 I would like to first of all express my sincere gratitude to your excellency all the time for giving us the opportunity to pick your wisdom and exchange ideas on digital governance. My appreciation also goes to Ajahn Thitharat, Tip Samrit Kun from the Faculty of Law of Thammasat University. She will moderate the session for us this afternoon. I would like to thank also Institute of East Asian Study, Thammasat University. Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office in Bangkok and Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation for your efforts and support that makes this event happen. Before we start today's event, I would like to reiterate that today's session will be Q&A style. I give the liberty to the moderator and our guest, honor speaker on how you will run the session. We send our some questions to the minister teams already but feel free to ask the question when we open the floor for you. You can turn on the microphone and ask the question or you can type in the chat box. I am sure that the moderator will be happy to facilitate your questions. With the minister of reputation and her success in maximizing digital technology in addressing the COVID-19, she actually needs no introduction but I would like to remind all of you that she is among the youngest cabinet member in Taiwan and she also very active in the social transformation activity and the promotion of radical transparency for decades. So today we are very lucky and honored and it is my pleasure to have your excellency with us. So without further ado, I would like to stop and pass the floor to Ajahn Tidirat and your excellency Ajahn Tidirat, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Ajahn Somgit. Good afternoon everyone and very pleased to meet you again minister. So my name is Tidirat. I'm from Faculty of Law, Hamasat University. So I'll be your moderator today and I would like to welcome all the participants today as well. And as Ajahn Somgit said, our style would be talk. We would like it to be more like casual talk and exchange of ideas, exchange of knowledge that we can do in these three hours. So let me suggest the floor of our talk today. So we received some questions in advance from the participants. I hope you already received that list. Is that the case, minister? Yeah, should I just start like pasting it or how should we proceed it? Okay, so I think the questions, there are some similarities in those questions as well. And I saw that those questions are some concerns about the tech vision or the history of innovation in Taiwan. And also some concerns about the new technology, meta words, cryptocurrency, many exciting things. And some also focus on how we can apply the technology or innovation to solve social issues. And then some also ask about leadership, which I believe it will be the topic that you can contribute very, very well. And also about the digital education or the problem of digital UI. So what do you think, minister? Which one you would like to, which topic you would like to go first? I mean, it's fine. Usually, we work with the Slido applications so people can vote on the questions they want to hear answered. But that's usually what we use when the time is limited and there's no time to go through all the questions. But since this time around, we've got more than two hours, actually, almost three hours. So I believe we should give each version like no question left behind, so to speak. So why don't we just just follow things sequentially and people also feel free to raise your hand and as follow up questions and so on. Would that be okay? Yeah, I agree. I think let me just try to, I think some get caught. Could you please try to, uh, some, uh, participate? Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sorry for, for, uh, we know that this might happen in there. It's like the weather. Yeah, sometimes it rains. Yeah. I like your, I like your analogy so much. Yeah. If you think like it's a weather, then we don't have to be frustrated about that. That much, right? That's right. Yes. Okay. So, uh, maybe we can go, uh, buy, buy the, uh, the sequence of, of the, uh, question. And maybe I think I will try to, uh, pull some, uh, relevant question that might have some similarities. Yeah. Just let me know of the number and I'll, uh, string them together, so to speak. Very nice. Very nice. I might, I think I might start with, uh, some, like, the, the vision and technology so that we can see the, the big picture first. And, uh, I think the organizer told me that we can have a break. We are allowed to have a break during the session. Would it be all right if we have a break? Yeah. Of course. Just, just let me know when you would like to have a break and I'll just finish up that question and maybe we take a 10 minute break. Okay. Thank you. Oh, you can also tell me. Uh-huh. I'm fine. