I would like to remind that we have a radical transparency protocol, so we will do the audio recording during the meeting time, and that we will make a transcript.

Yeah, but we won’t publish directly. Everybody get 10 days at least to co-edit. Feel free to take away any confidential or trade secret…

We will release it at a time we both agree.

Yeah.

No problem. Thank you so much.

We learned that from multistakeholder Internet governance.

I heard that a lot. I think you are probably the first and only minister who will record and publish all the meetings.

We had the hardest time convincing BBC HARDtalk…

…to let us publish the transcript of their interview. They are like, “Are you infringing journalistic independence?” We’re like, “No, we can embargo until you publish.”

In fact, on the way to Taipei, I was at the airport. The TV was playing BBC, and I saw your face on it.

The HARDtalk.

There was no audio on, so I couldn’t tell what topic.

Talking about Internet, connectivity, non-geostationary orbit, like Starlink, SES, and so on. We’re very interested in that.

I see. Thank you again, Minister, for taking the time to meet us. I wanted to take the opportunity, first of all, because during the whole pandemic, we haven’t had the opportunity to visit Taiwan for a long time. In fact, I feel that I’ve already known you because we’ve been on the same events a number of times, but actually, we’ve not met…

This is high definition.

The other opportunity also is because with the establishment of your new ministry, and we have new GAC representatives on ICANN, I thought I’d also take this opportunity to come and meet with the representatives and to get to know one another.

Again, to build personal relationships and explore how we can further strengthen our working relationship going forward.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, Kenny and Kuo-Wei, for facilitating this and making this possible.

You’ve probably already met. Did you introduce yourself?

Yes, I already did.

Then we will skip that part.

We talked about the radical transparency protocol. This is actually something that is also new to the public service as well. I understand many of you would like to have the possibility of speaking Mandarin, if that’s OK with you (Jia-Rong)? If they speak in Mandarin, then we’ll also make a Mandarin transcript, but our working language, at least for me, will be English.

I’m fine with either language, but we were discussing about the transcript. They were asking me do I prefer the transcript in English or Chinese. I was like, “If I have to choose a language, then the working language for me English as well.” That’s why I said, “OK, let’s do the meeting English.” Or, we can switch back and forth.

Excellent.

Maybe we start with our collaboration with ICANN, especially what can we do for ICANN.

I can talk about our relationship if you agree minister.

Sure, of course.

Minister, you might already have been briefed by your team as to ICANN’s mission.

Yep.

Our mission is to maintain a single interoperable Internet. To do that, we need the participation and support of multi-stakeholders around the world. I’m very grateful for your support of the multistakeholder model.

Within ICANN, we see very strong support and participation from multi-stakeholders. For that, we are very grateful. I’ll take the opportunity to share some of the participation that’s already been at ICANN. For example, Kuo-Wei has been a long-standing board member of ICANN for a long time, until he eventually stepped down, but he continues to be very active.

And in TWIGF, which I attend every year. [laughs]

He continues to help facilitate a lot of very good important conversations on current issues. The recent TWIGF discussion on blockchain domains, that was very interesting. A big thank you to Kuo-Wei who has always been supporting and helping to grow the community in Taiwan as well.

We have leaders from Taiwan who sit on leadership positions in ICANN. For example, in the GNSO Council, the council is an important decision-making body that approves policy made by multi-stakeholders. On the GNSO Council, we’ve had former councillors who are from Taiwan, and one of the current councillor is also from Taiwan. Her name is Manju Chen.

She in fact has a long history with us. She’s one of the alumni of the program I run for youth leaders. After she went through that program, then eventually she continued to participate, and now she sits in a leadership position. We are super-proud of her, and very happy that she can contribute in this way.

That’s excellent.

Also, we have a very strong partnership with TWNIC. A lot of it is in the technical area which is within the ICANN remit, and it’s thanks to Kenny, ever since he stepped up as CEO of TWNIC. Great appointment for Kenny.

Yeah. Anti-abuse, international domain names, and so on.

With TWNIC, they’ve been a strong partner and they were the first country code top-level domain to participate in one of our health identifiers work. We also partner every year on ICANN APAC TWNIC Engagement Forum, of which you also graced us before. That also helped to build a strong community within Taiwan to be aware of the current issues that are being discussed.

I think you also know Nicole Chan, who is formerly the NCC chair. She sits on the Address Supporting Organization, which is also an organization of ICANN. So, we have existing, a lot of strong participation, and I think there are a lot of avenues that we can partner to work together.

