Sure. Would you prefer to converse in English, or would you prefer Mandarin?

Either Mandarin or English is fine.

Let’s do English, because it’s easier for you to just make a material available locally. Let’s just do all English.

That’s perfect.

Sure, of course.

I think they sent you an email to let you know?

They did.

I had an initial meeting with them, and they’re very interested. The question right now is whether or not to open the event to the public. I’m pretty sure there are going to be interest, but they were a little nervous about it.

They wanted me to reach out t other groups, and make sure that there are other people who want to co-sponsor the event before we make that final decision of whether or not to keep it to just the employees or open the event to the public.

Employees, as in their company’s employees?

Yeah. This particular group is with the LGBTQ group.

I did visit their headquarters last April. They have already hosted me. I don’t think it’s a problem of their internal logistics. They may be nervous about potential protestors?

No. I think it’s just more the person who’s handling it.

They do run open-to-public events in that venue?

I don’t know about public events at this particular company. I do know that there are a lot of other companies hosting events all the time. I think it’s just a precaution.

It could be physically, only open to their company employees, but then you live stream it or make it available online and people can partciipate over the Internet. That’s also pretty common.

I don’t think it’s a problem at all. It just takes a little bit time in doing more out-reach to other organizations, and finalizing exactly which groups are going to be involved. Maybe it will take another two weeks before we can finalize the date.

Sure thing.

I know you had given me a couple availabilities, but I was thinking..... I just saw the information about the hackathon, and the final date is July 21st, right?

Yup.

Do you think it works better for you if we host it the week right after that? That way you can...

Sure.

That way you can talk about the outcome of the meeting. I’m going to propose to them either July 23rd or 25th, because I understand there are certain dates that you are more available.Tuesday for us would be Wednesday for you, and 25th will be Thursday, I think, in the US and Friday for you.

You mean 23rd of July?

Uh huh, or 25th. This is just a proposal. I have to run it by them and just make sure it works for everybody.

That would be early morning...

Yeah, this will be evening our time or afternoon our time, so it will be 24th for you.

Early morning my time, sure.

Or the 25th?

Which will be early morning for me.

Right.

I would prefer this time, simply because it gives more room here.

OK, the first option is the 25th, right?

Right, the 25th as an option.

All right, great. I will propose that. Then there is a possibility once I start talking with other communities, they might prefer June.

Of course.

At that point, I’ll get back to you on that. Also, wanted to check with you on the format of the event. I know originally you were very interested in having a complete open forum.

Just ask me anything.

They’re also proposing to have 30 minutes interview first and then Q&A for the second half.

Does that have to be a live interview, or can we agree on the questions so I can prerecord the answers?

I’m thinking it’s live interview because you’re going to be doing it...

Why?

Why? This was also my original idea as well, but they also suggested that, and I think that’s because as much as we know about you because we have done a lot of work and going through, but people coming to the meeting, they may not have taken the time...

No, of course, playing an interview is fine. Why don’t we just prerecord my answers and you can play the visuals during the interview? That way we ensure it’s on time.

OK. I think the fact is, because it’s already a video conference, that’s not completely the same as a live event. I’m guessing that we...I need to bounce this off them.

My intuition tells me the more live activity we do, the better. You’re not going to be there in person. To make it up for that, we want this interview to be live, so that it’s not just a video playing on the screen. There’ll be more...

It’s going to be exactly the same for the audience, though.

I think the perception is that it’s more interactive that way.

It’s not, as the audience is not going to have an input in what the moderator asks.

I understand that. I totally get what you’re saying. I can run it by them to see if they have any questions. Is that what you preferred?

Well, prerecorded clips is easier because I can show a lot more visuals. I can weave those visuals into my answers. If we do it through video conferencing, I will be very busy sharing my screen and answering questions and so on.

If we do it scripted, it will be much easier and I can show a lot more visuals. I would suggest, usually, my experience that it works best if it is around 20 minutes prerecorded.

I can check with them.

Then you can separate it into four questions or five questions. Then you give me the questions beforehand. You can still have the moderator asking the questions live.