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very used to three hour sessions. I'm okay. Okay. Very, very, very interesting. I know of that as well. Okay. Uh, so then, yeah, uh, we can, uh, start, uh, and for the, for the audience, uh, please, uh, feel free to, uh, uh, give your opinion or your feedback, uh, both in the chat box or also, uh, by, uh, raising your hands as well. But I think we will focus, uh, we will, uh, focus more on like raising hands or have direct interaction more in the second half, right? So that might be good. But if you really need, do you feel like, um, uh, it is better to, to speak up about that right now? Feel free to raise your hands. And for those who feel more comfortable with, uh, speaking Thai or typing in Thai, feel free to do so. I will, uh, uh, try to facilitate or translate or summarize your question over there. Um, okay. So if it's all set about how we're going to, uh, manage this session, I think we can start from, uh, the very first topic about like tech vision. Okay. So maybe I think we can, uh, can we start, uh, from, um, the very, uh, question on the, the, the second and third question. I think these two questions, they are, uh, linked to each other, right? So the one question, uh, would you please share your vision or your dream of digital governance in the next 10 or 20 years? And the third question is asking about like, what is the key success factors in, in Taiwan's policy innovation? I think this one is not only about digital innovation. It can be also about the other, uh, innovations as well. So could you please, uh, tell us about this? Definitely. Uh, so WebEx is telling me that my, uh, connection quality is not good, but I hear you perfectly. Can, can you hear me? Yes, we hear you perfectly. So, so maybe, maybe it's not as bad as it says. Uh, okay. So thank you for the great questions. Um, I believe that it's the time to kind of share my, uh, job description, uh, as the beginning of this talk because when I became digital minister in 2016, I was asked this very question about the vision of digital governance, uh, in the next 10 or 20 years. And so I wrote a poem, uh, indeed a prayer about it. So I'll just share it now. It goes like this. Uh, when we see the internet of things, let's make it an internet of beings. When we see virtual reality, let's make it a shared reality. When we see machine learning, let's make it collaborative learning. When we see user experience, let's make it about human experience. And whenever we hear that singularity is near, let us always remember the plurality is here. So that's literally my job description. Uh, and, uh, I believe, um, the common thread here is very simple. It's that while IT information technology connects machines with machines, digital, um, is about connecting people to people. It's about employing IT technology to connect people to people, but it always should play a assistive role and never a authoritarian dominating role. My favorite example of, uh, assistive technology is, uh, with this eyeglass. Many of you were wearing similar assistive technologies. I'm sure, uh, I saw it, uh, when we turned it on the camera. Um, the thing of this eyeglass is that it's 100% aligned to my best interest, right? It helps me to see you beta, but it doesn't say, oh, uh, I want to replace your eyes. I want to push, uh, uh, the advertisement for 10 seconds and you can't, uh, close them until you watch them. You're not allowed to see other things in which case, of course, it will be, uh, aligned to some other people's interests, not my interests, but because it's empowering just to me. It's a personal assistive technology. It's also quite accountable in the sense that if there is bias, like if it's blurry or it's, uh, some malfunctioning, I can fix it myself. Uh, or I can bring it to the repair person down the street. They can fix it and we don't have to pay tens of millions of dollars, uh, in licensing fees. We don't have to, uh, reverse engineer the black box, uh, with 10 months of hacking or something. We know exactly how it works because the schemata of what, uh, makes a eyeglass work is public, uh, open access knowledge. So because of this, uh, I believe all the digital technologies we design must bear this alignment and accountability in mind and assist people, bringing tech to where the people are instead of asking people to adapt to technology. So that's my vision. Uh, and now, uh, the key success factors of implementing this is, uh, instead of working for the people, we work with the people. We ensure that, uh, the iterations, meaning the time it takes, uh, between, uh, we have an important thing to let an entire society know. For example, in 2020, three quarter of more people need to wear a mask and wash their hands. Or last year, contact tracing need to work not 24 hours after each infected case, but 24 minutes. Or, uh, we need to get, uh, more than 80% of our population vaccinated and so on. So these are, of course, important things, but it's not digital in nature, but digital does help, uh, by translating these messages into memes, into funny, um, pieces of information that people would remix to increase its basic transmission rates, uh, that's to say go viral. Uh, and so we make sure that when people, uh, listen to every day at 2pm or press conference, they can call this toll free number 1922 and ask to their heart's content, uh, whatever