For example, just recently, the same team that audited our Sandstorm system actually won second place in DEF CON CTF, second only to the US team. Maybe we’ll try again next year to take that crown. [laughs] In any case, they basically look at the whole open-source system file through ...

More crucially, each new government project, such as this Sandstorm system, that we roll out needs to dedicate seven percent, if it’s a small project—five percent for larger projects—of spending to cyber security. It’s separate from an IT budget or ICT budget. Basically, we’re making the white hat hackers a ...

The Department of Cyber Security is part of the administration. It’s part of the cabinet level departments that set the policies. Because we have a Cyber Security Act, all the critical infrastructures, including industrial parks — that includes the TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) — all needs to have the ...

That’s why we almost exclusively work with the civic tech community, so that we make sure we take the best ideas, the best tools. We ask the cyber security council—actually, the Cyber Security Department—to basically run penetration testing, or white box testing. We have a safe underlying platform called Sandstorm ...

I’m in a Lagrange point between movements and the governments I take all the sides. The basic idea is that, using digital technology, we can design interaction patterns. If we design so that it’s easier to share and amplify during a protest than it is to co-create meaningful conversations or ...

Clicktivism, as in just clicking, without showing any contributions creatively, just amplifying the most divisive voices?

That’s our usual way. The advisory tracks are all on the website. You can basically track each and every reverse mentor’s activities and which meetings they attended, which focus they are on. Again, just like my own meetings, most of them have this radically transparent record. Each and every one ...

Then the senior leadership shows that we endorse those creative ideas, and the people react very favorably. That then become part of just the national policy. It’s not a generational thing anymore. It just becomes part of the national identity.

I think that is a good, concrete example of, basically, instead of convincing senior leadership to trust us to use social media to promote world skills, we just went ahead and did it ourselves. Then, we brought it into visibility on the national stage.

That’s the common “how might we” question, and we brainstormed with the senior leadership on that, and particularly with the Ministry of Labor and Ministry of Education, as well as the premier himself. After we formed this consensus in the national level youth advisory meeting, it then within a month ...

The most important part is just to co-create what we call the common “how might we” question. How might we make the skills, and masters of the skills, be seen as leaders of the country’s direction, instead of just supporting the academic and the sports people?

Huang Wei-xiang also crowdsourced a film that we play during cabinet meetings, that we played on the National Day, that played on President Tsai’s Facebook, and so on. Basically, the idea is that the young people show the possible visions, the possible futures, but the implementation is still for the ...

Then he petitioned our advisory council, which is headed by the premier himself, for our National Day Parade, which is October 10th, which went really well. Instead of just highlighting in the tour the sports people, the world skill champions are also in their cars, and he highlighted them as ...

Every student in the senior high school, for example, can use the school as a way to build their capstones and then an outer community as well. It’s a really good idea. Huang is the reverse mentor for the Ministry of Labor.

Coaches train the mentors to work with K–12 teachers so that they can power up their space-building skills and develop schools that feel like a co-creation project for the students.

Because our new curriculum, starting this year, emphasizes that the teacher no longer holds the standard answer anymore, everything must be done in a participatory way, so that the people learn creative and critical skills. That’s very important in media literacy, of course, but also in numeracy and in all ...

For example, Huang Wei-xiang, who runs a social enterprise called Skills for U, talks with world skill competitors. Taiwan placed fourth this year. They’re like Olympic medalists, but not seen on the same visibility as Olympic medalists, and neither has much connection to K–12 or higher education. Their basic idea ...

The basic idea is that, as you can see here, 32 ministries can each nominate one person as their reverse mentor. Each reverse mentor basically represents, in design thinking terms, the first diamond, the emerging trend, the gathering place. They can show their respective minister, or their reverse mentee, [laughs] ...

I think there are two answers. The first one we have found is that the cabinet level Youth Advisory Council is a really good device. That’s a Dr. Tsai campaign promise, and indeed, the first time that the Youth Advisory Council is elevated to the cabinet status.

The main question is how to build this kind of faith, because a blind trust in technology is actually worse than rejecting technology. We don’t want a blind faith, but a cautious optimism around emerging technology’s potentials in the senior leadership, in the Taiwan cabinet.

Which may work for 15 minutes, but just for 15 minutes. [laughs] Even the people who petitioned for +9 actually do concur with that. The idea of opportunity cost is not about jumping to the ideas, but rather, going back to the facts. We share as open data, not just ...

All the 16,000 people received the consensus, as revealed by the livestreamed meeting. It basically said, instead of changing the time zone, “We should actually just market our democracy, human rights, marriage equality, open data, international participation, meaningful participation, and sustainable health system.” People broadly agreed that, if we were ...

Then the ministries brainstormed with the people about two questions. First is whether the time zone change can clarify our relationship with the PRC. The consensus after discussion is that it can’t. Hong Kong has its own currency. There are many countries with many different time zones. They can just ...

They say, “Oh, we just want Taiwan to be seen as more unique in the world.” It turned out that people who opposed the time zone change also supported that sentiment. Basically, we’re not asking about positions, but about common feelings or common values.

It would not increase tourism, unless people break labor laws, and so on. [laughs] There are real numbers backing each statement up. We’re then asking what people feel about those objective statements. That’s when the feelings start to emerge.

