 So, what does the job of digital minister consist of during a pandemic time? My contribution is mostly on working with social innovators so that we can counter the pandemic with no lockdown and infodemic with no takedowns. And concretely, it means assisting professional contact tracers, it means assisting the local pharmacists, staff in the convenience store and so on to distribute the PPEs to ensure a fair and quick contact tracing among other things. How did Taiwan manage the digital COVID crisis? What was your role during that time in terms of communication? Since 2016, we've developed this idea of participation officers or POs embedded in each and every ministry trained in the art of engaging the public. And this time during the pandemic, for example, the Minister of Health and Welfare's participation officer along with his companion dog, a Shiba Inu named Zhong Chai, translated the signs, for example, physical distancing, mask wearing and so on into very funny memes and are triumphed over rumor. So, we call it humor over rumor. I also made sure that everyone who want to pre-register for mask, for vaccines and things like that can do so effectively, even if they're not a citizen, even if they're a resident. So what is the coronavirus infodemic and how do you fight it? The infodemic means a sudden explosion of rumors, misinformation and so on around the pandemic issue. For example, last April, people were panic buying tissue papers because they saw a rumor that says, oh, the state is confiscating toilet paper maker's material to make medical grade masks, and so it caused panic. And the way we fought it, again, is about humor over rumor. We made sure that the Premier post this very funny poster says each of us have only one pair of bottom and which is a web play because in Mandarin, bottom rhymes is a homonym with stockpiling. So there's no need to stockpile. And we said very clearly then, in addition to that meme, that the medical grade masks are made from plastic material domestically, whereas the toilet papers are made from overseas materials from South America. And because people find it genuinely funny, they share it much more than the people's sharing of rumors. So in a sense, our meme, our humor, have a higher R value, a higher basic reproduction number and they work as a vaccine of the mind. How do you fight mistrust and conspiracy? To give no trust is to get no trust. So what we have done is establishing a hotline, a toll-free number that anyone can call. It's called 1922. And the question that's worth answering is answered immediately in the public in the 2 p.m. press conference every day. For example, last April, there was a young boy that called 1922 saying, hey, you're originally our mask, but why am I only getting pink ones while the boys in my class all got navy blue ones? I don't want to wear pink to school. Well, the very next day, everyone in the press conference, all the health officers, medical officers were pink. And the minister of health and welfare even said pink panther was his childhood hero. And so just overnight, the boy became the most hip boy in class for only he has the color that a hero's wear and hero's hero I guess wear. You said the online dialogue between the government and the Taiwanese citizens prepared the ground and makes the country ready to face the pandemic. What do you mean by that? I mean, for example, the Gov-0 or G-0V community, which has been active since 2012 and has a very strong membership in the civil society in Taiwan. These social entrepreneurs and civic technologists collaboratively built our mask ration and visualization platform last year in just three days. As soon as we wrote out a real-time API of the availability of masks in each and every pharmacy, we've got tens of thousands of people using more than 100 different chatbots, maps, and visualization so that people can quickly find the nearby place where there's still some mask in stock. At the end of the day, I believe there's more than 10 million individual users of these civil service from the social sector. And that's what I refer to as the People-Public-Private Partnership. You said never impose from the top but from the bottom. Is that right? Can you please explain us this formula? When I say we're here to adapt technology to where the society is, instead of asking the society to adapt where the technologists are, I mean empowering the people closest to the pain. Instead of asking the elderly people or the very young people to log online and to participate in online forums and so on, they can just call this hotline. The tens of thousands of community participants of the G-0 community takes care of making the tools tailor-made to different languages, different ethnicities, different cultures and so on in a maximally inclusive way. Is the Taiwanese government really managing the country or the people is? As a digital minister, I'm not working for the government or for the people, but rather with the government and with the people. So the management is a process of what I call collaborative governance, meaning that the social sector, the public sector, and the private sector each pick the area that they excel