they want to report, uh, or think about with the latest counter epidemic, uh, strategies. Uh, and then on the very next 2pm press conference, not only do we answer all the journalists questions, but all the previous suggestions from the previous 24 hours, uh, are given the, uh, uh, stage are given the, um, floor. So that's, for example, um, in 2020 April, there was a young boy that called 1922 saying, oh, you're rationing our mask, which is great, but I God was pink mask, which is not great. All the boys in my class have navy blue mask. I don't want to wear pink to school, do something about it. And then the very next day at 2pm, all the medical officers were pink. Uh, Minister Chen, uh, even said our commander even said the pink panther was his childhood hero. So the boy became the most hip boy in the class for only he has the color that the heroes wear and heroes hero wear. And all the brands, all the advertisers in Taiwan just turned their avatars pink in the social media. And, and so that's the power of virality of communicating important ideas of wearing a mask, not just to protect others, uh, but to express yourself, uh, to, uh, the people of all different ages and so on. So that's what digital can do, uh, to amplify good ideas. And also as important is that whenever there are new innovations that can, for example, visualize, uh, the real time inventories of, uh, mask informacies to help preordering the mask, to, uh, make sure that vaccination are booked, uh, in an orderly and fair manner or to, for example, enable contact tracing in Taiwan. Uh, everyone when entering a public venue, just use their mobile phone, uh, without needing to download any app, uh, just point your building camera to the QR code and it sends the toll free SMS again to 1922 and just present. So that's like literally three seconds. Uh, and then it finishes a check-in that, uh, enabled contact tracing to work automatically, exposure notifications to work automatically without compromising privacy. And all these, like mask rationing map, the contact tracing system were not invented by the government. It's by individual civic technologists, uh, that look at the KPIs, uh, that's important to the society and then determining better ways to, to make that happen. And then we say, yeah, we do a reverse procurement instead of paying their money to build things. Uh, they, uh, make sure that's the government need to implement like an IT vendor, the real time API that's needed to make that happen. It works better than procurement because in procurement, usually you are allowed to change the specification only once a quarter or something, but using reverse procurement, more than 100 different teams are working on the same thing together. So better solution that works better for certain populations or certain, uh, municipalities, uh, gets developed in a grassroots manner. And then we can adapt the algorithms and APIs in real time, not bounded by the contracts of traditional procurement. So that's the second thing is to amplify grassroots social innovations. So the communication side and the innovation side work hand in hand. And, uh, the way we work is just by shortening the iteration between a good idea and the idea implemented. Wow. I think the, the, your, your examples was, uh, were fascinating was the, the mass, the pink mass, and also, uh, the idea of having, uh, civic tech, uh, uh, say to people to propose the, the better solution. Uh, may I add a following, a follow up question on this issue because, uh, um, for in Thailand, I think we do have this, uh, this also, uh, this solution that coming from grassroots or from people who see problem and would like to contribute to solve this problem, especially during COVID-19, uh, when we see a lot of, um, uh, uh, problem with the accessibility to medical centers or to, uh, the vaccination, booking or even with the checkup, right? And, and then, but the problem is that once, uh, the grassroots or the civic tech proposed something and it's quite hard to implement that or, uh, how does it plug in with the existing governmental system? And it doesn't mean that the governmental agency do not want the new solution. Sometimes they want it, but there was some barrier or some kind of like very hard to, to plug them together. Is there any suggestion from, from you on, on that side? How it is, it seems like everything goes very well and the government, uh, welcomed the, the solutions from the citizen side. How, how did you make it happen? Yeah. Uh, this is a great question. Now, uh, when I became digital minister in 2016, one of the first things that we did is to maximize modularity by writing in our procurement contract that all the vendors that implement IT systems that's visible to human users must also make it visible to machine users, uh, using the Linux foundation standard open API, usually in JSON format. Uh, and, uh, the language of that clause, I'm sure you have a similar clause, uh, was, uh, piggybacking on the accessibility clause, uh, previously in Taiwan, if an IT vendor builds a website and say it's just for people who can see, but for people