All right.

Thanks so much for meeting with us, especially for later in the evening. We appreciate squeezing us in.

I’m here from DC but I actually live in Oregon these days. Here because Alfred is our new resident director who I believe you met a week ago…

Yeah we just met at the open parliament national action plan event…

It’s always great to meet with you when we’re in town. Some things that we wanted to talk a little bit about were…last time I was part of the delegation that came in September 2019 and had a really interesting conversation.

For me personally, it’d be great to check in on all that. That was before the elections, talking a lot about…

We did it. We fought the infodemic with no takedown.

We didn’t resort to censorship. That was the main point we talked about…

I know.

I was looking through my notes of that meeting, and you brought up the point on democracy. I wrote down, “The foundation of democracy is public health,” which was very presssing at the time. Talking about how fighting pandemics and here we are. [laughs]

We talked about quarantine, the vaccines of the mind – all in a metaphoric sense – and then the pandemic happened.

It would be great to hear a postmortem of sorts of the elections, and the efforts that you were talking about. How that went in terms of the electoral period as well as that the COVID context.

What you and the government, the social sector, have been up to in terms of finding, countering disinformation, and then happy to talk a bit about NDI and our work now that we are opening an office here.

Were you around during the presidential election here?

No, I wasn’t. I just came back last December from Myanmar, from my previous assignment, but I’m from Taiwan. I did watch the news very actively on that day. I had some friends who are very engaged in the process. We went to all the events, and then…I understand, especially at the last election, the presidential election, the Civic Tech Community have contributed to…

Yet they really bonded together. We don’t see the same hyper microtargeting stuff that we saw during the 2018 election. Largest companies all agree to be a little bit more in social media analysts anti social media during [laughs] our presidential election. That’s thanks in a small part for the social sector.

We certainly didn’t enact a law to force them to take those pro social actions. They took it because they probably know they will force social sanction with other sanctions.

Interesting. Do you think to it had to do with sort of what we witnessed in the 2018 elections?

Yeah, definitely, because 2018 is the first election data National Audit Office, also from the pressure of social sector, published as open data, the campaign donation and expanded to in very fine detail. Previously, they only published a summary to the data journalists and investigative reporters.

When analyzing 2018 data set, everybody discovered the same thing, which is that social media advertisement were notably lacking. It’s not filed as campaign expanded, although they should. Our campaign donation refused sources from outside of our jurisdiction. The social media had no such qualms in 2018, which is essentially a loophole.

Basically, the kind of radical transparency non data civil society demanded a national auditing office to fulfill in 2018 turned into this what I call people public partnership against the private sector that had not yet implemented those norms. The people already successfully pressured the public sector for establishing such norms in the first place.

During the 2020 presidential election, we’re the first jurisdiction that for example, Facebook signed on such accord that they agree to make in real time open data or their microtargeting, alongside social and political issues. I understand you’re agreeing on similar things in other jurisdictions, but 2019, is quite early in terms of those infrastructures.

In order to do so they really work very closely with the social sector to identify what exactly is the information manipulation that we’re seeing, how their civic integrative scene need to respond to those emerging issues and so on. This is a real good case of collaboration that none of us resorted to takedowns.

The result is better resilience and better media competence, not just literacy of everyone.

Transparency sort of in a spotlight.

Then if I’m a candidate, I wouldn’t run such micro targeting campaigns, because it will be called out in a g0v voting guide, or from the 公督盟 or from any of those NGOs. I’ll be named and shamed and because of that, I make a rational choice to not make this dark patterns that will get spy without getting caught in 2018.

Looking ahead, the next election is coming up in less than two years, in 2022. The discussion will be around how we tackle disinformation and also how we make sure the election is run without interference from false advertisement, from a harmful disinformation.

I understand there are also some legislative efforts going on this year to amend the election and recall laws to, in a way, prohibit any advertisement sponsorship from foreign entities.

That wasn’t legal to begin with. The loophole was because they didn’t file it as a campaign donation. They file it as something else.

Advertising.

