just wanted to let you know, "Hey, I’m here."

Some of the things that you said really resonated with me. That’s pretty much how I figured out how to contact you. (laughs) Then I went to your YouTube channel and I just messaged you through there. That’s how it all started. I originally wanted just to...

Have some coffee?

Since then I’ve been craving this red velvet cake from this coffee shop. (laughs) I almost bought some, but I wanted just to have a sit down and have more casual, but now there so many formalities and so many people here...

I think we are very casual here.

As you can see, it’s like a small start‑up here.

Except for that [points at recorder]... everything is going to be public, except for that.

Anyway, that’s why I emailed you. I don’t know exactly how or where you see someone like me fit in, but maybe an extra eye and ear that could help you brainstorm an idea, or advice in a particular segment, a bridge. You talked about more transparent communication: transparent like glass, reflective like a mirror?

Yes.

These are all things that align to what I hope to find in some leader ‑‑ I don’t want to say like that ‑‑ but a movement. That’s what gravitated me to where I am here today. So, I’m here.

You’re very welcome.

We’re pretty transparent, as evidently you’ve probably already read about whatever we’re doing. If you have any suggestions or anything that you would like to contribute, just let us know, or any questions.

Here’s my more philosophical question...where do you see yourself in five years? Correct me if I’m wrong, I feel that now you have this platform, not only technical, but also political, where you could really create this movement that not only changes Taiwan for the better as far as 1) transparency, 2) a bridge to Silicon Valley, 3) a hub of startup, but you could do amazing things. I think that (some Mandarin words).

No, our English is pretty good.

Oh, fantastic. Even better for me. I was stressing already.

You have this group of people that could really, you guys could really do something amazing. I don’t know, I feel like it’s brewing... where I could see where it could go. I just want to let you know that I could be of help if you want me to be.

Yeah, certainly. Our entire communication strategy is pretty open. In fact, our entire website, the digital copy of it, is kept ‑‑ discussion boards that you’ve been to ‑‑ vTaiwan.tw, of course talk.pdis.tw. If you want to contribute by copy editing or helping us write more English communication materials, which I now have discovered you’re expert in.

All right, I could do that too.

It all depends on what you want to do. Around here, in the office we practice what we call the objective key result, the OKR kind of management, meaning that instead of me dictating where the office is going, I actually ask these guys where they would like to see themselves not in five years, but in three months time, and what kind of objectives each individual personally wants to see happening.

My role here is to facilitate everybody’s objectives and make sure that they align in some way. We would then collectively determine our office objective for the next three months or so. We don’t plan for five years. For a minister to plan for five years is absurd, because one term is four years.

How about yourself as Audrey? For example...

As for myself...

Go ahead.

No, I promise to be honest and...

You’ll still be...

On Earth. I’m not going to Mars in five years. Even Elon Musk is not going to be there in five years.

Yeah, he’ll let somebody else do the testing for it.

There will probably be some robots instead. Let’s be fair.

In any case, honestly, I’m pretty much signed up for the public service. It may be in government. It may be in an NGO. It may be in civil society in an individual capacity. I’ve been retired for a couple of years before I joined the government, so as soon as I’m out of this job, I’ll probably be on a similar job doing, still, governance stuff.

You don’t expect to be in policy‑making for the foreseeable future like your predecessor?

Jaclyn Tsai?

No, he was the digital minister before, and then he became the prime minister, right?

Simon Chang?

Yeah.

Yeah, Chang is still doing effectively open government on communication work. He’s now working in the Taiwan Mobile Foundation, still doing a lot of policy thinking, working with the civil society.

Do you see yourself doing that type of career in politics?

Well, it’s not quite a career. There’s no upward path.

Who knows?

Why not? It could be.

Like in the United Nations?

Or Senator Tang, then up and up and up. Do you see something like that...

From a minister to a parliament member, I’m not sure whether it’s a move up or down, but in any case...

...I harbor no political ambitions. I’m here to do open government work, regardless of whether Taiwan gives me a title or not. I’ve been doing this work for the past few years now, since at least 2012. If you count other sideline endeavors, then it’s longer. I’ve been here for a while doing, more or less, exactly the same thing.

Now I’m blessed with a much more capable team than when I had to do everything myself, but it’s still more or less the same kind of work.

So you could only have a four‑year term. What is your goal through that four‑year term?

My goal is to facilitate everybody’s goal on my team. It doesn’t sound fair, but that’s how OKR works.

All the pressure’s on us.