Then you play the prerecorded clips which is my answer to those questions, and after those 20 minutes, during which people can freely ask questions on Slido, then I’ll answer through telepresence or through videoconference.

This is the thing, because if we open to the public, there are actually going to be people sitting live in the room watching this interaction. If it’s not live, it would be like people sitting there watching a video. Do you see what I’m saying?

Sure. People anticipate that. At the end of the 20 minutes, I’ll, of course, dial in. I can even dial in and listen to myself speak.

You know what, I’m going to run this by them. My intuition tells me this looks more real because it’s interactive.

If you really want interactive you can rent a double robot and bring my avatar into the room. I can walk around and chat with people. That’s live interaction.

First of all, I’m going to run this by them and see how they feel about it.

Sure, of course.

I’m OK either way.

What I’m saying is that if we do prerecorded right, it will look and feel exactly the same as if I’m teleconferencing with you.

Except that the person who’s doing the moderating, she will be in the room. It looks like a real dialog.

We would script it so that she asks me and then I tilt my head to listen. Then I give back my answers. This is very easy to script.

I want to make sure we are on the same page. What you’re saying to me, I want to make sure I understand it correctly, is that one thing we can do is let you know the questions we want to go over so that you can prepare all the visuals. They we still ask you the question live, right? Is that what you’re saying?

Of course. Then the so called live answer will be actually prerecorded video.

I understand. I think we’re talking about the same thing.

We’re talking about the same thing. For the audience, it’s as if I dial in in the first. In actuality, all the visuals and everything is scripted. I basically play a video and share a screen.

Yes. That’s fine. I think we’re talking about the same thing. I’ll let them know and then I’ll confirm that. I’ll try to get a little information of the moderator and send it to you before we finalize everything in case you have any concerns or whatever.

Of course.

You’re OK with a 30 minute conversation and then classic Q&A, right?

How long is the Q&A?

Do you have any limitation? It’s not finalized yet. We were thinking 30 minutes. It depends on the time of the day.

I think 20 plus 40 is usually what has always worked best. 20 minutes is like TED Talk range. People’s attention span is probably going to...If you do 30 and you don’t give them a way to influence what the moderator will ask, because it’s all pre scripted anyway, people start to lose interest.

Let’s keep the opening brief, 18 or 20. Actually, in my experience, 15 works best, I’ll defer to the organizer, at max, 20 and then 40 minutes or more of questions.

Great. People can drop out anytime. People who are interested can stay longer and other people who have hard stops could leave early. I’ll let them know. Then I’ll get back to you again and provide more update when we finalize everything.

Now, I have a couple questions about your background information. Now, that you have worked in the government for a little while now...

With the government, but yes.

What would you say are some of the important lessons you’ve learned about bringing changes?

I joined the government with three conditions. First, I get to work anywhere. Here is my office, location independence. I get to publish everything that I see, every meeting that I chair. That’s called radical transparency. Finally, I don’t give orders, I don’t take orders. That’s called voluntary association.

This is entirely horizontal way of exercising power as opposed to the traditional top down, vertical way. My main learning is that public servants are very eager to innovate. As long as I’m here to distribute the credit and absorb the risk using this new methodology, they’re all very willing to...

Like the Presidential Hackathon, which is one of the prime examples, because people, hundreds of teams, propose ways to improve public service. Mostly coming from a 科長, which is like a division head level of the public service.

Perhaps they didn’t have the budget, perhaps they didn’t have the political will, but they are very willing to innovate, actually. What they require is that a change from the original way of power distribution which is that the minister always gets the credit in the old days. They always get the blame if things go wrong.

We flipped this matrix so that they can propose. In the Presidential Hackathon, we coach them to form the cross sectoral teams. If it doesn’t work it’s just a hackathon. It’s expected to fail.

If it works then they get all the credit and meet with the president and things like that. By flipping the pay off around by absorbing the risk and distributing the credit, we discovered that the public service is very good innovators and as innovative as any private sector. That’s my main learning.