at. The social sector invent the norms. The public sector amplifies it and then the private sector implements it. Is this a way for Taiwan not recognized by United Nations to show the world it is a champion of democracy? A way to make a difference with China? Is this hyper-democracy a wish to incite countries to include Taiwan back to the United Nations in spite of what China could say? Is it the goal of Taiwan and is this possible? I think in Taiwan, regardless of which political party you're identifying with, all the four major parties in the parliament agree that deepening democracy and connecting to the world, to the international community, these are fundamental values. So because of this, we fight a pandemic while not making a trade-off between human right and democracy on one side and public health and public safety on the other. We do so because in Taiwan, there really is no other way. This is the default that people expect, not just of the government but of the entire polity to act in a way that's democratic because we still remember the martial law. Anyone above 40 years old remember the martial law and how bad it was to have no freedom of the press, have no freedom of speech and so on. So I would say that this is not something extrinsic like trying to prove something to the world, but rather this is what we are. Until last May, you only had seven dead victims of COVID and 506 people. Today, you have maybe a little more. Today, it's one local case. Yesterday, two. The day before one. But there was something from before, so maybe it was a bit... There was a spike in May. Maybe we phrased it saying, but there was a spike in May. Because when we're filming this, we're a game post-pandemic. Well, post-poned. Anyway, the figures move all the time. That's right, exactly. So maybe instead of today, say this May. My question is simple. Is it still a good result for a government who is trying politics of zero COVID? Well, as I mentioned, as I answered this mid-September, we have one local confirmed case today, two yesterday, one the day before. And because of this, we're not quite zero, but we're quite close. And I do believe without this aspiration to be zero COVID, we'll see much more cases in Taiwan. Before joining the Taiwanese government, you were a programmer, an entrepreneur and a consultant, I think working for Apple. With Apple, yes, sure. With Apple. How useful was your experience in the Silicon Valley in your job of digital minister? Well, I'm still programming and I'm now an intrapreneur. I think what I learned from my work with Apple is that the ideas of design and design thinking is not limited just in the technological sector. Rather, anyone in the service sector, indeed public service is a kind of service, can learn from the idea of service design, of co-creating with not users, but citizens, of making sure that people's vision of what's going to happen can inform meaningfully not every four years, but rather every 24 hours. Why not work in Sinshu, Taiwanese Silicon Valley, even more advanced at certain levels than American one? Why did you choose American Silicon Valley instead of going to Taiwanese Silicon Valley? I'm physically based in Taiwan. Yeah, but before? Yeah, before I'm physically based in Taiwan. You were working for American, but... I'm working with, say, the Oxford University, which is in the UK. And then also people in Cupertino, Palo Alto and so on. So I'm a time traveler, I'm a time zone traveler in that way. So I don't think that question makes sense. Sorry. Okay, so you can work from it. Exactly. I'm a digital nomad. Okay. Chase the broadband. Was it an objective in your life to become member of government? What was your objective at that time? Yeah, at that time I helped the students occupying the parliament. So in a sense, we invited ourselves in in 2014, March 18. And the reason why was that the MPs at the time were refusing to deliberate substantially a trade agreement with Beijing. So instead of just demonstrating as protest, we demonstrated as a demo, like showing the MP and the citizen, was it like to augment this idea of collaborative democracy with the Internet Society, Internet Communities tools for listening as scale? Do you think it's normal that you are the only transgender minister in the world? For what I know, everybody else might be transgender. It's just I'm the only open transgender minister. And does it make Taiwan a better and more modern democracy? Well, I do think that, for example, that Taiwanese people voted twice now for Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, not because she's part of a political family, not because she belongs to a powerful family name, or she's someone's daughter or wife or something like that. She got her presidency entirely through her merit. So biology should not determine destiny. I believe this is shown conclusively by Dr. Tsai Ing-wen's presidency. Do you think having a transgender minister produce more open and more tolerant society? Instead of saying I identify as this or that, I often say I had this experience and then another experience. So I had a puberty when I was 13, another puberty when I was 24 and so on. And this way