I know!

Well you can declare an objective of nothing. You want to do nothing for three months, I will facilitate it.

I see. I know that you have three mandates: One is open government, social entrepreneurship, and then youth council.

Right, but the youth council is actually part of the open government work, because their mandate ‑‑ well, ours, because I’m also a council member ‑‑ as it turns out, is to facilitate open government through direct communication.

It’s like a subset of the entire open government mandate, but for young people. Social enterprise is something else, of course. It’s a bridge between the traditional NGOs, non‑profit world, and enterprises looking to improve their sustainability or CSR, social responsibility.

That involves some policy‑making, but I’m not an expert in social enterprise. I’m mostly learning from people from both sides and trying to facilitate some things, like the upcoming Company Act rewrite, that takes care of both sides’ concerns. What I’m saying is I don’t have a personal agenda for the social enterprise work.

Most of our office time is spent on open government work, planning particular designs around how to get ministries to talk directly with people, with stakeholders, instead of through proxies like media. The media of course is very important as an ally, but we want the ministry to also be capable of operating as their own self-media.

All right. Then mostly the work is that is done in this office is towards open governance?

Yeah.

So vTaiwan?

Yes, like vTaiwan and Join are the two Internet platforms, but there’s also things like Facebook pages and websites of each ministry. There’s also public hearings and city engagement roles in many of the ministries, in particular the Ministry of the Interior.

OK, side note. I was checking out vTaiwan. What happens if fake accounts start going on a particular...

We don’t vote.

It’s not voting, because you have some aggregations of people’s voices and opinions. So if, let’s say with respect to the Uber thing, because it’s the easiest to discuss...

Everybody brings that one up...[opens vTaiwan webpage and projects to wall Uber topic]

Yeah, it’s a beat up subject, but it’s easy. You have Uber, and there’s clusters of people. Let’s say...

Let’s say hundreds of people register fake accounts and vote exactly the same.

Or I’m the taxi driver, so I tell all my taxi driver friends, "Hey, we don’t want Uber. Let’s skew it."

Right, that’s exactly what happened. When we invited everybody from the taxi, the Uber, and everybody to contribute, that’s what happens. The all voted very similarly in the first week, and they all clustered in the corners.

You can see with your own eyes that people are divided in the four corners, because we take as finding agenda only the consensus items, then manage to convince people we’re different than they are. They have to come up with something to convince at least 80 percent of the total population, regardless of how many people they get through here.

It is dynamic threshold. It was 80 percent, because it was roughly a four‑sixths split. We’re taking all of 60 and half of 40 to calculate the threshold. In the next case, it was 20‑80 because there’s some mobilization on the 80 part. The threshold is now all of 80 plus half of 20, meaning that you still have to convince 90 percent of people.

No matter how many people you mobilize, you still have to convince half of the people in the other side.

To go forward with your particular...

That particular agenda. That’s one thing.

The other thing is that if you mobilize a million people and you vote exactly the same, it’s just one dot on this two‑dimensional plot. What we’re visualizing here is not the weight or the rank between the people’s positions, but rather the diversity. If you mobilize a dozen people, and they vote exactly the same, it’s just going to count only as one point around this mark.

What we’re trying to do is to get a spectrum of stakeholder positions, so that when we’re doing the face‑to‑face deliberation, we can consider everybody’s positions, and it’s regardless of how many people uphold this position.

In fact, the person who wrote this software was a civics teacher who taught Habermas. He insisted that even if there is a tiny fraction, like three people, as compared to thousands here, that holds a peculiar position that’s not share with any other cluster.

They’ll still show.

It will still show.

That’s right.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s how it was designed.

Let’s go back to the Uber thing. Let’s say we’re crowd‑sourcing policy...

The agenda.

The agenda, that’s right.

What we’re talking about, yeah.

We give them the points of this stuff or everybody brings their own points. What happens if, for example, let’s take a famous quote from Steve Jobs, I think he says something like "If somebody asked the people in the times of Henry Ford, they would have just asked for a faster horse.’

Would that be applicable here that most people might not see the benefits of having a service like a peer‑to‑peer car sharing?

Maybe.

So then would that be that we are creating policy based on a...

Democratic institution?

No. OK, yes. I see what you’re doing here.

Isn’t that the point? (laughs)

That is the point, but the majority sometimes doesn’t see the long term.

That’s true, which is why we need to have this reflective space, so that the initial minority positions get time to disseminate into this wider population.