Advertising, right. The advertising were not overtly about any particular candidate but in 2018 because the referenda topics and the mayoral candidate state overlap. It’s very difficult to tear those two apart because in some mayor candidates, they are also initiatives petitioner of a popular referendum.

For example, we had a cooling down period in lobbying our campaign advertising on the street for the candidates, but we didn’t have that for referenda. People could freely spread a small card that tells people to vote such in such a way in the referenda without mentioning mayor candidates by name, but people understand they’re linked.

One of the choices that we’re making in this year’s referendum is whether we continue on to have alternating years of referenda, election, referenda, election as to make sure that these two are not tangled up together, or there’s a upcoming referendum proposal that says, “Let’s go back to tie them together.”

That’s very meta.

That is very, very meta. Of course, whatever passes the referenda, we need to implement it for at least two years. The next referenda will be bound by the upcoming referenda, whether people prefer it to be tied to the election or not to tie the election. The acts will change a little bit differently depending on how the upcoming referendum goes.

If they are tied together, then you have to change also the referendum act, not just the election act, because they are going to be on the same day again.

Yeah, to make sure you have both.

That’s right, to make sure that the same loophole doesn’t exist in the upcoming referendum/election. Of course, if people choose at the end to continue having alternate years, then that’s one last thing to worry about.

Got it, because you don’t have that issue.

Yeah.

If they are tied together, we’re going to have a 12 hour, 14 hour long voting and counting process again. If you remember last time, it was painful day for some.

Yeah, it was really painful, especially for people who work in the voting booth. They have to work really long hours. If we continue to do that, maybe there won’t be that many volunteers anymore…

We do so because we make sure that each paper ballot, when it’s counted, is filmed by the YouTubers of all different campaigns. That’s very costly in terms of time.

On the other hand, though, it makes sure the disinformation about the electoral process itself doesn’t spread, because everybody can trust their camp’s YouTubers. That’s still a cost worth paying. Look at the US, what would happen without that?

We could make more improvements into actual logistics, but we shouldn’t just go straight to internet voting.

Interesting. We’re very excited to see the launch of the first time ever Open Government National Action Plan.

Yeah, by both the legislature and the administration.

Yeah. As you know, we’ve been working with the parliament inside the alliance. It’d be great to…My understanding is you have the plan finished and drafted.

Already signed and published!

In Chinese, but now you’re working on…

We do have the English translation.

We are doing the final…

Final.

It’s finalized. It’s just a matter of uploading it. [laughs]

Good to know.

Good to know. It would be great to hear about that phrase.

Feel free to share the finalized version because it’s finalized.

Maybe there’s another press launch, then the plan…

Currently we’re not scheduling a press event, mostly because for the administration side, there’s something we already public committed to do. I like the LY side, which is quite innovative because there’s nothing in the OGP per say that says that the open parliament plan needs to be published in conjunction with the administration. Is a new thing.

For the administration, everybody knows that we’re doing this since at least a couple of years ago. There’s less newsworthiness, but if you want to time a recent event with a conversation or some elaboration about some aspects within our administration’s NAP, that would be great because the administration’s NAP is all encompassing.

They are focused on, for example, empowerment of previously excluded stakeholders, new immigrants, indigenous people, people younger than 18, and so on.

That’s worth an event by itself, probably, but that’s not going to be the same event as, for example, beneficial ownership or some other corporate responsibility, transparency around country money and money laundering, and stuff completely different. [laughs]

Different audience.

…makes more sense to focus on subtopics if you want to run the event together.

Interesting. That’s good to know.

That’s great. We just attended the OMSF meeting this morning with the whole lot and it was exciting. They are already talking about ways to structure a task force to conduct the mid term review, and also the IRM report and they’re hoping to conduct the review and the report by the end of next year. It’s a half point of the policy.

We would like to be part of the process and also support the exchange between the IRM team here and also our board of experts within our own global network. We’re excited to be part of that process.

Awesome. We do have an upcoming cross Yuan effort, which is the Presidential Hackathon. The previous year we co hosted with the AIT. It is already having the buying in terms of participation of many other countries. There’s an international track and domestically, all the five Yuans have participated.

