 Here I'm hearing quite some echo from your side Now it's now it's better. I was hearing my own voice, but this is good now. Okay. I hope it's good okay, so Thank you for your time, and I'll ask you a few questions. I read about Taiwan's reaction to COVID-19 and your work. So I'll ask you a few questions about that So first of all, let's talk let's talk about masks I know you had a problem of shortage of masks in the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah, it was in February and March Yes, yeah, and in some point you decided to release to people to the public The data about the inventory of the masks all over Taiwan. Yeah, the real-time API is yeah So I guess any normal government would just create a map themselves, but you decided to release it to the to the public Not What why did you do that? Why did you what do you think it's better to give the public? Because people have different preferences, right the civic tech people who originates the idea of Maps is one slide, but there are also people who are more elderly that would prefer a chat bot or people who have seen Difficulties that would prefer a voice assistant not to mention the 20 different national languages It's just impossible for the government to deliver more than why a hundred different kind of services For all the kind of people. So if we open up the API for each person that says hey What you have provided is not accessible or inclusive enough We can say hey, here is the source code and API go ahead and do your own version and we will include it in our Portal, so I personally coded up this portal that lists more than 140 now different applications using that APM because it was not possible for us to be all things to all people But people can be all things to all people Yeah, so the government cannot Create all the solutions, but if you give the data to other people they can create a lot more solutions than that That's right. That's right There's no like reference Implementation if that's what you're asking about because if we do a reference Implementation and it's updated in its data more regularly than the citizens version then of course everybody will use the Official version and then people who feel excluded will still feel excluded But by having essentially the official version just be a portal to whatever need that you want and co-created with the Community then people want to be locked in to particular imagination and people who want to do You know chatbars and voice assistants wouldn't be limited to the map developers Imagination on the same API Yeah, I understand Another thing that you do in Taiwan or Is to use the cell phone location data? Yeah, it's the cell phone signal strength Yeah, same for single straight to just check if people are staying in the court in that's right But we don't use contact tracing or other GPS Apps like other countries. Yeah, our contact tracing apps are human They're medical officers that performs the interviews and such so it's not a application now yeah, but Do you think if if things were getting more serious in Taiwan? There were more people infected you would stop wanted to stop the epidemic. Will you? Consider using something like contact tracing or where where do you think the line stands between fighting the epidemic and keeping people? you see the the reason why we use cell phone strength is that It's already used before the pandemic, right? We use it for earthquake warnings for sending SMS to people to Evacuate from a flood potential vulnerable place when a typhoon hits and so on the whole point of reusing that Geofenced technology with SMS only is because people understand the perimeter people understand the properties of it people would not Fear that their chat log or their SMS messages will be read By the SMS sending cell phone towers because they understand that's not how it works because we've been having that for for years If not decades so the ideas of appropriate technology is that we make sure that people work with technology They're already familiar with so even if the pandemic Because more serious in Taiwan we would do whatever we can to reuse components That are already tried and trusted instead of writing new code This is not about cyber security for cyber security alone This is about the social trust of the mechanisms that were already in place and therefore trust more So not sure you will use contact tracing because there's not this is not something you did Didn't use before so you will not introduce new we use contact tracing that is interviews, right? And we do use as you said the cell phone tower strength the triangulation And that's because the data is being collected anyway, right? We we don't collect new data in the form of an app or a Bluetooth dongle or things like that because that would be new data collected But it as long as you turn on your cell phone the cell phone towers already know your rough Whereabouts anyway, and so there's no new data collection therefore no new Privacy or cyber security threat surface so to speak and that's the important part We will of course do whatever we can to fight a pandemic But the important thing is that we don't see it as a zero some tradeoff that you can Give up some human right or some sort of democracy to fight a pandemic We need to keep exactly the same line because we've never declared Emergency state and so we operate firmly within the constitutional limit every single Administrative action we do must be pre approved by the parliament explained to the MPs and therefore there was no lockdowns Entire year in Taiwan and even if there is community spread in the future We'll just do a kind of very small district level lockdown to make sure that it doesn't spread But mostly we rely on you know hand sanitation must use to keep the R not value under one So the community transmission will never become a community spread if more than three-quarter of people wear their mask and wash their hands It's funny I have a friend who lives in Taiwan and he said One day in the future when everybody talks about the the quarantine experience that they had he would not have any stories because Taiwan is one of the only countries that didn't use this so Yeah Yeah, so