You would note that it doesn’t look anything, the four corners now. This is because, after three or four weeks, they started to cohere ‑‑ more eclectic, more nuanced. More thought is being put into the subsequent ideas, so that when people ranked those ideas, they found stuff they tend to agree with things that are more... considered every stakeholder’s position, that is to say, more eclectic.

It is true that, with this process, we can’t count on somebody from the collective intelligence to have the foresight of Steve Jobs, but this is not what this is about. This is about getting something that everybody can live with among controversies.

OK, I understand.

OK, you’re welcome, glad to explain. But that was the point, seriously.

You mentioned one of the things that you wanted to do was not be the Silicon Valley of Asia, but more of a hub.

Linking Asia and connecting to the Silicon Valley.

So how come we don’t want to be the Silicon Valley of Asia?

Because there’s already a Silicon Valley of Earth.

Do we not want to create that type of innovative environment here?

Probably not that particular type.

Why not?

Because it’s not going to work. Taiwan’s essence and very peculiar culture towards startups, towards innovation, and towards foreigners… I would, of course, love to have some more Silicon Valley kind respect for diversity or getting more talented people from around the world.

This is part of linking Asia plan and educational diversification, so we are not caught in one discipline. But still, with all these efforts, we’re still not replicating the Silicon Valley culture at all. Taiwan has its own culture. Branding it as Silicon Valley of Taiwan just dilutes the Silicon Valley idea and also dilutes the Taiwanese culture. I don’t see anything useful in branding it like that.

Ok. So how can we be better than Singapore as a hub?

Well I don’t care. Singapore is very good at being Singapore. Singapore doesn’t have 23 million people. It’s a city‑state that excels in what a city‑state does, because it’s very small and it has a lot of efficiency‑minded policy‑making.

Taiwan is much larger, a lot more people, a lot more respect in this kind of consensus‑making, rather than sheer efficiency. It’s going to be a different path. It’s going to be a different model. Taiwan’s better at being Taiwan than Singapore does, but that’s not saying much.

OK, so how do you see...

I’m pretty uniquely non‑competitive.

No, no, that’s fine. I just wanted to see where we’re going as far as Taiwan and the bridge...

We’re going upwards.

Good. As long as it’s that way, we’re good.

Towards the sun, towards the stars.

That’s right. How are we going to get there, the particular aspects?

Through what we call a convergent boundary between the two tectonic plates.

When they hit?

We’re technically going upwards.

You mean physically?

...we go up a little bit more every now and then.

Like five centimeter every year.

Something like that. It is true. It’s been like that for the past four million years. (laughs)

That’s not what I meant though, but I like that...

It’s what I meant.

Oh, oh.

You were so happy about it.

I’m was getting pumped here.

...not trying to disappoint you, not for this meeting.

It is a pretty physical statement, saying that we’re inching towards the sky. It means that we are not competing with anybody else.

OK, how can we be more unique? Do we have a way of creating this unique Taiwan tech hub?

Sure, yes.

OK. How are we going to do that?

How are we going to do that? By just doing innovative stuff. In the government, we’re trying to find out ‑‑ we have this kind of Agile governance ‑‑ what kind of existing regulations serve no purpose but to block people’s own innovating.

Then we’re assessing them on vTaiwan and other platforms, so that we can get everybody a new version that everybody can live with and is somewhat better than the previous version. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Then we do that every time there is someone that says we should review that revision again. This is a recurrent process.

OK.

We did that for many things.

We’re currently doing this for the securitization of intangible assets, which means that if some company secures a contract with the government, say, that they are going to supply renewable energy for the next 20 years, they could use this government contract to get some loan from a bank, without getting some cars or houses or whatever as tangible assets. That used to be the only thing that could be securitized.

There’s many little, small things like this. Each one, taken together, gets us a better innovative environment.

OK, so how would you, as in the office of the Digital Ministry, like to create that bridge? You mentioned one of the things you’d like to talk about is creating that bridge to the international community. Do you see certain strategies of doing that?

So far, we’ve just been documenting the tools, the rules, the playbooks, that we’ve been doing. They’re very hard at work on this website. (laughs)

You mean vTaiwan?

No. PDIS. [pulls up PDIS.tw website and projects its on the wall]

What does PDIS stand for?

Public Digital Innovation Space.

OK.

But if you look at a website you would think it’s public digital innovation service, which works too.

I see.

It lists our...

[reads from landing page] "We incubate and facilitate public digital innovation and service."

Right, and then it highlights...

That’s where we need your input.

