I’ll keep the video off because we are in transit. Malcolm lost us. Sorry about the noise but we are in transit to Ukraine to meet with the presidential administration there. My point is very simple. I love everything that you’re doing when it comes to the all-digital innovation in Taiwan.

Glenn is by far one of the greatest geniuses, I think, that the world has ever known. Everything he is doing with radical markets is superb. As simple as that. My point is very simple, to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

I have been mentioning to the Ukrainian government officials that they should take note of everything that is being done when it comes to radical markets, crowd law, but my work is definitely an example to follow. Everything that she has been doing for years with crowd law, definitely the way forward.

My point is very simple. What is the most efficient way to track your progress, what you’re doing when it comes to these ideas in Taiwan? Facebook went out as social media. How can we, basically, copy-paste, these solutions as far as Ukraine is concerned?

There are three levels. One is the everyday work that I do and actually easily track that using my website, which includes the blog and things like that. That is, by far, the easiest to track thing. Not all of those toolkits are widely copy-able.

Even if you copy certain parts of the technologies, the best reference I can give is the participation officer website, which is in English also, that we give as training material for the public service in all levels. That is the public service layer. Finally, there’s also the layer of the civic technologies themselves.

In that, any software developer can easily set up the software system that we use day-to-day, be it Sandstorm.io, Pol.is, or things like that. These are, as I said, whether it is the day-to-day work formula, whether it is the design of the public service or whether these are the technological components, none are readily copy paste-able. Rather, they are just a toolkit that should…

…based on the political situation you are actually in and based on who gives the accountability promise. In our design, the presidential hack-a-thon, the President gives the promise or in our petitions, it’s the Premier, the Prime Minister, that gives the promise.

Or, in the sense of the delegates joining our office using those collaborative tools, it’s the section chiefs or director generals that join that give the promise. You need to determine who is giving the final accountability promise first and then, design the process based on the real political willpower that you have from the guarantees.

It can be done, of course, as an outside game. People can occupy the parliament, of course, that gives another source of legitimacy like we have done in 2014.

Any legitimacy building way is OK but you have to have a legitimacy framework before embarking on any of these crowd law issues.

For sure. Everything to do with legitimacy is very strong when it comes to the Ukrainian case because the current president has won his office with an overwhelming majority. Now, his party holds, by far, the largest majority in the history of Ukraine when it comes to parliament. The strong legitimacy is there but this is legitimacy on the election day.

From my point of view, this legitimacy should be reinforced with, basically, crowd law. Open government to the fullest possible extent and digital engagement at all levels. The way I, personally, see it, on this point, I agree with Zuckerberg when he said that votes are the new apps.

The more digital government is integrated in messengers – it doesn’t matter whether it’s Facebook or WhatsApp, Telegram, doesn’t really matter – as long as it’s done with all the checks and balances in mind. These are the solutions that we are crowdsourcing at the moment.

We are shopping for the best ideas to take this forward but when it comes to the ideology, let’s say, definitely radical markets, quadratic voting, crowd law, everything that have been published. What you’re doing in Taiwan, I’ve seen the work that has been done on Pol.is.

From this point, we should definitely take note and copy-paste as much as possible because we have a lot of programmers, the political will is strong, but we need to have the solutions that work at the moment. One other thing that I really admire when it comes to Taiwan, decades ago, you have introduced a receipt lottery.

We’re running the receipt lottery, yes. It’s also electronic now.

Obviously, it has to be. We are in the 21st century. My point is very simple. An idea that we have is to build an engagement tool, so a vote that can be introduced. For me, at least, the simplest example is with the Telegram channel. On the Telegram channel, you really only have one-way communication. It’s very straightforward.

Underneath each post, for example, suggest a new initiative. You can have a vote with quadratic voting, where people will be voting according to their preferences. The money that is deducted from the electronic vote, wallets, will go towards the implementation of this specific issue with very strong visual and financial analytics.

Let’s say we are voting for more electric power stations to charge electric cars. This will be a way to subsidize the installation of the power stations to recharge electric cars. Then, everyone becomes a stakeholder in the implementation. In effect, it’s going to become an offering. Everyone who has voted to support it will be receiving revenue according to this.