Giving them the autonomy to innovate and recognition for bringing change.

That’s right. If anything fails, it’s Audrey’s fault.

With clear accountability. That’s awesome. I know one big focus for you is government transparency. There’s also a lot of concern about cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity is the foundation of transparency. Otherwise, nobody knows who types those transparent data.

[laughs] That’s right. How do you balance national security with transparency?

Of course, any government has confidential or national security information. We have a pretty good national security act that says that if it’s classified material, of course, it’s not to be mixed with the transparent data. It’s part of my regular transparency plan. I don’t even touch confidential or national secrets. I don’t even know any national secrets.

When they run the military drill, for example, I take the day off. I still don’t know where the bunkers are. Because of this, anything that I see is, by definition, compatible with freedom of information. Basically, I use my own physical isolation to protect the national security from being accidentally exposed because I simply don’t know about it.

One of the things you are trying to do is empowering all the citizens to have a say in how the government should be run.

Of course. Anyone can summon me very easily.

Right. Right now there’s also a rise of populism. There are concerns about the future of democracy. We are starting to see that sometimes people can be manipulated and incited very easily.

For a time, not continuously.

My question is, what do you say to people who are concerned about the future of democracy, or even starting to question the wisdom of the masses? What would you say to that?

The masses could only provide two bits of input every four years. Of course, it’s very asymmetrical.

Very good point.

Then it pays to meddle with the election and so on. You only need to confuse people on one day which is the election day. If we do democracy more continuously, that is to say, everyday people can raise a petition with 5,000 people, can participate in participatory budgeting with their local population.

They can form a regional revitalization scenario planning forum and summon the National Development Council. They can meet me every Wednesday here in the office hour or they can summon me through every which means. It means that every time the agenda setting power is determined by what people really cares about rather than only every two years or every four years.

If we do democracy in a continuous fashion the people focus more on the policy, on the things instead of on the people. Because in traditional representative democracy, the representatives are those in charge of agenda setting as in what is important and also the delivery, which is how do you do this effectively?

The legislative both makes law but it also oversees budget. These are two different functions. What we’re saying is at any time people can raise what is important to the lawmakers, to the policymakers, by essentially saying, "OK, we have a social innovation. We have autonomous vehicles. We have AI banking. We have whatever." That is not foreseen by existing regulations.

We use a system called sandbox where everybody can apply for one year of exemption from existing fines, and regulations, and penalties. In return, they must be open and share the actual experiments, and the failures, and the data protection, and everything that relates to that particular experiment.

It’s a limited-time, limited-space monopoly, in exchange of open innovation. Whenever we see an emergent phenomena or emergent innovation, we’re saying, "OK, let’s try it out for a year and what happens."

That, basically, leads the agenda of the policymakers so the policymakers don’t have to regulate on something that we don’t have firsthand experience of. Social innovation can drive regulatory innovation.

That is the basic co creational method that we’re improving democracy. We still have a group of people who are MPs and so on. They don’t have to be forced into handling something that they don’t have any firsthand experience of.

You’ve touched on a couple really important points. One of the reasons for the rise of the populist movement is because, for example, there is a lot of distrust. With better communication, you are gaining that trust but you’re also educating people about what really is going on.

Exactly.

That’s a really great point.

If you have a friend who only respond to your calls every two years, of course, there’s a lot of room for rumor to grow. If you can practically meet that friend every week, then there’s no room for rumor to grow.

What do you think about fake news? If you are put in charge to deal with the issue, what would be the strategy that you would take to combat fake news?

Disinformation, which is my preferred term by the way. We don’t really know whether fake news is meant to mean disinformation that pretends to be news or actual news, that isn’t fact checked. There’s two different definition that doesn’t overlap. It’s very hard to put the operational definition.

We see this information as like an epidemic of the mind. It is basically virus of the mind, that infused a sense of usually outrage, but it could be any other emotion, for people who cannot help but share this piece of information. Even if they know that it’s potentially misguided, it struck a chord, so that people really need to share it with somebody else.