All this basically resulted in what we call a fact-based conversation. Everybody who comes to our face-to-face meeting who came from both petitioner camps looked at the same data—which is, even if we just did the daylight saving time change, it would only reduce energy use by an minuscule amount.

It’s 16,000 people in total that have supported both sides. Instead of seeking a compromise, namely GMT+8.5, which makes nobody happy [laughs] … We’re actually tallying each and every aspect of the time zone change and asking the Board of Energy to come up with real numbers about how it ...

There are some thoughts around that. Also, very crucially, the petition also said that we should change, not only because of this ideological thing, but also because it would save energy, it would increase stock trade, and so forth. But our basic idea of conversation is that we’re not only ...

The second question is about opportunity costs. There was a petition that very much identified this idea. The petition asked Taiwan to change our time zone from +8 to +9. The petition was one of the most popular at that time. The basic idea is that 8,000 people thought that ...

That is the basic idea of the culture changes, just to make the administration itself much closer to the people, and also, closer to the people on the planet, not just people serving the Taiwanese population.

There are more independent ministers than ministers of any party. We propose neutral bills to the legislation where, of course, party politics enters place. There is a very clear delineation between the two branches.

Because the premier agreed on those ideas, I’m also immune to the party politics. This also is informed by Taiwan’s constitution, because most of the draft bills that we build here are built in a remarkably non-partisan environment.

That’s the basic idea of open innovation. This, I think, is broadly accepted by the Taiwan population, as evidenced by the thoroughly multi-partisan conversation that lead to my entering the cabinet.

The PRC did also sign the Sustainable Development Goals that promise a fair judicial system by the year 2030. [laughs] Basically, we’re focusing Taiwan’s role in the world stage to produce reliable data through distributed ledgers and new technologies, effective partnerships, and open innovation. We co-create with New Zealand. We’re ...

Because of that, the cultural change is less about me personally, but rather Taiwan’s national identity. Instead of focusing on the most divisive issues—which is the PRC (People’s Republic of China) issue, obviously—we are now focusing on the parts that even the PRC has agreed on.

We’re doing this not only for Taiwan, for people in Taiwan, or for the Taiwan administration, but rather, with the Taiwan government, and for the entirety of the planet, as basically outlined by the Sustainable Development Goals.

This is important, because most of Taiwan’s foreign service, after Dr. Tsai Ing-wen became president, focused on the core idea of what we call “Taiwan can help,” meaning that we’re solving our sustainability issues, like the Presidential Hackathon. Each team needs to identify one sustainable development target that corresponds to ...

Actually, this weekend, I’m going to Addis Ababa, of all places. I just came back from Osaka and prior to that Argentina and UNGA in New York and DC. The next step would be Rotterdam and Berlin ‘m literally everywhere across the world, but I still work in our virtual ...

Three years ago, I proposed three working conditions to the prime minister, to the premier, Lin Chuan at the time, who had to agree, otherwise I would just do this work from the outside. The three conditions: are radical transparency, which is everything that I personally say must be public, ...

The first question is about the culture dynamic. Very simply put, my idea is that I work with the government. I don’t work for the government. I enter the cabinet only after one month of very public Q&A, ask-me-anything style of public negotiation.

Design in this way ensures improvement for all the three different levels of the administration, without trading one for the other two. Now, we don’t have 32 people from the ministries in my office, maybe 20. We’re not forcing the rest of the dozen or so ministries to join this ...

They pay his salary, and he does his own scoring and ranking. [laughs] I don’t issue or take commands from each ministry, but the only thing that I ask is that they work out loud, and to co-create this kind of innovative mechanism that can both further the public diplomacy ...

After a year or so, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discovered that there’s an element of public diplomacy in it, and so, for example, Joel is our MoFA delegate. While he’s working here, he’s still reporting to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

In Taiwan, there are 32 vertical ministries, each with a vertical minister, and I’m one of the nine horizontal ministers. They only participate by voluntary association. For example, the Ministry of Defense never sends anyone to my office, for obvious reasons. Neither did the Council for Continental China Affairs. [laughs] ...

I don’t force any ministry to do this kind of work. My office is literally a horizontal ministry. Every minister can send a delegate over to my office.

Their career changes, because the president hands the trophy to them, meaning that their idea is not constrained to the Keelung region which they control, but must be scaled out to the entire country within a year. They get political blessing, and their ministers, of course, get the credit. This ...

Now, because it’s mostly creative, young people are much more likely to do this work, this assistive intelligence that deploys the AI to the service of the repairs people. Now, if, after the three months, it turns out it doesn’t work, the prediction doesn’t work, then it’s just an academic, ...

They would like to spend their time on the creative part of the work, which is fixing the leaks, instead of the trivial, non-creative part, the routine inspection and detection which doesn’t attract young people as much as the creative work.

Through the Presidential Hackathon, initiated by the “social sector,” people would like a chat bot that talks to those repairs people, so they can wake up and find the three most likely leaking places, using water pressure and weather analysis.

Just one example: one of our five winning teams last year said that there’s a Taiwan Water Corporation that maintains the world’s longest plastic pipes. Many of them leak, and on average, in the Keelung region nearby, it takes two months for a leak to happen before it’s discovered by ...