of speaking, I'm more able to then empathize with you, no matter which kind of puberty you went through, and also take all the sides and taking in those sides, making sure that we arrive on some common values. Do you think China could employ a transgender minister and his government? I haven't talked with their cabinet about this. I don't know. How did your experience in the 2014 Sunflower Movement help you to build a digital democracy? As I mentioned, it was the first time where the people occupying the parliament did so as a demo, as showing what's possible. And at the end of that year, all the mayoral candidates that supported open government get elected sometimes surprisingly, and everyone else who didn't, well, didn't get elected. So because of this, there's already appetite within the public service to learn the art of listening carefully and engage in millions of people, not as a way of doing a public broadcast, but the inverse, like listening at scale. So whereas previously, before the Sunflower Movement, people believed that this kind of deliberation can only happen in university classrooms or in places where it's up to 100 people maybe, but after the Sunflower Movement, all those digital tools made sure that we can engage meaningfully with tens of millions of people on some of the most pressing issues affecting our society. How would you define the Sunflower Movement? The Sunflower Movement is a demonstration, in the sense of a demo, showing that people occupying the MP's office, the parliament, can deliberate and debate meaningfully and produce a high quality, equal or higher quality than MP's deliberation when it comes to line by line deliberation of a trade agreement with Beijing. The Sunflower Movement engaged more than 20 different NGOs each focusing on particular aspects of the CSSTA, the trade agreement. For example, one side of the parliament talked about whether to include the Beijing regime's so-called private sector component in our then-new 4G telecommunication infrastructure. Of course, in the next few years, the entire world will have the same conversation around 5G, but our conversation at that time around 4G really engaged half a million people on the street and many more online, producing a set of good enough consensus that is not just ratified by the parliament and the National Security Council here, but also survives partisanship. That means it's not a partisan issue anymore because people from all the different sides of the political spectrum came to understand each other's position on this particular matter and many more. You were called a citizen hacker and a member of GOV Zero. What is a citizen hacker and what is a member of GOV Zero, please? A civic hacker is someone who looks at the digital services of the society, but finding some shortcomings instead of protesting simply fork what's there. Forking means taking something already there, not writing it off, but taking it into a new direction, an open direction, and willingly share the fruits of our labors so that anyone who thinks of an even better idea can build from our beginnings. So it's about a common purpose and also it's about open innovation. Now GOV Zero is a community that looks systematically at all the government digital services and produce something that GOV.TW into something that GZeroV.TW, so just by changing an O to a zero from a popular website, for example, join the GOV.TW into join the GZeroV.TW, you get into the shadow governments that's faster, more fair, and more fun, and always open source, so ready to be merged back to the national digital service. Do you think being a civic hacker is like being a sort of activist? Sometimes people refer to our work as hacktivism, so using technological tools as a mean to further, for example, human rights, inclusivity, and so on, like an activist. So I'm happy with the term hacktivist and I'm happy with the term civic hacking. To me, they're interchangeable. Activist against who or for what? So hacktivist. So a hacking activist. Yeah, a hacking activist against who or for who? For human rights, for inclusivity, for the values that activism believes in. In my opinion, civic hacking, as I mentioned, is about everyone's business with everyone's help. So a common purpose and a social innovation, an open innovation. So this common purpose may be about equality. It may be about solidarity. It may be about inclusivity and so on. And that is no different from traditional activism. There are about 30 millions of cyber attacks against Taiwan every month and half of them come from Chinese pirates. How can Taiwan resist to such a number of attacks and on such pressure? Our partnership and good relationship with the wide-had hacker community is paramount. Whenever we roll out new digital services in the government, we make sure that we get a full-fledged penetration testing, meaning that we get people in the wide-had community attacking our system even before we deploy the system to find vulnerability but instead of exploiting it once of it so that we can do proactive threat hunting and so on. So because of this, we ensure that if you are a cyber security researcher or a student in Taiwan, you are