That makes the message viral, basically. There’s two different forums that were making this...basically managing this epidemic. First, is that to treat it as spam, as junk mail. We sort the original junk mail issue, not by loss, but rather by just adding a flag that is spam button to every email, and so forth.

Having it red flagged, sort of thing.

Exactly. Mail is actually private communication. It’s not the state’s place to look into people’s email. If people voluntarily say, "Oh, here, there’s a self-proclaimed royalty that wants to offer me five billion dollars," and so on, if they flag that as spam, it’s not one to one communication at all.

They’re donating, flagging that into a public SpamHaus network, to basically identify these spots as not worth the attention of people, so when sufficient people flag that as spam, then the incoming email of sharing that signature goes to the junk mail folder.

Basically, it’s not censorship. It’s still in your mailbox. If you specifically search for it, you can still see it. It just doesn’t waste your time by default.

The person who receives it, is the person who....can it classify whether that’s disinformation...?

Well, when you flag something as spam, you’re helping everybody else. When a sufficient number flags something as spam, and it’s checked as spam by this SpamHaus, and other domain blocking lists, then for every new people who received the same piece of email, that goes to their junk mail folder.

They don’t have to participate in this flagging, in order to benefit from the social innovation, that is the collaborative flagging response. In Taiwan, we have a popular end to end encrypted app called Line, which is like WhatsApp. Because it’s encrypted, nobody can peak into content.

We’re building partnerships with Line, which in turn is partnering with a lot of social sector innovators, to whenever you see a potential rumor in Line, you can forward it very quickly and easily to third party fact checkers. When a sufficient number of people raise the red flag, so to speak, then they can be fact checked.

Line has dedicated a piece of that software into the real time clarification of popular rumors and disinformation campaigns. That system then feeds into the international fact checking network so that, for example, soon Facebook is expected to launch an algorithm change so that anything that’s checked by the local fact checking network goes into the spam folder for physical users.

That is to say, by default, it doesn’t show it anymore. Then, if you only have one friend, of course, it’s forced to show it. If you have any other friend, it prefers to show other friends’ posts.

If you look specifically into it, you still see it, because it’s not censorship. If you go to that friend’s wall, you can still see a small information icon that says, "This is fact checked by the Taiwan Fact Checking Center and click here to learn more."

This inoculates people’s minds by getting the rumors when it’s still misinformation not necessarily disinformation into everybody’s mind that, "Hey, this is an information manipulation and this is trending but this is the actual truth."

The second part is to make sure that people who influence the propagation of information, for example, there’s popular ways to influence election by buying position targeted social media or otherwise media advertisements.

Now, unless one of them knows transparent campaign donation law, every single donation to every election campaign starting from the previous election is downloadable as open data, as CSV, as Excel spreadsheets, essentially. It’s very transparent. Because of that, people with a lot of money who are not local Taiwanese, they cannot donate to election campaigns.

What they do is they buy advertisement. We see a lot of influx into advertisements in the previous election. Now, we’re passing the same as the US, the Honest Advertisement Act. It’s currently in the parliament. It’s expected to be passed soon.

It says if you, during elections, buy advertisement or otherwise influence the media using money, you have to be held on exactly the same standard as campaign donation. They need to be listed. They need to be public. Only domestic people can sponsor. Foreign people cannot. There will be a large penalty.

Every time, just like the anti money laundering, the platforms, the people who place the ad, the people who pay the writers and so on, they all need to disclose the stakeholders, so they will make sure that the entire chain is within the cap of campaign donation.

This is one of the main vehicles the foreign or other influence is going to meddle the election. I would say legally because we haven’t passed the law yet. [laughs] At work, we’re now blocking that from happening.

On the disinformation, we control the spreading and we make the media literacy part of the K to 12 curriculum. That is within our civic building, vaccination, and antidotes. Then we are also making sure that the people who spread those news through the infusion of cash or whatever is stopped or at least revealed as what exactly they’re doing.