Then, there are two parts. One is either to run a receipt lottery so that people are even more encouraged. People are, effectively, engaging in the government transaction. When they are voting with quadratic voting, you can also run a receipt lottery through that so that you can have daily winners so that people are actually looking forward to expressing their will.

Again, receipt lottery together with quadratic voting. That would be one of the simplest ways. We have something more sophisticated but the development work on that will be done by the end of the year. Then, it will be my pleasure to share it with you and please give me your critical feedback on that.

This will be atop specifically putting together all pieces of the puzzle to generate the highest level of engagement possible together with everything that you have been doing over the year. Much as the radical market said yes but also the centralized ID and social graphs, his work on social graphs. I’m not sure if you are familiar with that but this is something…

Sure.

Yes, there you go. Really putting all these pieces of the puzzle together and we are extremely fortunate in Ukraine that we have something called [foreign language] , which is a crazy group for APIs. We can put all different APIs together, literally, 10 times faster and at least 8 times cheaper than any other solution. This is how the largest bank in Ukraine was built from scratch. Currently, we have 22 million people in one bank and it’s a very powerful tool to spread any digital reform countrywide.

The whole country, let’s say, is 40 million. You have 22 in one bank. This is the situation here. It would be my honor to share this with you and if you are anxious to hear your feedback on that once it’s ready by the end of the year.

My main question is, I already asked, what is the binding power? As far as I understand, there was a draft law on public consultation but it went into a deadlock last year, last September, where the plant law was returned to the administration. The administration did not make significant amendments.

That will, supposedly, give the kind of system design you just had, a legal basis for the national level consultations but as far as I understand, currently, the normative legal act is only on the citizen’s appeal in the local level petitions. At which level of law and which level of binding power will your system be accounting for?

This is what I go and need to check because I have been on the road for quite some time. I’ve been to India, to Dubai, and so all over the world. Before my departure, I met with the highest-ranking government official on this regard and they were still holding consultations.

For them, it was important to ensure that, literally, every vote counts. As I said, I’m now, in one hour, I will be back to Ukraine and I’ll check on that.

I think something that has a basis in the existing legal system, of course, is more sustainable because then, it doesn’t depend on the goodwill of a single politician. Especially when the result isn’t 100 percent agreeable to that politician, you really need a legal and institutionalized framework to uphold the result.

The initial experiment topic is also very important. We chose, for example, teleworking. In Taiwan, about the first issues exactly because there was no union of teleworkers and there’s no associations of companies that employ teleworkers.

There’s, literally, no other way to get feedback from the society in a traditional representative system, so the government is open to suggestions. The same holds for UberX. If you choose your initial topics in such an early stage discovery rather than define stage issues, then, of course, I can see the kind of voice credits that you just mentioned coupled with some sort of identity social graph system on Telegram.

That could work but if you choose the initial topic so much so that it’s already well into the development and delivery stage, then no amount of technology can actually establish the legitimacy over the existing representative system. That’s my firsthand experience. That may have some applicability in your scenario as well.

100 percent. I am deeply grateful to you for this comment because I read a little bit on Taiwan, whatever I could find but definitely, this point made a very strong impression on me. The earlier these things are settled, the smoother the road is later on.

Definitely. Thank you so much. Very clear to me. Thank you. I’ll make this point very clear to the officials on our side. I really appreciate it. We also have Malcolm on our call. Malcolm, are you there? I think we lost him. Never mind because it’s his birthday today and he’s a huge admirer of the work that you’re doing.

Malcolm? There you go.

Yes. It’s nice to see you again. I filmed at the event in Berlin. I was really deeply impressed with your presentation, especially, a couple of things. One of them, I think, is really critical to mention here is that the level of engagement that Taiwan has achieved is higher than any I have seen in any of the other places.

In Rio, they’re talking about 600,000 people and you have 10 million and half the population. When attending the meetings in Ukraine, the putting the different pieces together…

You froze, I think.

I’m sorry he froze. That’s why…

That’s OK.

…video. Yeah, Malcolm.