who see with difficulty, we're not providing the service, then that vendor could be disqualified for discriminating against people with seeing difficulties, uh, for not conforming to accessibility standards. Uh, so we're essentially saying a machine are a kind of people to, uh, and if you discriminate against machines, uh, then you could also be disqualified, uh, from future procurement. Or if you say, I have to charge you four times more in order to build a API endpoint, you could also be disqualified, uh, for future procurements. And what a change it makes because, uh, in Taiwan, when we build large IT systems, uh, sometimes it's a result of citizen's petitions. In 2017, there was someone who petitioned our national, uh, e-petition system joining system saying, uh, our tax filing experience is explosively hostile and of quote, uh, and they got quite a few people resonating with them. Uh, and then we simply said, okay, let's just collaboratively redesign, uh, the new experience, uh, using web-based technologies and open API. And so people who complained suddenly turned into curcury ATOS, but, uh, because we have participation officers staff in each ministry, uh, in charge of engaging the public, we made sure that when we hold workshops such as this, uh, we hold, uh, one every two weeks. So when we hold workshops such as this, um, the facilitator in each breakout groups are public servants unrelated to the issue. So when we redesign the tax filing experience, how the API should look like, how the experience should look like, might be facilitated by the Coastal Guard, by the Ocean Affairs Council's participation officer. But when we design the opening up ocean policy and its related, uh, web systems, then maybe it's facilitated by the finance ministry or the tax agencies participation officer. And the reason why it's very simple. I'm sure you can all relate to this, right? Because when you're off work, you're also a citizen, the Coastal Guard also files their own tax, right? Uh, and, uh, uh, tax agency person also likes to serve or fish in an amateur profession or whatever. So when the citizens enter the workshop and they see their breakout groups are facilitated by public servants, usually there's some business, but in a few seconds they discover, oh, this public servant is definitely on my side. They don't defend, uh, government policy. They actually make demands in a much more professional manner than I could. So, uh, I'm, uh, I'm very relaxed and, uh, feel that it's authentic that I'm interfacing with another fellow citizen, not a public servant that defending existing policy. So when we redesign this, all the different agencies learn about this tax filing system, and then later on when we need to reuse the authentication parts, for example, to, uh, make sure the rationed mask, uh, do not receive double booking and so on, we reuse the tax filing system. And then when the economic affairs ministry, uh, want to issue the stimulus coupons vouchers, they then reuse another part of the system and so on and so on. So because it's built like legal blocks, the IT vendor already, uh, have the potential, uh, to interface with different front ends while keeping the back end secure and tested. So if your foundational system like tax filing service are all procured this way, then you already have a lot of safe, uh, and privacy preserving, uh, API endpoints that when new needs arise, like, uh, contact tracing, printing QR code, vaccination reservation, um, or credentials for vaccination and so on, you just kind of plug and play difference from the end, from the grassroots, from the city tech sector to the well proven bedrock APIs. I see. Wow. So it seems like we, uh, we, you, you did, uh, provided, uh, structure that will welcome, uh, uh, more change or will be very agile or very flexible for the, uh, the new plugs in, but at the same time also your answer focus on the human centric culture as well. And I really, I'm really impressed about the way that, uh, to, to, to, uh, change the head of, uh, public officials that actually they are also citizens and try to, to make citizen realize that, okay, we are on the same page. We are on the same site, working for the same purpose. Wow. That's, that's really fascinating. Linking to that, I think I would like to move to question number, uh, 24, which, uh, let's talk about the barrier, uh, uh, the, something that might block the transformation. I think this link to the, the, the issue that we talked before. And also like, uh, to the, I'm very impressed about, uh, the, uh, vision that you present at the beginning, how human centric it could be. And also it is very poetic as well. But, um, I mean, people might be able to see this vision, but, uh, it might, I might, there might also be something to block this as well, right? So you answered about the, the technological structure, about the human centric culture. Is there any other things that we should be aware or we should be careful of that might block the transformation? Yes, definitely. So our theory of change in my office is that I'm a public servant to the public service, meaning that