That’s really exciting. Since you touched on foreign involvement, I’ve got a flipside. There could also be people who really want to help contribute to making Taiwan a better place. I’m curious, for example, you have this joint platform where people could provide their suggestions and ideas. I know with the hackathon you are also recruiting other teams.

Yes. Also with sandboxes, there’s a lot of foreign innovators that are interested.

I guess my question is, is there a place or is there a plan for people whether they’re Taiwanese or they’re foreigners who are interested in providing innovative ideas other than the annual hackathon?

Yes. All we’re asking is a resident’s certificate, the ARC. You don’t have to be having a national ID in order to participate in the joint platform or to start a petition. The reason why we passed the Honest Advertisement law that way is because election is restricted to people with voting rights. Naturally, campaign donation is similarly restricted.

To raise an important issue, one of our most active groups in the joint platform is actually people around 14, 15 years old. They started one of the most popular petitions which is banning plastic straws in national identity drinks like the bubble tea. [laughs] That became policy now for indoor drinking.

You need to have a sustainable way like stainless steel or the other recyclable or upcyclable material in place of plastic straws. That is one count of an e petition by a 15 years old. They don’t even have voting rights but they are already very active participants. We’re also encouraging people with resident certificate to participate in the same way. It broaden the definition of citizenry.

To expand on that, let me give you an example to explain where I’m coming from. For example, in one of our meetings, there were two Americans and a Taiwanese American who had suggestions for Taiwan Tourism website. These two Americans had lived in Taiwan before. They are so passionate about everything Taiwanese.

We were sitting around talking about Taiwan and they touched on the issue of the website by the tourism bureau. They were like, "You know there’s so much misspelling. I just wish somebody would tell them to do something about it." I’m saying a suggestion like that in terms of global communications.

I think the bureaucrats are very committed to their work but sometimes they don’t understand the other cultures or languages as well as the locals do. For people from outside of Taiwan, whether they’re Taiwanese or they’re Americans who wanted to contribute ideas to improve our global communications or strategy towards better diplomacy with other countries, is there a way of sharing their perspectives right now? Is there a plan?

Of course. We do have a national bilingual strategy starting this year. There’s a few things. First, all their regulations that concerns partly or mostly foreign people, it’s now required to be bilingual. By giving advance notice to people who...There is a lot of communication gap.

Most foreign people don’t even know that a citizen digital certificate that’s also is available to foreigners. Not many people know that it is or that we’re changing the ARC numbers. It currently starts with two letters while the national start with one letter and a digit. We’re fixing that by changing the second letter into a digit as well. It looks like national IDs.

That enables a lot more service, for example buying train tickets and movie tickets. What we’re saying is that we, of course, welcome everybody to go to the joint platform which has the regulatory commentary period of everything. If it concerns foreign people, we make sure that it’s bilingual. Leave your comments there. That is a good first step.

If you know that your contact or how to reach you, most of the time the ministries do reach you if they have another clarifying issues and so on to talk about. Making yourself a joint platform you can comment on regulations, on budgets, on e petitions and they will all be considered. You can use your native language. That’s the first thing.

Also, I think for websites, we’re rolling out a series of new websites. They are all national level. They all end in taiwan.gov.tw. Previously, what we have heard is that it’s translated from the traditional Chinese website then it’s very difficult to navigate, because it assumes a different cultural context.

Now, if you want to know, for example, how the Taiwan AI strategy is you Google for AI Taiwan and you can get into this new domain that is ai.taiwan.gov.tw. Whenever you see anything that is something.taiwan.gov.tw, it is made with English first, with mobile first, and with an aim to communicate to people with a different culture.

This is the face of Taiwan. The domain name is owned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MoFA. My suggestion would be try a MoFA Taiwan on Twitter and to engage in dialogs on Twitter and other social media of our TECRO and TECO offices. They are now all required to have a social media presence of shared branding.

They will be your window into reaching the tourism bureau, and the other areas. Our bilingual strategy is just starting. If you see something.taiwan.gov.tw or the Presidential Hackathon, which is ph.taiwan.gov.tw, anything you feel that there is a need to improve, let me know on Twitter. I’m audreyt on Twitter. Tweet me.