I’ll cut the video just in case it helps with bandwidth. There were so many ideas that Alexander has on the technological side but would really love to get your input on the engagement side of how you were able to so successfully get almost half the population involved?

I really see that for some of the ideas that Alexander is looking to raise forward with the government, this level of participation that you have received is so critical.

I do agree with that point. We did not go to here overnight. The 10 million people were just, a year ago, 5 million people, and a year ago, maybe half of that. It was exponential growth.

I think the reason is that people really saw some of their petitions and some of their engagement really resulted in meaningful change in policy, especially, for example, the most popular ones being animal rights, environmental sustainability, and transportation.

A lot of those, I would say, very tangible changes were done by people who petitioned and then, of course, people would engage more.

Sorry, Malcolm. One point that is of great interest and perhaps, we can take again, copy-paste, try to copy-paste this solution from you. What about participatory budgets? Are you involved that you’re focusing on when it comes to participatory budgets or are you doing any work in this regard?

Yes. Taiwan began its experiment in PBs, I think, around 2014, where the local legislators in the council level were working one single district started using their discretionary budget in the new Taipei City city council.

One city councilor, whose office head is a head of district. They started working on a very small-scale participatory budget that involved maybe a hundred or a thousand people. From there on, people saw that it is really working.

It began experimenting in first cities, like all the districts in the Taipei City and then, Taichung and Kaohsiung City for a while. Then, it started to be adopted by, for example, the Taipower, the energy company, to introduce novel energy-saving activities.

Finally, as of this year, it’s adopted at a level of the country so that up to 10 percent of the original development fund is now done in a participatory way through the idea of original revitalization.

Of course, all of this can be Googled but the point here, the main learning here is that only when a civil society knows how to run PB in an effective manner – and that takes a few tries – can it be scaled up into another level of jurisdiction. If you start from a national level, you’re probably going to fail unless you design it for a very, very specific case.

Another set of witnesses of the effectiveness of PB was in Taoyuan City, where they work with migrant workers, who do not have the right to vote, about facilities pertaining to migrant workers.

This is, of course, really an expensive thing to do, logistic-wise because they have to translate across four languages but because they are not normally voters, there’s no alternative way to participate anyway. It received a lot of enthusiasm.

It’s not perceived as something that hinders the existing democratic process because there were no democratic process for that. That is also why in our system, 15-year-olds get a lot of voice because they don’t have any voice in voting anyway, so they devote their time on the alternative, new, day-to-day participation facilities.

Basically, it’s the same as the teleworking case for vTaiwan. If your constituents had no other choice to express their voices, they’re much more willing to try.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Can’t wait to get to Ukraine and go through this. Thank you, really appreciate it. The Digital Minister in Ukraine, he is very young but extremely enthusiastic. With your permission, I will convey all the information to him.

My hope is that the two of you can co-create as much as possible and, ultimately, that you have time to visit Ukraine and see how both of our places can work together.

Sure. Of course, the whole right of exchange movement has a lot more network and connections but we are always happy to share our experiences through teleconference and so on. I’m sure that in Kiev, there’s also a Taipei office, I think. We do have consulate people, so I’m really happy to introduce people to our consulate.

Thank you so much, really appreciate it. Malcolm, I’m sorry, I cut you off, so, please.

Just one other thing is I’d love to hear how you shared the successes because, in terms of getting engagement, people need to know and feel progress. How do you create that communication loop with them so that they feel that what they’re contributing is being heard and turning into success stories, which, then, feeds more engagement?

I’m really interested in this upward spiral of collaborative engagement that you have with people and I’m trying to find a way to create that in Ukraine, potentially.

I think there’s a few things. If you participate in one of the petitions, which by definition, is over 5,000 people. Of course, people already mobilize themselves, so when their petition becomes a reality, they do have their own way to produce films, clips, and so on, to celebrate their success.

We also make sure that in my columns I write every couple of weeks, in “April Daily,” one of the largest newspapers and also, every three weeks on “Business Weekly,” again, one of the largest magazines that have online and paper versions. I insist on getting a creative commons license so they only have the right to publish first but then, I publish on my blog the very next day.