my primary customer are other public servants because it's very easy if you design things in the top down manner that looks like time saving for citizens. They save an hour, but actually a public official would have to spend two hours just to save that one hour for the citizen. It's very easy to design that, uh, especially in a democratic, uh, polity because, uh, one are beholding, right, to the parliamentarians. And when they demand something, it's very easy to say, oh yeah, let's just work overtime, uh, to deliver what the MPs want. Uh, but, but that's not sustainable, right? If you keep overworking yourself, the quality of service suffers. Uh, and so I always make it very clear to MPs and other citizen representatives saying, you know, what we are looking at are what we call Pareto improvements that are incremental Pareto improvements, meaning that everyone involved, all the stakeholders need to not spend extra time and effort. It need to be a time saver or at least not wasting time for everyone. And at the same time, you need to make everyone feel safe or at least as safe as before. It must not introduce additional risk. So this is what I call swift and safe. It must be swift and safe for everyone. Uh, too many, uh, digital transformation fail because, uh, the, uh, transformation officer, uh, took those two things and think they're fungible, like everybody can work a little bit extra overtime to harden the cybersecurity and feel safer. Or we can relax a little bit of the safety constraints, uh, to save some time. Uh, but, uh, before long, uh, any delta, any comparison with the status quo, uh, will be perceived as weakness of the system and it will create division and polarization because people would say, oh, we are, uh, the ones that gets left behind or sacrificed or things like that. And that will cause the legitimacy of the system go down very quickly. But by saying, oh, actually we consulted with all the stakeholders, they think they're all, uh, swift and safe, uh, or at least not, um, you know, worse than before. Uh, and then we can then say, yeah, this is a good way to go forward and nobody would then block the path to transformation. So that means, for example, when I show you the QR code base, SMS base scanning, we, we didn't say for a second they replace paper. You can still write your name, uh, and contact number or even stamp your way in. What we're saying is that, uh, when you're writing down the numbers, a lot of people gather in the same place, which is unsafe, uh, health-wise last year, uh, people may be sharing the same pen and things like that, or the, uh, they may, uh, be, uh, unable to process that many paper. So if we post a few QR codes there and people who opt in, uh, to the QR code scanning, just go ahead and do that, it also protects the people who prefer to use paper. And that's why we got massive adoption, more than two, uh, million venues joining voluntarily in the first three days. Uh, but if we say this replaces paper, we would get nowhere. I see. So it's really like, uh, uh, user-centric and actually human-centric to use your words, right? Yes. Yeah. And I really like that, uh, the idea of SWEF and, and, and SAV, uh, transformation for everyone, not only for the citizen, but also for the workers as well. And, and then, yeah, that's, that's really, yeah, uh, very brilliant. And I think this one is addressing the pain point of many policy implementation in Thailand as well. Uh, following, following up that issue, uh, there is one question, this question number 28, uh, about, uh, the, the seniority, seniority culture. I think it's also linked to how, um, technology can be adopted. And this might be another, uh, issue, another element that might block the transformation that people think it might block the transpiration. Is this true that, uh, seniority culture might block the transformation or block the innovation or is it just a myth or is it any way that we can overcome, uh, this seniority culture? That that's a great question. Um, in Taiwan, uh, we think that senior people are full of wisdom. Uh, they have the key, uh, to make things happen. The personal connections, the resources, and so on, which I understand shares with the Thai culture as well. Um, however, the young people, the digital natives, uh, they have a firm grasp on emerging, uh, technologies on emerging trends. They are better at thinking out of the box, especially because they consider their neighbors, not people who live physically nearby, but, uh, kind of value system nearby, right? Sharing the same hashtags on social media. So, so they have a different tribe, a different community, uh, neighborhood. Uh, they have a neighborhood of the globe, uh, so to speak. Uh, so, so in Taiwan, what we, uh, create is a system of what we call reverse mentors. So usually when a young person enters a large organization, the senior person mentors the young, the junior one, but we deliberately choose, uh, every year, um, every couple of years, uh, 35, uh, young people, uh, usually younger than 35. Uh, and then, uh, they become, uh, the mentors of the ministers. So I'm, I'm old now. I'm 