very well-paid, you can attend various activities and even get recruited by the Center of Excellence for Cyber Security and meet the minister or the president all the time so that you will stay on the light side instead of falling to the dark side. How is this possible and why China does this? I don't know. You should probably interview them. You don't have a clue or a version of yours? So to be more serious, I believe whatever we are doing is an existential proof that you do not have to succumb to authoritarianism or any kind of top-down way of ruling that removes the freedom of speech journalism and assembly and yet we can take care of ourselves pretty well when countering the pandemic, the infodemic and so on. So this existential proof warrants more understanding and also more informed dialogue to not just democracies around the world but with pretty much everyone around the world and I do believe that giving Taiwan this voice, giving Taiwan this stage is very important to all the allies to democracies around the world. What are the targets and what do you do to prevent those attacks from destroying government accounts? Ten government agencies and 6,000 email accounts were recently acted by Chinese computer pilots. First of all, we make sure that we do not process anything related to public utilities in the operation technology and so on with the same public internet technology for our IT services, so it's called defense in depth. And also, equally importantly, we're making sure that people in the public service and the public service contractors understand the danger of not practicing the cybersecurity good habits well. Things like the multi-factor authentication and things like that are essential training for our public servants. This is exactly like wearing a mask which protects you against your own eye-washance, I guess. So, countering the computer virus and countering the biological virus has some similarities. This is the last question. How did those attacks disturb the last presidential ballot and almost cancelled the re-election of Miss Tsai Nguyen? Did it? I'm not aware of anything like that. Okay, so maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that all this cyber-attack, the fake news created a kind of chaos on the... In 2018, around the referendum, certainly. Yes. But nothing like that happened in 2020. What was the first election? 2016? Maybe I'm wrong. I thought that... Usually used to describe 2018, but that was a mayoral election. And we took the measures to make sure that this information crisis do not impact the election again. So, by 2020 January, the presidential election, we don't see anything like that anymore because our defence, well, frankly speaking, worked. Okay, so you find a parade of these attacks? Yes. So, between the mayoral election of 2018 and the presidential election of 2020, we installed most of the safeguards against this information crisis in 2019. Can you describe those safeguards? Of course, of course, of course. Learning from the 2018 mayoral election and referendum where there's a lot of foreign-sponsored, targeted advertisements on the more anti-social corners of social media. In 2019, the social sector led by, for example, the PTT, which is the Taiwanese equivalent of Reddit, except it has no shareholders or advertisers. So, squarely in the social sector, they invented and signed on the anti-disinformation self-regulation accord, which, again, fed to the already very strong popular will to ask all the sponsors to presidential or mayoral election campaigns to disclose their financials. Indeed, 2018 was the first election where the National Audit Office and the Control Yuan is compelled by the new act to publish as open data for investigative journalists to see what kind of campaign donation expenses are there in that election. And so, people found out that the social media advertisements were not classified as campaign expenditure or donations for that matter. And because campaign donors are restricted to be domestic only, whereas on social media, the advertisement can be placed anywhere. It creates a backlash where people took this accord that PTT already signed on to demand Facebook to sign on something like that, basically treating the social and political advertisements during election times as campaign donations, forcing Facebook, essentially, to disclose the details and also ban foreign sponsors on that kind of advertisement. So, in 2019, Taiwan became one of the first jurisdiction where Facebook rolled out this honest advertisement platform, not because we passed any act we didn't, but rather the implied threat of social sanction if Facebook did not implement something like that. Of course, Google and other usual suspects signed on the same accord. And that, by and large, made sure that in the 2020 January presidential election, we do not see something like that again, which was rampant in 2018, did not affect the presidential election that much. Thank you very much. Yay. And we're done. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Can I do a little bit more of you? Sure, sure, sure. Of course, of course. Working on your... Sure, sure, sure. Just do whatever.