Now, of course, last but not least, not forgetting very strong participation from the GAC. Prior to the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, we have received very strong support all the way back for as long as ICANN has been established.

As far as I can remember, the NCC has been participating. Then after that, under the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, Morris Lin has been participating actively. And we hope to secure your continued support for the GAC members to participate.

Of course. The first project that I joined the public sector was around end of 2014, is the vTaiwan project that takes the multi-stakeholder model for Internet-related rulemaking. At a time, Nicole Chan was the head of the STLI within the III, to bridge the Internet governance model to the everyday political governance model.

(Deputy minister) Ning Yeh was also instrumental in taking actual acts into this model. We are committed to spread not just awareness at the Internet governance but also practicing it in our day-to-day work.

Thank you. That really broadly sums up the kind of collaboration we have with the Taiwan community. Again, seeking your support to find other ways for more community members to participate in ICANN.

Nicole Chan is now quite into blockchain; she heads the decentralized ESG association. I was also supporting one of their work in hosting the Ethcon, that’s the Ethereum annual meeting. I was in Osaka and gave a talk pre-pandemic. We’re trying to push Taiwan to host the next Devcon for the Ethereum community.

I was like, I’m a speaker, I’m committed to make a resounding success, and so on. Would ICANN consider something like that, having Taiwan host a meeting.

We are definitely open and happy to explore. There are two ways of hosting ICANN meetings. One is the actual ICANN public meeting, the global one. Another one is I have recently launched the APAC DNS forum. I launched that in this year. The first local host for the event is Malaysia.

I actually in fact asked Kenny if he’s willing to explore hosting one of the APAC DNS forum in the longer term. It’s basically a regional forum to discuss anything related to the DNS. Actually, if we just talk about ICANN only, the topics are very narrow, because we only talk about domain names and domain name policy.

If we talk about DNS, it is slightly broader, then anything industry-related to that can be discussed as well.

To domain names in general?

Yeah, so blockchain domains can be discussed. Any new innovation that sits on DNS could potentially be discussed as well. It provides this avenue for us to have a discussion within the region. That can be a starting point for a more global conversation.

We’re happy to be a localhost… Which is a domain, regardless?

Kenny, what do you think?

Yeah, I think that’s great. Although we have the regular annual ICANN APAC TWNIC Engagement Forum, but Jia Rong discuss with me about the potential collaboration with Taiwan. We have been proposing to run the global ICANN meetings several times. In addition to ICANN meeting, of course, with any Asia Pacific DNS forum that can be running in Taiwan, we are happy to support.

Also, we have the other different kind of forums such as APIGA, Internet Governance Academy. We are also willing to partially support or have a regional, a local host as well. It depends on what kind of ability and how you’re willing to arrange the venue according to your strategy.

Great. Would Kuo-Wei like to enlighten us on how to proceed?

I think it’s OK, but I think the people in Taiwan have to understand what is the scope the ICANN to start talking about.

If you are talking about ICANN institution, then ICANN institution have a very clear mission, what they are going to do. If you’re want to talking about forum - for example, like DNS – I think you can involve many, many different things. If you want to talking about DNS, I think the key problem is we have to find out who is the right participant from Taiwan.

We’d be leaning toward the web3 community, which is… [laughs]

…actually not only focus on technology. It can be focused on social issues.

Exactly.

…Web3 fraction, and about blockchain domain, and actually that’s also relate to how ICANN operate in that unique identifiers, and also the policy is going to bridge together. I think that can be a topic.

There’s a lot of things that runs on the TXT records nowadays, not just the DNS link from IPFS, but also entire domain systems, even communication systems, TCP over DNS, actually, is a thing for anti-censorship. I think these are creative uses of the technology.

In fact, I was just chatting with Kenny this morning, and one of the current trends that we are seeing – and Kenny has this on a very nice PowerPoint slide. In the last few decades, with the advent of the Internet, a lot of focus is on infrastructure development.

The last decade is more innovation. We’re looking at innovation sitting atop Internet technology.

Where are we sitting right now, is perhaps a crossroads of head-to-head of innovation with the need for some regulation.

I think, going forward, there is a trend for governments all over the world that they feel they have to regulate. I’m not saying regulation is a bad thing, but this concept of regulation and governments are coming together as an important topic, especially when we talk about Web3.