40 now. So I have my own younger reverse mentors, uh, working with me and their work is to point out the emerging, um, situations just like a mentor would and mentor me, uh, in the latest developments, for example, around decarbonization, uh, and the latest, um, ideas about circular economy and things like that, which, uh, in my, um, childhood, uh, I'm taught that economic development has negative externalities and we have to recycle and so on. And the younger mentors now teach mean it's not like that. Uh, circular economy have positive externalities. The, the more, the better you do, the, the, the more good you do to people. Uh, and nobody do recycling anymore. This is upcycling. So I said, uh, basically, uh, I learned of those emerging, uh, concepts. And of course I help find them the resource to actually make them happen. But what's important is that I actually call those young people mentors. They are cabinet level counselors of the youth advisory council or in our open government, uh, national action plans, steering committee. We have a committee members, members of the committee. Um, so, uh, com, for example, uh, commissioner Wang Xuanru, uh, who is just 19 years old at a, at this point, uh, but we, we make sure that we call her a commissioner one whenever she, she enters the meeting room and so on. So I think, uh, the Thai culture shares this with Taiwan in that if you have a regulation that defines a seat, a position and a position sounds very powerful, uh, then, then that's title actually, uh, is equivalent to seniority. So just make sure that you have, uh, awesome sounding titles for people younger than 35 as reverse mentors and they can then work as peer to peer, uh, learners, co-learners, uh, with the senior decision makers. Wow. That's, I really like the idea of this psychological nudge adding into the way that we address each other. And this might be something that we do not have a lot in English, more in the Asian language. And, and you kind of like, reversingly use it and very well to, to nudge psychological functions of people to think about this. Wow. That's really, uh, fascinating. And I just want to ask, uh, um, a little bit more about this, that is it something that, uh, happened from the inside the government? Does, uh, is this practice also disfused to the other, uh, like private companies or other part of the, of the, uh, society as well. I noticed when I visited Taiwan, there's, I think the elders in Taiwan might be the most, uh, uh, happy, uh, the, the happiest or like the, the feel enjoying their life. They don't feel cutie being all in, in at least in Taipei that I saw, and I was impressed by that too. So it's just like common thing in Taiwan now, or is it still like? Yes, definitely. Uh, we will have this, uh, concept in Mandarin is called Qingying Gongcheng, uh, or, um, use, uh, senior, junior, senior co-creation, uh, meaning that for, for each, uh, large projects, there needs to be a kind of intergenerational solidarity in order to make it happen. Uh, and this also flips, uh, the idea as a real seniority because, uh, many young people are actually very senior in internet time, right? They're very senior in the internet culture on social media and so on. And many people in their 60s and 70s maybe are spending their first couple months now, uh, in social media, right? So they're, they're actually the junior, actually like babies. So basically, uh, what, what we're saying is that, uh, we need to learn, uh, from each other's seniorities, so to speak, each other's experience areas, but we must not lose sight on the plurality, on the, um, the ideas that different social configurations requires, uh, different people to bridge the difference between people who are new to that configuration and people who are already very, very well-versed in that configuration. So we make sure that we pass, uh, laws, for example, that encourage, uh, the companies, uh, to retain as retainers, uh, the already retired employees, but as mentors, uh, to the younger people and also encourage, uh, the younger, freshly, uh, graduated undergrads, people to serve as what we call digital transformation ambassadors. So five, as a team are deployed, uh, to a local business, uh, or a, uh, social innovation organization, uh, in order to help them digitally transform and they're not interns, again, they're ambassadors from the digital world. They are reverse mentors and so on. And then we subsidize, uh, most of their salaries and so on. So yes, I believe this is truly a cross-sectoral call to action. Wow. Wow. I think, like, this is fascinating and you have many models not only within the government, but also extending to the private, uh, uh, side as well. Wow. So I'm not surprised why, um, the elders in Taiwan are happy. Yeah. And, uh, I would like to move a little bit to another, uh, uh, uh, area where how can technology, uh, be used to solve, uh, issues, social issues. And, uh, uh, uh, previously you talked about this, uh, recycle or the new ecology, uh, equal system problem or like environmental issue as well. There was one question about, uh, is this number 11 about