use I heard you said that one of the success one of the secrets of Taiwan success is listening to the Citizens in some way the government listens So maybe you can say a little bit about what kind of feedback from the public did you get the government? And how did you maybe incorporate that? How did you use this feedback or change things? Yeah, the mask availability map for example when we first introduced the idea of mask rationing It was six thousand pharmacists Trusted by the community having professional credentials during the rationing and the mask map was designed as something to save their time Right because people don't have to run to four different pharmacies only to find the first three have run out of masks that that was the idea But it was the ideal. It doesn't work that way that the first day we get Literally hundreds of angry pharmacists messages through the feedback form and calling the one night to do Toffery number saying that this so-called time-saving device actually wastes everybody's time because as opposed to what we thought Which is people would use their national health insurance card to swipe it and collect the mask and therefore the map numbers goes down in real time Many pharmacists choose to just take the NHI cards and give them numbered plates And tell them to collect the mask at the evening So and then they will swipe the NHI card slowly during the day and as to you know Not to make the queue so long, right? so you basically you visit the pharmacy twice once to get your NHI card there in exchange to a plate and At the evening you get your NHI card back and then hand back the plate and many pharmacists do that But when they do that they may run out of the mask quota of the day by 10 a.m But on the mask availability map it will go very very slowly and only runs out Maybe at 1 p.m. Or something because they were you know handling the card without the People right in it and so everybody who visits those pharmacists will see a very large mismatch between what's on their app and what's really in the pharmacies and many Pharmacists at the first week write very large words Paintings even in the front door. This is don't trust the app And so it was not it was not a overnight success We work with pharmacists in weekly iterations literally changing the app the data structure and Working with all the map designers and so on and changed every week and it only stabilized maybe three weeks later Because of the feedback that's co-created by the pharmacist So the opening hours will become additional notes on the map is feature Prominently that says collect back at evenings when they run out of stock They can eventually press a key to disappear from the map. I can go on But this is a really a co-creation journey This is not some like magically good idea that works on the first try This is like us literally looking at the feedbacks and the call centers people and working with initially angry Pharmacists to make sure that we did end up saving their time by early March Hmm, but but you yeah still operate this one nine two two hotline. Is it still available now or yes? Yes, I can call it There's more than 90% chance that it will be immediately picked up and you can get all your questions Answered and make suggestions like the pink mask thing that you probably have heard already and and that continues to operate now Even though there was no new effect infections for a long time in Taiwan And because people worry about the rest of the world also, right? And so there's also overseas visitors, right? We just had a 90 people delegation from the Czech Republic And we're the head of the Senate visited and and say that in the spirit of He said I am Taiwanese, which is how I read But because of the visits from the US from Japan from Czech Republic And and more in the future people also want to know like what's the procedure of keeping The visitors from the public transports How is the foreign service making sure that everybody properly wears the mask especially the journalist that comes with the visitors and so on So there's there's endless, you know question to ask of when I to to and make suggestions too Yeah, but and and the daily press conference. You don't do that anymore. It's not weekly. It's weekly now But it's still It goes on and if there's new developments and things like that We just have a press conference that day. Yeah Yeah, nice So, you know Another thing that is very crucial is a trust between the government and citizen to fight COVID-19 In some countries, maybe Israel included The government lost a lot of the public trust because of 40 steps So what do you think is like the secret or what steps should the government do in order to restore this trust? Yeah, I think I think the citizens may or may not trust the government I don't really think the citizens should trust the government really I think the government should trust its citizens The government should make itself transparent to the citizens and not to make the citizen transparent to the government That's why we insist on new new data collection is a no-no when we do the constitutional review of the Counter this is plan. We basically reuse existing data collection under our GDPR Hopefully adequate soon Data privacy protection law and so this is important because then people feel that They have a say Considia agenda will be responded in a here-and-now or at least next Thursday And and that's builds trust by showing our trust to the citizen. It's like the pigmalion effect, right? so for example when a MP the name is Angle Gaohong An who basically Questions in a parliamentary interpolation our minister Chen Shizhong About the mask availability distribution unevenness right and things like that because she was a VP of data analytics at Foxconn and She used this Civic technologies built map called joping and that shows that even though it looks like is spread very evenly From a city to city viewpoint Actually, if you are elderly or taking public transportation in the more rural places Although the distance looks the same it would take you actually a lot more hours to get to the nearby pharmacy so that Algorithm that we use was biased because not everybody fly