That’s also a place where, for example, if there’s new data sets coming out from the parliament because of the National Action Plan of open parliament, that would be the great place to showcase that to the Presidential Hackathon people.

Previously people more look into, say, the auditing office or the Examination Yuan and so on. They don’t necessarily think about the parliament when they think about data sources that the parliaments are people who send their requests.

If there are actual data sets to work with, I’m sure that it will be quite sensational at the Presidential Hackathon press conferences.

One is supposed to be an annual event now?

It is an annual event. We are in the fourth year now. It’s SDG Index, anything corresponding to the global goals is fair game.

Is part of it?

That’s right.

That’s great. One thing too I wanted to let you know about is, NDI so long with the work that we’re doing with the parliament and we’re continuing to do some work on information integrity, doing some virtual workshops with civic tech groups here.

We’re also planning to coming out of our new office here, doing a regional program that’s focused on youth engagement, on transparency, open government, and anti corruption issues.

Part of that program is going to be bringing young folks from Southeast Asia and Pacific Islands, South Asia, across the board, and the region, to bring them to Taipei for leadership academies and why not to meets stakeholders here and learn about Taiwan experiences, tools and resources.

Still figuring out when we’ll be able to do…

COVID-free travel.

…COVID-free travel. We’re hoping, soon enough, maybe by the end of the year, but certainly or hopefully, next year at the latest. Wanted to let you know because it’d be great to involve your office as well as other agencies and departments in the EY.

The US State Department’s summit for democracy is scheduled around the end of the year for exactly the same reason. [laughs]

Everyone scheduling everything at the end of the year because they’re all our fingers crossed [laughs] that we can travel. We’ll see.

We made a few calls with different government offices and interests to introduce our program this year and then everyone said, “Oh, we also have something scheduled for December. We’ll also have something toward the end of the year.”

Very merry Christmas.

It probably happens, I can imagine. Our holiday season is going to be canceled this year if we can actually fly. [laughs]

At least, for Americans, there’s only three week period between Thanksgiving and before the holidays. [laughs] It’s going to be…I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll cram it all in. We’re hoping.

I understand the open parliament forum and MOFA is working on with LY. They’re also planning it towards the end of the year, possibly in December. It’d be great if we can align some of our events with events going on here, for example, we can bring our youth participants to come here and also to participate in the forum.

Our Presidential Hackathon ceremony is also December 12. It’s all in the same couple of weeks.

That’s great if we can align those events, so our cohort can have the best of Taiwan in one go.

That’s right.

It’s going to be super hectic. [laughs]

I know.

That could be fascinating. We’re also working with civic tech groups here to help mainstream civic technology into that program. That’s what we’re doing with organizations on the ground in Southeast Asia. We’re excited about that.

We have a few, of course, the idea is to bring the same cohort to come to Taipei every four to five months because we want to have a longer engagement.

Just like the heartbeat, keeping beating.

Yes.

Yeah. [laughs] Exactly.

That’s why we’re trying right now to identify a few themes, so that every time their visit can be more systematic. Civic tech would probably be a core theme of one of their visits. It makes sense to bring people to Taiwan, especially, Taiwan is actually advancing on those issues regarding disinformation, and also how we mobilize civic tech communities for public benefits.

These experiences would be a very good opportunity for our youth fellows to learn and also to interact with the key stakeholders here.

Definitely. In Taiwan we already finally see democracy as a form of technology that could be developed. If people take this particular iteration of our digital democracy ideas and try them out in their own jurisdiction, for example, the Cofacts had a really good partnership with the Chulalongkorn University and Thailand people.

Oh, yeah. We heard about that.

Which had good innovations or the Code for Japan people which worked with the Tokyo Metropolitan dashboard counter COVID. That’s a beautiful collaboration with g0v people in the same counter COVID efforts.

Our mask availability map is actually just months after our introduction of that idea last February. In March, people from South Korea already pressured their government saying that, “If Taiwan can do open API why are we still approving data?”