Web3 is still like the Wild West. Nobody really knows what it is, how it should truly be governed. It will come back to how is the Internet being governed as the model for that area.

We were talking about DNS forum as a whole, that governance as a topic would be one key pillar where we think about norm setting in the multistakeholder fashion and use that as the model to discuss how can we collaborate with each other within the region or globally.

The original impetus back in 2014 was to take this idea of permissionless innovation from something that’s threatening – like Bitcoin and Uber and so on around that time, especially for career public service – into a forum where, actually, the good ideas can also be amplified through multistakeholder settings.

We don’t have to determine all the rules, but rather can co-create such rules. Here are our career public service colleagues. Do you have anything to maybe ask or consult with our guests?

Yeah, one question. If you want to host maybe a DNS forum, do we have to submit an official letter?

Do I have to write a letter of intent or something?

Or you can make a deal with maybe just with Kenny or Kuo-Wei. That’s the… [laughs]

If it’s the APAC DNS Forum, I can just decide.

That’s his job.

Yes. We are actively looking for regional partners so that we can have a coalition of sorts, with a combination of different stakeholders. The idea is that, if there is a current topic that comes up, we don’t have to wait for the yearly event to discuss it.

We could have, say, in India, they have a particular interest in a particular topic and something came up. If we wanted to do a webinar discussion on it, we can do so. We will have a dedicated website for the APAC DNS forum that helps to host and post the content.

Any of the partners can host a discussion at any time.

That helps us build the momentum, for each year, when we have an annual event. That would help us then throughout the year when we discuss issues, when we come together on a yearly basis, we can really focus on what are some outcomes we could try to achieve from the forum.

For now, we’re really looking for more partners to support and work with each other. I’m hoping within the group of partners, then we can start laying out who might be willing to host the DNS forum for the next few years. Then we’re pretty much set.

Yeah, also, because we’re now post-pandemic, we relaxed all the quarantine rules. We want to send a message out that the culture and food, like xiaolongbao, [laughs] night markets are open again. That is also the message we very much want to send.

Of course, webinars and so on are very good first steps, but we do want a physical gathering, if possible.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to a physical gathering as well. One of the things we all agree that Zoom meetings cannot replace is networking. It’s very hard to, it’s impossible to replicate that.

I know.

Within the APAC region, it’s quite clear when people want to attend events, that networking aspect is key. We’re hoping that, with the APAC DNS forum, we are able to achieve that as well.

That’s excellent. Anything from our colleagues?

I’m interested in the HLGM, high-level government meetings, because I think the GAC host the HLGM meeting once every two years. I think ICANN just scheduled to hold the HLGM, I think, in 2020, but it was canceled due to the pandemic. I’m wondering what’s the ICANN plan for the HLGM? Another question is how about the HLGM’s participation?

I think, in the past, due to some reasons, only GAC representative from Taiwan can attend the HLGMs meetings. I think GAC HLGM meeting is going to open the floor for the ministers and higher-level government officials to share and exchange ideas, and use Internet issues.

I’d like to seek your advice on ministers’ participation in HLGMs meetings, and in the name of Minister of Digital Affairs from Taiwan.

I believe even Audrey is fine with the title as Minister of Digital Affairs as a participant.

Or just Digital Minister.

My title actually is a domain name.

So I can participate as digitalminister.tw.

.tw.

Right, you can carry your title to any ICANN meeting?

Yeah, I attended many meetings in multilateral and multistakeholder settings with this title. Nobody raised any questions.

There are two questions from Vicky, the first is when will be next high-level government meeting. There is some current ongoing discussion at the GAC; it also depends on whether the host government for an ICANN meeting will want to host a high-level government meeting at the time.

The participation invitation to the HLGM is from the host government. It’s the host government who will invite the participants to attend.

Yeah, actually, I was going to suggest that there are two kind of channels. One kind of channel is HLGM. That’s officially launching every two years, officially. The other project is, if Audrey willing to participate, actually, ICANN can have a special arrangement with Audrey, because ICANN always have a private meeting. That can be arranged.

Before Nicole Chan stepped down, actually, I tried to arrange for Nicole Chan to be in Japan to meet the ICANN CEO, and ICANN Board member. Actually, it has been arranged, but eventually, because she was forbidden to go to abroad, so she cannot participate at that time.

Actually, that kind of approach can be arranged with all official title, without any problem.

OK.