That means that the suggestions are not limited to domestic issues. You can actually give suggestions for foreign policies.

Yeah, actually the national ID number mismatch is raised by someone on Twitter, who just Tweeting about it. I got back to him about our group resolution and so on. Just do public communication on Twitter. I think that’s the easiest way.

I just have two more questions. They are personal questions for you.

Of course.

Obviously, we know that you have made a decision early on to make a sex change, right?

I’m post gender. I don’t care. My gender’s whatever.

I’m just curious, what does it mean to be a woman, to you? The reason that you wanted to redefine yourself, there’s a drive, a sense of maybe a connection to a certain sex. So what does it mean to be a woman to you?

I’m curious. I went through two puberties. I know something about going through the male puberty as well as the female puberty. The female puberty, of course, connects more with the body. The body asserts itself more. One feel more sympathy and then empathy about their surroundings and so on.

Of course, in each puberty, I’d only spend maybe three years. Any longer would of course cause a lot of social...

...with the family and so on. We’re all very familiar with that. In any case, I think having gone through two puberties lets me relate with people’s experiences more, because people have gone through puberties, most of the people, anyway, that I interact with.

Then people tend to basically assume a different range of social interactions when they’re going through puberties, because of social expectations, social scripts, and so on.

That gives me a larger reach to interact with people to do less with the pre described presumptions, but then also being able to relate how it is like to be, basically, an intersectional perspective on things.

An intersectional perspective means that we all have our more vulnerable moments, more vulnerable positions, but we also each of us have our own advantages, our own uniqueness. Intersectionality means then to take our advantages, our uniqueness, but putting it in a way that empowers people who are currently minorities or otherwise oppressed.

Yeah, I would define myself as post gender, as in, my gender is really whatever. You cannot really offend me. Just call me whatever.

I can tell that life experience made you a more empathetic person, because you’re able to look at things from so many different perspectives.

That’s right.

That’s something I really appreciate and it really comes through. Last question for you, what’s on top of your bucket list?

I’m actually traveling to the US tomorrow early morning. I’m going to Detroit to talk with the International Women’s Association, organized by Taiwanese, I think it’s Taiwan Women’s Association US or something. They have an annual meeting. We’re going to talk about how technology for social good can be uniquely seen from a more feminine perspective.

That is a very interesting topic, and especially starting this year, the US and Taiwan has a mutual interest in fostering women entrepreneurship. That is something that Taiwan is really good at and especially my domain, which is software. Engineering and software design, the gender is very balanced, more so than more hardware oriented fields.

I can bring our perspective that alert people to be more gender sensitive in their designs as well as in being more inclusive. In Taiwan, feminism has really gained large strides. We have a president who has long been an advocate for equality, and then previously our vice president Liu Chao shiuan, as well.

They basically designed an entire local gender impact analysis framework, so that every single policy that Taiwan Central Government passes need to be seen by different gender lenses, and to make sure that it doesn’t systematically exclude people of certain gender in some way.

This is something that I’m very happy in sharing, and now we’re lifting this into a more all the different SDGs can piggyback on this existing impact analysis framework, so that we can also evaluate the impact endangered species, on indigenous people and the other more marginalized groups just as we first designed for women.

That is something that I’m very interested and I’m going to share in Detroit. Then I’m going to DC. There is a lot of meetings and talks about how we can collaborate on fixing this information. That is also Taiwan bucket list.

Awesome. Any chance you want to come out to San Francisco?

Maybe next time. I did visit San Francisco already.

Yeah, I’m sure you have, because you used to work for Apple.

With Apple, but yes.

OK. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for your time.

There are a lot of interesting thoughts that you mentioned today that I can probably share in the event announcement. It’ll be a good intro as well.

We’ll send you a transcript in a day or two, feel free just to co-edit it after we publish, feel free to use it any way you want.

OK. I’ll keep you posted once I have more information.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.