All this show that democracy could be something, is continuously applied not just once every four years.

Piggybacking off of that, I’d be curious to hear a bit more on your COVID response in the technology realm. Were you able to use any of the strategies that you developed during the elections?

Definitely.

How you shifted or changed or even challenges that you ran into? Things that didn’t work?

We talked about humor over rumor during our previous conversation. At that time, it was about our premier saying that, “You will not get fined for perming your hair multiple times but you may go bald.”

Yeah.

Yes.

I remember I saw that. I personally saw that.

Right, and that was really effective.

Got it.

During COVID, pretty much the same playbook is used but with more players than just the premier. The premier continued to contribute, for example, wiggling his bottoms saying that [laughs] each of us only have one pair of bottoms. It doesn’t pay to stockpile tissue papers. [laughs]

That was tissue paper panic buying.

Yeah.

Truly a masterstroke, and people share it very virally. There was a real tissue paper panic buying. When people see that, “Oh, yeah. We can’t use that much anyway.”

Tissue paper material are different from mask material. The nationalized mask production is not going to hurt tissue papers. That message reached everyone in just a couple of days and the panic buying stopped. Exactly the same tactic as the going bald perming hair thing.

People thought the mask production was using resources…?

Using tissue paper materials, which is why people are panic buying.

Got it, in case that was spreading?

That’s right. The [laughs] disinformation, we eventually traced its origin, is by [laughs] tissue paper resellers.

Oh, my God.

Go figure it out.

Of course. That’s funny.

In addition to our premier, which continues to [laughs] literally making himself a butt of jokes…

The Shiba Inu, the very cute dog, we have a official spokesdog of the counter pandemic effort, and the Shiba Inu helped a lot, for example, around mask use. One of the most striking difference between our public communication around mask use and, for example, the US one, with all due respect, is that…

…the Taiwanese message appeals to rational self interest. We say, and the cute dog says in a very eloquent fashion, that, “Wear a mask to protect your own face against your own unwashed hands.”

It doesn’t mention other people at all. It just say wear a mask so you won’t do the thing that this dog is doing, which is literally putting food into his dog mouth.

We say, “ 嚴禁吃手手.” [laughs]

That is so cute.

That is really cute.

This is super cute, and physical distancing. [laughs] The beauty of this message is that it’s very much easy to remind each other.

Yeah.

We just say, “Remember to put a mask. Remember to wash your hands,” without accusing other people. In the US message, which what I’ve seen, is, “Respect the elderly. Respect the frontline health workers. Respect each other.” It’s a more Confucian collectivist message. [laughs]

That doesn’t work because people are shy from reminding each other that. People who do obey that doesn’t virally spread this message because it’s not fun. It talks about a sense of duty. This is fun. Protecting your own face against your own hands. This gets much more viral.

That’s…yeah…because the counterargument to helping other people by wearing a mask is it’s my choice, like freedom. That’s interesting. You actually have to target the benefits for yourself of wearing a mask.

In a more individualist fashion.

Completely flipping the stereotypes around. The humor over rumor playbook play a large part. We are very fortunate that we have institutionalized these collaborations with comedians.

The participation officer idea — which we also briefly talked about — a dedicated team to engage the public like hashtags it’s now firmly embedded in the Ministry of Culture.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare, for example, the participation officer literally lives with his stock. After each press conference, they walk a couple of blocks back home, take new photos, and then publish.

The Ministry of Culture houses the officers.

…of Health and Welfare.

Then they go to say, “We’re seeing this. We need your help to come up with something. Take some stock photos.”

Exactly. The PO, the Preservation Officer is both a communication expert and also in charge of handling citizens’ initiatives and petitions. For example, when a young boy called saying in last April saying, “Hey, you are rationing out our mask, but why all the friends in my class, all the boys got navy blue, but all my household got is pink?”

The boy doesn’t want to wear pink to school. That gets escalated to the same participation officer. Based on their suggestion, the minister of health and welfare, as well as the medical officer in the next 2:00 PM daily press conference, all wore pink. Pink became the most hip color.