Only the GAC official delegation requires that kind of position. If you attend ICANN meeting with any unofficial arrangement or even official arrangement outside of GAC should be no problem.

Yeah. There’s a very concrete proposal, actually, the whole reason of me printing this name card is trying to say whether it is possible because there’s precedents in various online meetings already, for me to appear as someone from .tw.

If I say “dot Taiwan” the transcript would just write “.tw”. If I say “digital minister dot Taiwan” then it will just write “digitalminister.tw”. Would that work?

I think it will be a little bit complex. Because it’s also how it will be interpreted.

Did you have any precedents perhaps talking about DNS, root domains, and things like that where the transcripts actually recorded “TW” somewhere in the transcript? I assume yes, because…

The TW context is little bit easier.

OK. Then let’s do that.

You have assumed talking in GAC, like talking in the other constituencies like ccNSO, GNSO, or whatever.

It’s a little bit more complex, but I think to be honest, sticking to TW might be a way… Maybe Kuo-Wei can give us some advice?

Kuo-Wei always just say he comes from Taiwan.

We just launched a new service called gov.tw. It’s a real service that shortens a very long URL into gov.tw/xxx. If we’re there introducing the service, it’s not talking about the government, it’s literally a website called “gov.tw”.

I think you’re basically clear on… because you are mixing many things in one block. First of all, when you are talking about high level meeting. A high level meeting in ICANN, to be honest, is not really helpful, although we could hope that there is some government want to run high level meeting.

But if you look at the participant, I don’t remember anyone higher than minister be a participant. None of them. Even at a time in Canada, I think only vice ministers, deputy ministers up here and might be just a single digit. Not many of them.

Just like Jia-Rong mentioned, it really depends on who would host the meeting. The host country sent out the invitation to others. The other country can decide they want to send a high level or not. It’s not on the ICANN’s hand. ICANN cannot do anything; it’s up to the host country.

This is a first problem we should be clear. Particularly when we’re talking about high level meeting that is only talking is in the GAC. Nothing more than the GAC. Because ICANN is a very complex structure and many of them really care is a business. They are making money.

The GAC actually is like a GNSO or other stakeholder, they just want to make sure GAC will not bother them from making money. That is the most important for them to do it. You know, I think first of all, we have to be clear, what you are talking about in high-level meetings, that’s the first part, it’s invited by the host country.

The second part – let’s go one by one – the second one is Taiwan can be the host. You can continue to apply, but from my experience…

We have just discussed that. That was the last part…

I think, if we want the minister to visit to the ICANN CEO or the board member, I think Jia-Rong is a good bridge to find out how to do that. Another one is I heard you mention about the DNS Forum. The DNS Forum, you have to understand what do you want.

DNS Forum, if you really want, is a big meeting, then the best way is making that, is a business opportunity that everybody go. Right now in ICANN, they have about 1,500 registries and about 1,500 registrars. If there is money, they will fly in.

If you just want to talking about the general discussion, the general meeting, I will tell you, it’s only by invitation.

Those businessmen don’t want to go anywhere without money. It really depends on what you want to do. Of course, if you said, OK, maybe in case we’d like to run the DNS Forum in Taiwan or in the Asia-Pacific Region. Then you should set up what you want to do.

For example, if you want to say, “We want to focus on the technical,” or, “We want to talk about the social impact,” or, “We want to talk about the possible conflict,” for example. Recently, a couple of the issues is a hot topic. For example, the blockchain DNS…

Blockchain is one of them, but remember, blockchain DNS, within the ICANN forum is a minority.

If you want to talk about more like security, and then you might be interested, find some of the peoples, the really good, really important for Taiwan. For example, the security guy. The ICANN have a very good security committee.

They are very good. It’s world-class level.

How we can maintain the connectivity’s resilience? From my point of view is first of how you can guarantee your root services in operations. The root server right now we only have Anycast. We only have A, M, and I don’t remember.

We have three of them, but all them is Anycast. We don’t have a… What I’m saying is Paul Vixie’s version. Of course, if you want to talk about undersea, submarine cable, we can talk about that with many of the engineering in the security, they understand it.

That’s a little bit different what I see or read from the journalists. They’re too far away. Be careful. I talked to NGO already, that most of the submarine cable coming to Taiwan, the property does not belong to Taiwan. If you are in the government, you know that.