That’s the kind of initiatives we’re doing, and if you click "More about PDIS" it shows some backlogs of whatever we did. We have interviews, and then there is also a page that describes the tools that we use for our everyday work.

Right, you have that Virtual...

...Reality stuff.

Yeah, it’s kind of like that "Black Mirror" episode, the one where they...

Yeah, I saw that.

Everybody has an avatar, and they vote. (laughs).

Yeah, I saw that.

Yeah, see someone, vote someone.

Right, exactly. We’re all fans of Black Mirror here.

Don’t watch that if you want to sleep. It’s horrible.

In any case...

Moving right on.

Basically, like our counterparts in other places ‑‑ you mentioned Singapore ‑‑ there’s a Singapore government agency, that is the Singapore GDS, which is I think a hundred people now? More people than us, though we’re getting there.

In any case, there’s counterparts like our office all around the world. There is GDS in the UK. There is USDS in the US. There is one in Australia, I think. There is one in Italy.

In many cases, what we’re doing here is just to document the kind of tools that we borrowed from other public sector innovative labs, and also sometimes the private sector, (laughs) then document how we’re adapting it for our purposes, and then share it at the end. We attend international conferences and...

See if anyone has a tool that we can adapt.

I’m not here representing the private sector...

Oh, sure, but if you have some tricks that we can adopt in our daily work, just add it here [addresses the site], and we’ll give it a try.

OK.

What we are trying to do here is to basically be a meme.

That’s what you practice here?

Right, exactly. Be a meme, that is to say to spread ideas that’re worth spreading.

Like TED?

Sure, with ideas that we hope are worth spreading and...

That’s our motto, "ideas hopefully worth spreading."

We spread hopeful ideas.

"Ideas hopefully worth spreading - Digital Ministry of Taiwan." I get it. [laughs]

"Hopeful ideas, worth spreading." In any case, what we are aiming to do here is to get each ministry to assign a participation officer. Then we work with POs to empower them to face the cyberspace, to face this kind of civic engagement, also to empower them so they get versed into these kind of data tools that we use.

Now whether they spread these ideas into their ministries isn’t really our call, but at least...

At least they’re there and...

...they’re there, they’re public, and there is some cross-ministry collaboration. That’s what we’re doing this year. There’s not much space left, but that’s what we’ve been doing.

You have two weeks to finish this up [referencing to the end of the year coming in 2 weeks].

Yeah. (laughs)

So this is something that the ministry will be making public and creating...

Holding workshops and whatever.

Who will be in charge of that?

Everybody.

Everybody here?

Everybody here.

Yeah, pretty much.

Really? But if everybody’s in charge, then no one is in charge.

Really?

I think it’s the reverse. No one in charge and then everybody’s in charge.

Oh, OK.

Everyone here is pretty much self‑recharging. We’re on renewable energy.

Now we’re just recharging.

It’s like some kind of blockchain thing [Ethereum], it is self‑funding.

Exactly, exactly.

By the way you met with Vitalik Buterin. That guy is insane. He’s wonderful.

Yeah.

Are you trying to use some kind of blockchain technology to put behind...

What?

...vTaiwan for example, or creating some kind of more...

We’re rethinking the new website of vTaiwan, and for that I’d like to hear more input from you as well. So you just...

Stumbled upon this.

You understand the structure of vTaiwan, but you haven’t use it personally?

But it’s in Chinese. I had to fumble my way through it.

That’s something we’re working on, also.

And you understand Chinese?

I don’t. I understand context, which is great because Chinese is very contextual. (laughs)

Seriously? So you read Chinese...

I don’t.

...as if it’s contextual pictographs?

That’s right.

Ah, very handy on a menu.

Right. (laughs) That’s a way that we can figure out the UX. Even if the people don’t really understand, at least you could...

...see those icons. See, that’s why icons are very important.

Yeah.

She makes all our icons.

Oh, OK.

No, I didn’t. Don’t put that on me.

She made the new ones.

Hey, it got me this far.

She made the old ones.

I made the old ones. Yes, that’s it...

It’s OK. It got me this far to understanding that entire thing in Chinese. Anyway, are you guys trying to do something with Ethereum? What’s going on with that?

If you are, then we are.

If I am, then you are?

Yeah.

I’m not.

Then not for now. Sorry.

Oh, come on. You’re much more technically savvy on this than I am.

It’s true.

It is true, yes. (laughs) Don’t rub it in.