At the POs suggestion, the minister of health even said, “Pink Panther was their childhood hero.” The boy become the most hip boy because only he has color the heroes wear and heroes’ heroes wear. For just three weeks or so, all the social media of all the trending brands turned pink.

Everything we’ve got…trying to wear a pink…

Is a great gender mainstreaming move. We moved beyond reacting to this information. This is about agenda setting by the people, by this young boy, and then we just amplify within 24 hours.

That’s so clever. [laughs]

It’s like vaccination of the mind. [laughs]

Mask is about protection. Pink is for everyone. Once this idea gets to people like with Pink Panther and all that, and then they won’t fall into this gender stereotype or counter mask use or whatever tropes.

Can I ask? Just because this is in the US in particular, and I know also globally with the vaccine development. There’s the debate of people who will or won’t take the vaccine.

How are you? I know Taiwan is developing its own, and then there’s also the recent shipment of…As you now are entering the vaccine phase, how is the administration handling it?

It’s all about familiarity. The reason why the mask use is prevalent in Taiwan is because we already wear a mask first for, say, air pollution or pretty much anything else.

The reason why mask collection at pharmacies works so well is because people already get their refilling prescriptions, drugs, and things like that at a local community pharmacy using their health card.

Even the very old people don’t need to learn new things when collecting the mask. We were able to do the digital fans based on the phone based location tracking for quarantine observation because people are already used to get earthquake warnings and flood warnings in exactly the same way without having to enable Bluetooth or installing an app.

This building our familiarity is the key to get the public health measures taken. If you invent a new system during the pandemic, that will not work because the privacy or civil security implications is unknown to the people. Therefore the conspiracy theories will have a field day.

For example, our vaccination center location tracker, the map, is the domain name, is the same as the flu shot one. It’s just a few different parameters, but you use the familiar because a record high number of people got the flu shot.

This year. Yeah, of course.

[laughs] Making sure that they already did a dress rehearsal [laughs] to everything that’s required, especially for vaccines that do not need super low temperatures, that’s going to shape exactly like the flu shots.

Using the same healthcare cards, using the same map to track the shots where it’s delivered the same usability way that’s already tested when reporting flu symptoms to the post vaccination symptoms and so on. The less people need to learn new systems, the more likely they would just treat it as a flu shot.

In terms of dis or misinformation, you’ll just utilize the strategies, yeah.

The same cute dog.

The same cute dog. What’s his name?

Zongchai, which is a wordplay in itself. It says 總柴 is a Shiba Inu, but Zongchai means CEO. [laughs]

CEO Shiba Inu.

CEO Shiba Inu or the dog meme, that’s the Shiba Inu. Doge means CEO. [laughs] It’s a wordplay in many languages.

I love that. I love dogs. That would work for me. [laughs]

The Internet has been for cute dogs and occasionally cute cats.

It’s not just the photo. Sometimes there’s also some really cute drawing and cute memes. Sometimes it’s just better to get the message across by sharing this memes instead of going through a long reasoning process or going through a debate.

Definitely, once you spread the idea of measuring physical distance in terms of the number of Shibas.

Indoor keep three dogs away. Outdoor keep two dogs away. You can’t unsee that.

I wonder, do the other thing is possible or it has something to do with the fact that the way Taiwanese people access information or how we would like to process information through visual form, through digital forms?

That’s because universal broadband is a human right. Anyone, for just $16 a month, gets unlimited bidirectional network connection.

Here?

Here, yes. It is a human right. If you don’t, it’s my fault. You can write to me.

People did write to me.

To complain?

Right, to complain. Someone have written a few months ago saying, “I’m in the Bayto Area and in group quarantine. You promise broadband is a human rights that we can enjoy the 14 days with Netflix, but actually, in the site closer to the mountain, I sent this email almost three hours of retrying.

There’s just packet lost all the way. The five telecoms didn’t cover this area. The other parts of the quarantine hotel works though and so on.” It’s very long complaint.