If you were to look at my blog, you would see, basically, how I go about and share the success cases and, sometimes, with films as well. A lot of people discovered that how people engage into, for example, diplomatic policies and so on, and find their suggestions turned into real policies simply by reading the blog, either in printed form or in the blog.

Of course, there’s also some YouTube channels. We also make short films. We even made a [foreign language] , which is a comic book to share a particular success story in all the six languages in Taiwan so that people can read even in indigenous languages about the success case that was the co-creation of the text filing experience.

If you’re interested in that, I can share our issue account with you so that you can read these comics. I’m sure that there’s an English version. If you want to translate into the Ukrainian language, feel free to because we relinquish the copyright, do anything about it.

Fantastic. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that because the President’s background is in movies, so definitely when it comes to great engagement and whatever. Fantastic stuff. Thank you so much for sharing.

One last thing that I thought was also really profoundly interesting was how you changed the game around transparency. When you have a meeting, you say, “You can meet with me but understand that this will be televised or filmed as a YouTube clip and/ or done as a transcript.”

Because, then, instead of people petitioning for their self-interest, they’ll speak to the common good because everyone can see what they’re saying. I think that that was absolutely a phenomenal innovation.

Given the challenges with pre-existing processes in Ukraine, I think that is going to be a difficult shift for people who normally petition for their private interests. I thought it was absolutely brilliant, that success. Did you get a lot of pushback from the people…?

No, not at all because it only applies to myself anyway. I just pasted to you the protocol and feel free to copy-paste that as well. It’s radical transparency in the sense that it’s transparency at the root. It doesn’t mean that we’re live-streaming anything, right?

For example, this recording will probably not be on YouTube because you are a voice only, so we’ll probably do a transcript. You’re free to, for example, add additional supplemental information. If you talk about a third-party person’s anecdotal story and they have not cleared it for publication, you can edit it away.

The point is that you put in extra effort to make it less transparent if needed but if you don’t do anything, it’s transparent by default.

Beautiful. That’s the way to proceed from this…

It was really incredible.

Thank you so much. I really do appreciate your time. Really, I can talk about this for hours but I’m sure you are extremely busy so my deepest gratitude for sharing all these points.

Thank you. Once we share this transcript, also, feel free to let me know when it’s OK to publish. Usually, we publish within 10 days. We can do so sooner. I just share this as a link to your further meetings and I’ll be happy to set up similar meetings with other stakeholders and, eventually, of course, defer to one of the civil society partners because I’m not going to travel to Ukraine the following months.

Maybe you’ll have to wait quite a bit. I will be back in Berlin, though, in April but, of course, I’ll defer to the local non-profit and chapters and other people sympathizing with this idea to collaborate with you on the development part of things.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. My point is seriously to connect the radical market chapters around the world as much as possible, particularly through Telegram. What I’m seeing, this is the most efficient platform to communicate, where you can share 1.5-gigabyte files instantly. It is convenient. The same for movies and everything else.

…with Telegram? What’s your capacity vis-à-vis Telegram?

Look, it’s very simple. Me, my colleagues, we have been friends with Pavel and Christine for many years. One of the things we are doing, we have been helping them as much as we could in whatever issues that they had.

One particular place is innovation. When it comes to creating a hackathon, this is the open network hackathon for Telegram open network. Some of the projects that have been in the works for years, and actually, any project, it can have a breach to Telegram blockchain.

What we are doing, on January 1st, there will be over 200 projects that will be publicized because, as I said, this has been going on for many, many years. Now, it’s time to make it public and throw them out. Publicity is key to spreading the good word and getting people on board.

This is one thing. Another dream of mine is to crowdsource the most powerful way for an independent legal system globally.

That’s the Optima One, right?

Exactly. That’s the Optima One. Absolutely. That’s everything to do with Optima One. Even the Telegram open network, it is a great way forward but what about collaboration with other platforms without the messengers? For me, the only optimal way lies through collaboration, not competition.

Thank you. That’s the background I need to know.

Good luck on getting the Optima One rolled out.

Thank you so much. Thank you, really appreciate it.

Thank you. Good to see you again. Take care. Thank you.

Thank you. Take care. Cheers. Bye-bye.

Cheers. Bye-bye.