helicopters. You see answer because of that and Interpolation went really well because ministering who enjoyed great popularity did not even for a second Defend our existing policy rather he remarked legislator teach us and then immediately revised the system So the day after working with Miss Gal the MP posted quote in the wake of yesterday's questioning is today's Improvement and quote so the more trust the government has in its citizens including parliamentarians the more trust worthy citizens become Yeah I'm interested to know. I know that you were involved in the sunflower movement in 2014 Do you think? Maybe the this Taiwan's reaction to COVID-19 was was influenced by this movement, you know, if this protest was not happening in 2014 you think Taiwan will react differently Well to be perfectly honest, I think the more influential event is the stars pandemic well epidemic not pandemic epidemic back in 2003 Because in Taiwan we had to lock down an entire hospital Unannounced with no fixed state of ending the lock down That led to like 37 people directly dead because of this 73 Indirectly at least one nurse try to jump out of that hospital It was very traumatic for everybody over 30 years old and because of that we have a natural aversion to lockdowns so when the rest of the world look at the first episode of Wuhan and Because they did a lockdown right and so people were like oh lockdown is how we counter the virus we're like no We tried that, you know hoping a hospital it although it may work. It's very traumatic We're not going to do that and and so that is kind of what really influenced that said I think the sunflower showed that even through video conference only live streaming only Telepresence only people can still get a useful rough consensus on things So it doesn't You know, it doesn't matter if people are in the most rural places the offshore islands the highest mountains and so on because we have broadband as a human right everybody have a equal state a equal say in the Public policies that consoles us all at a time. It was a trade agreement So I would say that the demonstration back at time serves as a demo, right? It makes the government easier to trust the citizens because the citizens at the time did produce something useful For example asking the government to to ban PRC components from our then new 4g network, right? The clean network thing that I'm sure that the rest of world is now slowly catching up, too But that was a useful consensus from the street was very compelling argument that was eventually adopted by the government So this trust in the citizen is easier when there is precedent of things actually working that way But I think the traumatic starts experience is still the more important one But the sunflower movement in some way they created the government caused the government to trust the citizens more Exactly. Yes. Yes, because it shows that these are not violent mobs, right? Not only they clean the street And the 20 NGOs having very orderly useful Deliberations at the end. It was also a night market and anyway, so it's a it's a real Demonstration of nonviolent communication and I stress the nonviolent part. So after that Mayors that says, okay, we want to run open government listening a skill and so on did get elected Sometimes surprisingly to themselves and the mayors that use the traditional tap-down way of policymaking as their platform lose their Elections and that changed the political culture in Taiwan Very interesting. Yeah And I don't think that impressed me when I read about it is the human versus rumor strategy that In order to to respond to fake news or conspiracy theories about the corona virus But the most the thing surprised me the most is the speed you say that sometimes the government They the government offices they react in in a matter of two hours. That's right Yes, and that's maximum average is about one hour one hour They create any and they see like fake news running in the internet and then they decided to react So that's really really fast. How do you do it so fast? You know government offices Traditionally are very very slow That's right. So you're you're a journalist. So you can use the F word in conjunction with news I'm not a journalist though. I will say disinformation That's because in in Mandarin Journalism is literally news work. So there is no way to say quote fake news I'm quote without offending journalists Immendering and both my parents are journalists. So out of video piety, I cannot use the F word So disinformation in Taiwan and misinformation We managed to counter it with no takedown And the idea is that administrative takedown much like an administrative lockdown One for the infodemic one for the pandemic, right? It's very similar, right? It may offer some Like on the surface solutions to the to the epidemiologically affected people Whether it's virus of the mind or virus of the body, but it doesn't educate people There is no vaccination. The lockdown is not a substitute for vaccination And the takedown is no substitute to Clarifications that are funny because when people laughed about something they cannot feel outraged about the same thing anymore They're mutually exclusive in our minds. And so we have professional comedians in the ministries We have what I nicknamed hashtag offices, but the actual name is participation offices in each ministry For example, the persuasion office and a minister of health and welfare literally lives with a dog a Shiba Inu So whenever there's a new dog meme that need to be produced They just take a photo of the dog of the companion animal and they roll out those funny memes And so it means that it need to be pre-cleared to a very high level that these timely responses doesn't need like five levels of Approval within the bureaucracy all the FAQs frequently answered questions materials are already there and The ministries including the premier who literally made himself the butt of the joke Pre-clear those images for use for comedians and so on so they do not need to seek additional approval And so we rely on people even on end-to-end encrypted channels Which of course the state cannot see people can volunteer like flagging something as spawn