I think Taiwan only own less than two percent. Most of them is a foreign property. The Google, Facebook, or other telco company. Taiwan is a minority, and although we see a lot of cable coming to Taiwan and get in and get out of Taiwan, but that is a different one.

The connection resilience is more important inside the island. How the inside of island connectivity is resilient. I think I have a very different point of view about what the journalists likes to talk about.

Yes…

We’re moving down the stack now…

You need people watching this.

Yes. Now, remaining on the middle layer of the stack, the call of our ministry — Ministry of Digital Affairs — is “digital resilience for all”. That includes the societal resilience, the industrial resilience, as well as emergency response, all of which Kuo-Wei summaries beautifully.

We are now the Ministry in charge of the cybersecurity industry, and also in charge of the industrial digital transformation. Both are our jobs. The business opportunities would be in looking at innovative ways to deliver on risk mitigating work, think of it like investment of resilience, redundancy and so on.

We are currently also the ministry promoting zero-trust architceture using cloud identities and decentralized identifiers and so on. Of course, I understand that’s more about W3C than ICANN, but the principles are the same.

When we talk about decentralized identifiers, it’s not just abstract technical discussion, but actually, a real ministry-level test-bed or sandbox that we can offer to all those vendors to test the interoperability of the one Internet, actually, the one Internet of Trust, of Names, and so on.

In my view, I think we can host this forum to have two different but complementing values centering on resilience. So one would be the industrial applications, the kind of insurance or investments and so on, and one would be about cybersecurity, about response in emergency, and in earthquakes, for example.

Earthquake cannot be attributed to any actor. It doesn’t respect international law. It just so happens maybe we will suffer many large earthquakes targeting submarine cables… All these scenarios can be discussed in such a forum and how it interacts with the Internet system.

Thank you. I think there’s a great suggestion. I will discuss with Kenny when we think about how to frame the various themes for the forum.

“Maximum resilience” or something like that.

Anything else from our colleagues here?

I would like to mention the simple issue we have talked about. If Audrey want to attend — besides the private visit to ICANN board — if Audrey would like to attend ICANN high level regional GAC or something like official meetings, of course that depend on the invitation of the host country.

Besides that, can she go to the meeting with the title of “digitalminister.tw”?

Would that work?

In theory, is it not an issue, right?

If the host is fine with that.

If the chair is OK with that.

The first step really is with the host government. If the host government is OK with it, then it’s at the invitation of the host government.

Understood, but I’m just a domain holder. I’m not representing any government it’s just “.tw” or “gov.tw”. It’s a ccTLD last I checked. Anyway, we wouldn’t even expand the acronym ccTLD.

The point I’m trying to make is that we’ve had a lot of experience in very similar situations that you find yourself in with the MOUs.

Those venues, we can provide many precedents to the host country that .tw or digitalminister.tw, which does not automatically convey a non-economy status. Not even gov.tw. I think that if you are in principle OK for us to negotiate with the host country and the chair directly for that particular form or meeting, we will just do so.

That might be easier, to talk with the host. Because it’s at their invitation.

Yes, of course.

I think you have a clear understanding of the landscape. As you mentioned, it’s more complicated in other…

Yeah, definitely.

I’m also very grateful that you understand the constraints that we have as well. The multi-stakeholder platform is in some ways quite fragile. And if we can avoid for it to be politicized, it maintains the multi-stakeholder interests, and I think that’s also in Taiwan’s interest as well, to continue to keep the multi-stakeholder model governance moving forward to work for that.

Yes, and I’m nonpartisan. Just a couple of days ago, a visitor described me as a senior bureaucrat. I was like, “Am I so old now?” Really, I think in the lines of just furthering multi-stakeholderism and strengthening resilience, which is anti-fragility, right?

Every time there is such a debate or discussion and so on, when I attended the UNIGF back in Geneva as a robot, the precedent was that, I think that was the only time, the first time really in many decades, where a representative from .CN, and representative from .TW spoke in the same UN forum, both on the record, and nobody escorted out. I’m all for that.

For same reason we mentioned in that meeting about “dot tw” it’s just a domain. That will be recorded as “.TW”, right?

We’ll just say “TW” or “.TW”. It’s not to be expanded.

Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us, and I’m grateful again for all your support. I hope that we continue to work with each other. I’ll see you at the other events we organize.

Yes. Maybe as low-definition boxes, but hopefully more and more high-definition in person.

Yes. We are planning for more in-person events, so looking forward to that.

That’s awesome. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.