What I’m saying is that although I am technically capable of running a blockchain, whatever, I’m not seeing anything in the vTaiwan process that would benefit from a distributive ledger at this point. I’m sure that there will be in the future, if somebody cares enough to do it.

To try to figure something out?

Right. This is the idea that you have three or more parties, and neither trusts each other enough to put their ledgers in the same place.

I don’t know if this is even technically possible, but again we are brainstorming. This is why I wanted to do coffee, really relax. One of the debates that you had with David from Uber...

David Plouffe.

That’s right.

Nice guy.

Yeah, he’s great.

...was that he said, "So you want the government to have the control of the policymaking over Uber?" That’s one of his side comments.

No, we were talking about the car dispatch. I was talking about how we’re building an API standard so that everybody who has an e‑fleet car can put it on an open exchange, of sorts. In fact, the Ministry of Transport is working on what they call the PTX, the Public Transport Exchange, for something like that, where they share the open data on the traffic data.

You can consume it very easily to do your own traffic analysis and service...

I understand what you meant. I think maybe the communication did not go through, and then he was like, "Wait, so you want the..."

The government controlling the entire...

"...the platform?"

Right, traffic platform. I was like, "No, I want everybody to share it."

I think that’s where one of the trickeries of communication went through there. But, that got me to thinking. What if that is controlled in the...

Cloud.

Yeah, like in an Ethereum fork. I don’t know. Would that be even possible?

Maybe. It is a very interesting thought. Let’s see.

Then it will be self‑governing.

It’s true. Currently, the airlines, the buses, the city bus here, the inner city bus, registers through machine‑to‑machine interfaces to the Ministry of Transport. What you’re essentially saying is that, "Well, we use blockchain to collaborate with different storage." [ pulls up https://ptx.transportdata.tw/PTX ]

That’s right.

I’m sure it’s technically possible, yes.

Would that be beneficial? Would that help? Uber wouldn’t be concerning that it’s a government‑regulated platform, because they’ve never been...

That would be entirely dependent on how the blockchain code is written. The fact that it’s a blockchain doesn’t mean that it’s decentralized. It only means it’s multi‑central, that the initial agreed‑upon rules that can be enforced independently.

Still, there has to be some initial rules, and who gets those rules is...I’m all for redundant backups of these kind of data. Granted, that means that somebody would want to host their own part of this replication. In fact, PTX is already open data.

By the license, there is nothing preventing you, for example, from starting a blockchain that stores these data, or even makes this without the data. It’s entirely allowed. The fact that there’s nobody doing this probably says that it’s us not knowing sufficient people.

There’s probably already people doing this. They are just not registering themselves or let us in. I’m sure that there’s already plenty of people making use of these data.

Is the ministry open to having outsiders from Taiwan creating these type of apps for the Taiwanese government, to be used in Taiwan?

Not at all. It’s just fine. I work with the Ministry of Education’s Creative Commons data. The largest consumer of that data happens to be Pleco.

The Chinese learning app. I have it. (laughs)

Exactly.

I’m sure you have it. Everybody has it. We did get useful feedback from Pleco, so I’m sure there’s already these kind of collaborations also in other domains. It’s just that I know dictionaries better.

You have good ideas. Go ahead and we’ll try and create it.

(laughs) You mentioned in the email that you wanted to figure out how we could bridge the international community.

Certainly. Now that you know we have a website, it’s a pretty well‑kept secret. We’ve not been advertising it.

PDIS?

Yeah, pdis.tw, which...

With an O, not a zero this time. [referencing g0v.tw site]

It’s just pdis.tw, which automatically expands to this pdis.nat.gov.tw, meaning the national government.

PDIS.nat.gov.tw.

That part is optional. You can just write pdis.tw, and it will get you there. This is just to say that we’re still a government agency, of sorts.

I understand.

In any case, the entire content here is amenable to change. If you find a better way to say something, or you want to see a new page, or whatever, just post it on the forum, and it will be done. There’s a forum talk.pdis.tw, which expands to talk.pdis.nat.gov.tw.

Now that you know the pattern, you can fill in the rest of them. Then you will see a category here that says "PDIS site". You will see pretty much the entire website here, what we do, how we work.

This [site] is in English... and this is...that one [clicks link on PDIS.tw category "PDIS site" that opens to another page]

This is basically just a link to a speech that I gave. If you see “track”, this is basically a chronological log of what everybody in the office, but mostly me...

Are you @chlai? Is that you?

@chlai is somebody else.

@chlai is there...[points to outside of office]

Smart Lai is @chlai.