right long press something in the line It's a name of a end-to-end encrypted communication system If you long press it and flag it as spawn then eventually it goes into a dashboard for the international fact-checked Network members to fact-check and so we know what's going to trend as a rumor on public social media Long before it actually goes viral on the social media when it was just a be testing on the end-to-end encrypted channels with no State surveillance but rather relying on people to voluntarily report them. So that is like an early warning system That's very impressive to do it because a lot of governments use humor But sometimes they will publish the the the reaction like a day two days a week after that It doesn't work right because vaccination only works before you develop symptoms And and later than that of course that is the Pharmacology work and of course we have that too, right? We would invite people who are most vocal opposing some of the government's policies Into co-creation basically asking the people who complained the loudest to be co-creators of policies That works too, but it takes more time and is far more time-consuming Easier would be just to vaccinate so people don't travel their image their imageries Outrage and can just discuss the matter in the book part of Facebook not the face part of Facebook Okay, yeah So basically the Taiwan government doesn't ask Facebook to take down a lot of stuff But we would do a notice and public notice like if there is a trending rumor that says for example, and I quote It's a real one before our election. I think last November and I quote Hong Kong Mobs are paying Teenagers $200,000 to murder police Unquote and with a photo of young people in the protest looking I don't know young but it's a Reuter photo by the way, but the caption is a Cyber information warfare the original caption says nothing about being paid or things like murdering police But a new caption says that this teenager is being paid so that he can buy new iPhones and recruiting his younger brother And things like that so instead of a administrative takedown the international fact check network very quickly traced first It's the Reuters photo right and a miscaption actually original came from Zhongyang Zheng Huawei the central political and law unit of the Chinese Communist Party in the people's Republic of China regime that is to say it is state propaganda It came from their Weibo account And because of that instead of taking anything down We basically just ask Facebook to show a prominent notice whenever anyone shares that story It would say basically this is probably sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party Well, it doesn't quite say that but you get the idea like the the frame of their story Changes because of the notice and public notice because if you take it down people lose the chance to learn that there is something like this Propaganda going on but if you frame it as the propaganda as it is And stay sponsored at that then people understand that oh Someone is trying to change our outlook on Hong Kong. Maybe because it's the most important topic in our presidential election one last question before we I know that you worked after the sunflower movement V Taiwan You worked on this to create collective dialogue between people and that Created some laws in that I want about selling alcohol online or Lead before before my ministerial position now it is V Taiwan is still carried on by the social sector And they are now I think deliberating how to open up the parliament Not just the administration but the parliament which is great, but I don't run V Taiwan anymore But we use what we learned from V Taiwan like the Polis AI Conversation is the one into the join that GOV that TW platform, which has more than half of population as visitors And V Taiwan initially talk about digital economy issues and the but on the Polis use in the join platform We talk about things like what's our ocean policy was our mountain policy It's even used with the de facto US embassy the AIT on the digital dialogues about Trade relationship military collaboration people to people ties and things like on the diplomatic front And so my main work now is on the join platform But they share the the same methodology which is get people a safe space to reflect on each other's feelings Before jumping from the facts all the way to interpretations because if you jump to the interpretations It may look like our position is very diverged But actually they come from the same shared feeling the same shared value So with the shared value there may be innovations that they can take care of both our positions like the join platform has been used for example to Solicit feedback on marriage equality, which is a highly debated topic back at the time In in Taiwan and at the end our regulation Our law law actually is nicknamed the hyperlink act Legalized for same-sex couples all the bylaws the rise and duties But none of the in-laws that is to say they wed as individual but their families don't wed The heterosexual couples their families wed And their individuals wed but for same-sex couples only the individuals wed but not their families And that is the kind of innovation that gets much more support from all the different generations Because it protects the family value for all the different stakeholders Even though their position may look very different, but they all respect family values. Otherwise, they will not go to marriage So this is very good in creating consensus between Something that looks like opposition sides, but they find the common ground anyway Exactly. Yes Okay, the join platform. I mean yes And and it was a prototype and researched in v-taiwan. Yeah Okay, so thank you. Thank you very much for the time. Yes. Yes. Yes. So would you like Me to embargo the publication of our conversation after you write your report This is very important. Yeah, of course You know often we publish the magazine Interview and then you can just use the video. Okay. Okay. So I'll put it on youtube as unlisted And that's it and then I will wait for you to tell me when to publish Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Cheers. Bye