We worked with the CHT to NCC and so on to set it up. After just two weeks, we’ve got a new telecom tower in that corner and providing for high bandwidth. Of course, they have already out of quarantine…

…but I did write to them. [laughs]

Yeah. You’re like, “I tried.”

We tried. Of course, that’s a very good political commitment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in a quarantine hotel near the mountain. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the top of Taiwan, like literally almost 4,000 meters high. We’re guaranteed to send helicopters, even so to make broadbands accessible.

Because of that, of course, people prefer visual and video forms because there’s no marginal cost. You already paid $17 per month, unlimited upload, so why not livestream 24 hours a day? That’s one of the underlying reasons.

When the vaccine is widely available in Taiwan, at least we have the system in place to facilitate the rollout. I was just thinking because not just this COVID vaccine but in previous flu shots. We also faced some, I would say probably not disinformation but doubts as to, “Are we procuring the right vaccine? Are we procuring enough vaccine?”

That’s a global thing. [laughs] You can’t find a jurisdiction that’s not having this conversation.

I’m wondering if you or your office is also doing something to prepare for the future possible doubts or disinformation that’s going to spread around the COVID vaccine rollout.

If something that’s strictly within the ministry…I’m a minister at large. I work on things that are across ministerial, but if something does within a single ministry, then usually the preservation officer in the Ministry of Health and Welfare takes care of that.

We are connected. If they need something from another ministry, then, of course, they would brief me. Otherwise, in a day to day things, they operate on their own ministry. Feel free to reach out to the…

To the PO?

Yeah, to the PO.

Interesting. Every ministry…

…has a team.

…and even third level or fourth level agencies sometimes all have their own POs as well as, so more than 100 people now, I think.

Do you have any other questions?

No. Thank you. That’s very informative and also to give us a sense as to how we should structure our future events, future programs. Moving forward, definitely, we’ll have to promote the civic community here, trying to connect local communities with our network. That is something that we would like to do very much right after COVID. [laughs]

We see our office here. A lot of what we’ll be doing is working regionally and helping share Taiwan’s successes and experiences around the region. We’re excited that we have our office and we have Alfred. We’d love to stay in touch.

Awesome.

Thanks so much for meeting us so late as well.

Sure. Just because you mentioned youth engagement, each ministry can send a secondment into my office, for example, Frances, our foreign service secondments. We also have secondment from the Ministry of Education, because one of my subject areas, in addition to open government and social innovation, is youth engagement.

Great.

The international outreach for, for example, the Youth Development Agency and so on, that’s my job. If you have any upcoming programs that link to youth engagement, both domestic and international, chances are we’ll find you resources.

Fantastic. I didn’t realize that.

Frances can introduce our YDA and MOE secondment to you…

Fantastic.

…or a working level meeting.

Again, when we’re bringing the fellows here, we really want to increase peer to peer engagement as well, so great.

That’s right, and MLE also have a lot of KPAD, they couldn’t meet through video conferencing alone, so it is a natural idea.

We had a meeting at MOFA yesterday and they were telling us about their, what’s it called, the youth ambassador.

Youth ambassador.

That’s right.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to link bring people in, you know alumni.

…they can probably meet in Taiwan before they head out for their mission, because this year there are a lot of uncertainty and I think MOFA is not really decided yet as to when or how to conduct or to assemble this year’s youth ambassadors.

What I mean, if we can just align our activities and while we bring our people to Taiwan, and then if there is a group of US ambassadors already in country, it would be a great chance to have that exchange before the event.

The YDA has quite a few programs of that shape so that we can figure out what needs to happen before the holiday season or the non holiday season.

Or whatever.

There for like the extended well beyond 2021…

Many more Christmases. [laughs]

Exactly.

…hopefully, this is a long term engagement. Good to know that we have the resources here.

Thank you so much, it’s so fun to talk to you. Good luck with the vaccine rollout, but I know you guys will be fine.

We’ll be fine.

Not worried about you.

Thanks to the physical vaccines, that’s masks.

It’s incredible.