Oh, OK.

We have 17 people.

17 people are doing this?

16, now 17.

Where are they? Are they remote, or do they all fit in this office?

They’re here and upstairs on the third floor.

On the third floor. There’s nine people up, and seven here ‑‑ counting you, eight.

Join us!

Yeah!

If you register for an account in this forum, you can basically just look here, and then you will see the entire website, actually. This is my talk. Basically, they just transcribed this, added some photos ‑‑ I don’t remember putting this in, then switched to, "Let’s all keep listening to each other. Thank you for listening," and changed that to, "Thank you for reading," which breaks the rhyme. I think it’s more fitting for a website. (laughs)

In any case, this ends up here. If you click this [click through flow of PDIS.tw site revisions]

I see. Whatever is there in that admin...

It’s displayed here. At the moment, it’s instant. You will be...

It’s instant? If there’s a bunch errors like there...

Right, then you will see a lot of errors...

You’re testing in prod, basically?

That is correct.

Soon, we will have a better pipeline where it was pre‑rendered.

That’s so good. I see.

If you happen to not speak English, then you can switch to other languages, like Spanish.

Where’s the Spanish? Let’s see the Spanish.

You speak Spanish?

Yeah, I speak Spanish.

Oh, that’s great. There’s also Catalan, which is different.

]Reads spanish text of PDIS site] That’s not bad. Is this Google just translating?

This is Google, yes. So we also have the Spanish website.

Very good. Let’s do "the business talk". What is the marketing strategy behind the Digital Ministry of Taiwan?

That’s a very good question. It’s a question that we expected you to ask.

No, seriously. We don’t yet have a strategy. We give some international talks. She gave, what, two...? [Points to Shuyang]

Two.

...just this year. After coming into office, I gave maybe four or five to our international counterparts.

You did one with Blaise?

Yes, that was earlier though.

With the eye thing. It has the eye, retina, face recognition?

That was in January. That was before I was a minister. I was just a random speaker at that point. Then I gave his talk in Mix Taiwan in the Ministry of Economy, talking about the artificial intelligence stuff.

Thanks, Blaise, if you’re watching, for these slides.

In any case, what we’ve been doing mostly, using this website [points to PDIS.tw] , is just to bring it to our international counterparts, and say, "This is roughly what we’re doing." It’s a conversation‑starter so far, but it could do much more.

What do you think?

What do you think?

What do I think about the...?

The digital communications strategy.

Wow, all right. I was ready to ask it, but I’m not so sure to answer that question right now.

For example...

Take your time.

You can tell us anytime.

We have a Twitter account, but we’re not using it at the moment.

The Digital Ministry of Taiwan?

No, we call it Taiwan PDIS.

@TaiwanPDIS.

How come you call it that?

Because it’s the Public Digital Innovation Space. If you have any suggestions, we can switch.

That "digital minister" name has so much punch. I’m talking branding here, like hardcore...

That’s great. Go ahead, yes. I totally agree. Go ahead.

A digital minister, everybody in the planet knows what that represents.

Maybe not everyone.

You are a minister.

This one is "Taiwan’s Digital Minster."

Yes, you are the minister, therefore you have some political weight behind, you have some clout. You have a team. You have some kind of power, and you’re in digital... You are in tech. So you don’t have to educate. You don’t have to spend any time, effort, money in reeducating the people.

You read it, and you already know what that is. "Digital minister? Oh, yeah, OK." - P‑D‑I‑S is like, "Oh, P, P‑D‑I, P, OK. P‑D‑I‑S, what does it stand for? P‑DIS? Is it P‑DIS or PDIS?"

P-DIS.

Exactly. You have to have this debate. "Oh, and the website is pdis.tw, OK, well, it will redirect you to the nat.gov...forget it"

What about the GDS in the UK?

Or the USDS?

USDS?

The US Digital Service.

If we want to be a counterpart of them.

For example, you could have the name ‑‑ let’s take Twitter ‑‑ be "digital minister," and then the "@pdis" a the handle. Whatever.

Ah, very clever.

Your handle will always be the same, but this handle represents a connection to the digital minister, or the Ministry of Taiwan. By doing that, you’re already educating the people. "Oh, Digital Ministry of Taiwan? Yeah, I know exactly what that is. Oh, PDIS? OK, I’ll look it up." Obviously, it’s the Digital Ministry of Taiwan.

That’s great, except we’re not really a ministry, but yes, otherwise it’s...

It says minister on the top.

Yeah, but not ministry.

We’re not a ministry.

Is this some political stuff? I’m getting confused.

No, in Taiwan there’s ministers with portfolio. They are ministers with ministries. I am a minister without portfolio, meaning a minister without a ministry. There’s no digital ministry, which is why I’m a minister without portfolio who works with 16 people somehow. Anyway. We’re just magical.

You have no ministry of 17 people?

Yeah, a virtual team here...

See, that goes back to that whole movement that you’re starting here. You are building your portfolio.

That’s true. Well, the team is building their own portfolio, and they’re just working with me. In any case, yes, it is true. It is fair, if you call it a portfolio of some sort. I do agree that, of course, “digital minister” itself carries much more explanatory power than minister or whatever.

That’s the first thing I can see.

Yay! That sounds very good.

Put it on the issue cards.

So things like that... To me, it was a bit hard to find out what you were talking about [in reference to YouTube videos and online articles].

That’s true.

A basic way is to link… from the doc… you know that I’m a big fan of linking - I don’t know if you remember when I replied with the doc corrections, I had a bunch of links to outside sources, like, "Please link to article that you’re referring to, so that somebody could easily know what it is that you’re talking about."

One key thing is the ministry talks about very important stuff. If you don’t understand, you lose it.

That’s true.

While you guys are doing that presentation, and since this is all digital, you can upload it. Things that we talk about, perhaps put the links in the YouTube description, or talk about it in the articles themselves. Link to the outside. That also will help in the SEO, right?

Yes. Always think of the SEO. That’s right.

It’s affinity, OK.

Also, I wrote one of the ‑‑ going back to SEO ‑‑ I write Audrey Tang, and there’s 10,000 Audrey Tangs, actually.

It’s not a very SEO‑friendly name.

If you put all the stuff in there, you put digital ministry...

Then if you put another keyword ‑‑hacker.

Oh, OK. I’m trying to be the end user. The one that you guys want to influence the most is not hacker, right?

If you search for Audrey Tang, I think, I’m probably the first five pages.

You’re up there.

It’s not that hard to find.

It’s not hard. I did find you after...

Digital Minister of Taiwan?

Taiwan? Maybe you’re going to my Wikipedia page. No, it’s the QZ page. Obviously not going there. Seems they have better SEO.

It’s OK.

We’ll crack on.

Anyway, brainstorming over coffee here. (laughs)

It’s good.

Things of that nature.

Somehow getting people googling, "Digital minister of Taiwan," end up in our PDIS page. This is great.

That would be one thing. It goes back to what it is that you want to achieve as a ministry. What do you want? For example, in a business, I want clicks on the call to action ‑‑ buy, trial, download. What do you want me to do as a user, or as a person engaged in your ministry? What would you like? Do you have an idea?

I see that Audrey is already...

...very much getting you to do our work.

That was the version we were always thinking about trying.

You don’t have a mission?

I think the mission is quite clear on the website.

The mission is quite clear.

What’s that?

We incubate and facilitate public digital innovations…

Oh, it’s in Español. (Spanish words) Oh, this is wrong. Anyway, see, this is the thing with Google. Sometimes it doesn’t get the context right.

You can also say it’s a very broad mission. We don’t really have a call to action.

This could be a vision. A vision stays forever.

A mission changes every quarter.

There you go. Come on, put your business hat on. A vision is forever. A vision is why I am here, because I agree with the vision that you are portraying. At least, I don’t know that is in‑depth, obviously. Maybe you have some plans that I don’t know about.

No, we don’t.

No.

From what I’ve read and what I’ve seen for your guys’ talks. There is a vision there for a more transparent government, a more tech‑savvy populace, scalable, open technology sharing, idea sharing. That’s the vision, but missions are short term tasks, and achievables. (laughs) Why are you so excited?

Let’s say we review our missions every quarter.

It doesn’t have to be every quarter. It doesn’t have to be every quarter.

It happens quite randomly.

Oh, OK. This is a well‑known...

Yeah, this is a well‑known...

Not the safest thing to do...

It’s a well‑known phenomenon.

The mission, you put the time [refering to time of completion].

Audrey put "quarter" there, but it’s up to you guys.

Yeah, it’s closer here.

The mission is what drives towards that vision. What is your mission? It’s still a little...

I think their mission individually is due end of this month, I don’t know yet.

We don’t really have that hard a deadline. I’m thinking about the topic of civic participation, as we have in Taiwan enjoyed right now. We have already sprung from this...

...collaborative community with the private sector and the civil society.

Yeah.

Called g0v, right?

Yeah. Also, one thing, since you bring this up, I have no idea how to get to that site.

You mean g0v?

Yes. How do I get to that site?

It’s just g0v.

That’s it?

Yeah. Did you Google for g0v?

G‑0‑V.

Then you get it.

You see what you’re doing? You said, "Gov zero." I googled G‑O‑V‑Z‑E‑R‑O, or "G‑O‑V, dot, number zero".

Like this? [pulls up google and searches G-O-V zero]

You can bring that up.

No, it doesn’t.

I tried so many different ways.

With a dash?

It’s terrible SEO on our part.

I spent maybe two minutes, but I was like, "OK, I’ll just ask her, because I don’t..." Here’s the thing. You talked about it a lot, but there’s no single link anywhere to it where you talked about it.

Granted.

Right? (laughs)

So nice to have you here.

It’s so nice to have you here.

Do you want to say something?

Little things like this will create a ripple effect on your international perception. People will start noticing, and be like, "Oh, hey, what’s going on in Taiwan?"

By the way, if you look at the g0v.asia page, instead of linking to the mostly Chinese page.

You have to stop saying "gov-zero" in your chat, because it’s not “gov0”.

It’s hard say G‑zero‑V all the time.

G‑0‑V, Just say G‑0‑V. It’s not hard.

Trying saying that 10 times.

G‑0‑V G‑0‑V G‑0‑V.

All right.

G‑ling‑V, yeah? G‑0‑V? [reference to "ling" being "zero" in Mandarin]

We say G‑ling‑V, and then for media, they start to remember the pronunciation of G‑ling‑V instead of gov-zero.

Oh, I understand.

Then you have another problem, because they would type G‑L‑I‑N, or something like that.

See, we have to work on your branding here. (laughs)

It’s true.

I think it’s catchy, G‑0‑V. It’s kinds hackery, G‑0‑V.

Well, it says "hack democracy." If you look at this landing page, what does it say to you?

[reading g0v.asia landing page] "Ask not why nobody is doing this. You are the nobody." Ow.

That’s harsh. Jesus Christ.

It says you’re a nobody.

Yeah.

That’s offending, isn’t it?

Yeah. I don’t want to be on this site.

Too bad.

Is this public?

This is public.

I don’t know. I didn’t write this.

I don’t know, (laughs) but that’s like a wiki page there.

From grassroots, meaning it’s bottom up, basically.

Then just put that.

Ah, OK. It’s re‑writable, so we’ll go and change it. "From grassroots," change that to “bottom up”. Keeps growing. It keeps growing.

All right. You have to get that “nobody” out, that’s under the... [reference to g0v.asia slogan]

That is too offensive?

It’s not too offensive, because we all have thick skin. It’s just the first thing when you land. [reference to first thing seen when visitor enters landing page]

How would you rephrase that?

You land on the site, and then you get punched in the face. It’s not the nicest welcoming.

How would that work better?

"Ask not why..."

"You’re that somebody"?

Exactly.

"You’re that somebody"?

Why don’t we say, "Don’t ask why..." [starts to brainstorm messages on notebook]

Yeah, it doesn’t work.

There is this paint that you could paint over, and it makes your walls a dry eraser (whiteboard). Did you know this? [pointing to the wall of the office]

That’s exactly what we did here.

Oh, this is what you could do here? You can...

Yes, yes.

Oh!

That’s exactly what we did to this wall.

Yeah? Oh, fantastic. Where’s the pen?

Well...

If we’re going to brainstorm stuff, we could just...

But you can also write it on the iPad here...

I could. I’ll also do it here.

Yeah, and then we’ll all see your writing, but then it’s easy.

Oh, OK.

Then you can keep the screenshot. Or you can write on the wall.

No.

I didn’t know that.

There’s an eraser in the other room.

You can write on it with a marker? [pointing to the wall]

Yeah, we can write with a marker.

We can write here on the marker. Oh, that’s fantastic. Anyway whatever. Where was I?

“Ask not why nobody is doing this. You’re that nobody.”

Ask not...all right. (laughs) "Don’t ask why.... Don’t ask why..." What is the page that you have up here? Let’s just center on that. Can we write on top of this? [pointing to projected website on the wall]

Yeah, we can. We’re fine.

Oh, What kind? Oh, yeah you copied.

You take a screen shot, switch it back, and then you paste it here. Easy‑peasy.