the, uh, I'm sorry, 20 and 11, uh, number 20 talk about the policy innovation that benefits sustainable development. And it is also linked to the, uh, question number 11 about the rare earth, uh, mineral shortage that actually affect the main industry, uh, in Taiwan, uh, the chip, uh, uh, manufacturing industry. So how do you see, uh, the, you know, the, the link between innovation and sustainability and maybe could you also address the issue of, uh, chip manufacturing, uh, or how it is developed or how it is solved, the current status of, uh, Taiwan industry right now? Yeah, definitely. Uh, gladly. Uh, I believe, uh, upcycling, uh, really use a, a idea that has, uh, took root, uh, especially now that we're doing climate actions, uh, around the world. That is to say, the more you recycle, the more value, uh, you create because the recycled material could be used for things that its original, uh, products producer did not, uh, imagine. Uh, for example, many of the, um, clothes that are wear jackets that were, uh, were made out of upcycled denim, uh, or upcycled, uh, plastic bottles, uh, and so on. And there's many, uh, people in the textile, uh, industry in Taiwan, uh, working on how to make, uh, for example, one of the, uh, jackets I wore, uh, quite regularly, uh, is the, I think it's called s.coffee, cafe. Uh, it's, uh, uh, upcycled coffee bean wastes plus upcycled plastic bottles and together, uh, they made a new material that cleans itself. So I don't have to, uh, take it to the laundry that often, uh, just to hang it somewhere with ventilation and it just automatically cleans the outdoors and, and something, and I'm sure that the original coffee makers didn't think of that use. So basically it allows people of very different industries to cross-pollinate, uh, to learn from each other. And I think that, uh, is a direct result of our social innovation, uh, policies because in Taiwan, uh, anyone can register as a social innovation organization. Uh, it doesn't matter if it's a, um, credit union, a co-op, uh, a, um, more traditional business, uh, company or any other, um, organization form can say, okay, I'm going to focus on SDG this, dot, that, uh, specific SDG target or multiple ones. And I'm committed, uh, to publish my impact reports at least once a year. Uh, I agree to get, uh, uh, third-party auditing as if I'm a, uh, public listed company, but I'm not a public listed company. So even the small and medium enterprises are encouraged because, um, when people buy such socially innovative, uh, positive impact goods, uh, we give them awards. I personally go out and give awards, uh, to, uh, any large, uh, product purchaser, uh, or service purchaser of the, uh, impact businesses and organizations. And we also make sure that we highlight the best social innovations five, uh, each year into our presidential hackathon so that the president commits to say, okay, this model works really well on the local, uh, basis, uh, using a new voting method called quadratic voting or QV, uh, more than, uh, 10,000, uh, judges like jury real citizens, uh, votes, uh, which projects out of more than 200, uh, deliver the best social, uh, and environmental outcome. And then these local projects are then, uh, uh, went to the presidential office, uh, and in the public ceremony receive a trophy from our president, Dr. Tsai Nguyen. And the trophy is shaped like Taiwan, uh, again, upcycle material, uh, and then a small, uh, projector underneath. When you turn on the projector, it projects, uh, that this trophy being handed by the president to use. So it's very made, uh, the trophy, it describes itself. It shows the presidential promise, uh, in video, uh, recording that whatever you did on the local scale as a public servant and as a social sector or business, uh, will become nationwide public policy with all the personnel budget and law required, uh, in the next fiscal year. So basically that's presidential executive power, uh, to scale your ideas out in a cross-sectoral national way, uh, as a hackathon award. Uh, and we hand out just five awards each year because we also have limited bandwidth to change laws and reallocate budgets. But, but even so, uh, it created wonders, uh, on, uh, for example, um, last year's champion, uh, one of the champions, uh, was a app, uh, that lets people to, uh, call each other, uh, to, uh, plan for planting the trees and carbon, planting carbon sinks, uh, and to visualize the impact that tree planting and collaborative taking care of trees, uh, can create to the local community. Uh, and if you're a, uh, community builder, uh, you understand this is very easy to do in the town of say 1,000 people or 10,000 people, but very difficult to convince 23 million people to settle on a, uh, single standard or a platform. But that's what presidential hackathon does. Or two years ago, uh, there's a app, uh, that's encouraged people to play like Pokemon Go, uh, but instead of, uh, finding Pokemon Go, uh, stations, uh, they've had drinking fountains. So you can bring your bottles there to refill them. And once you refill and taste the, the water and leave comments, you can earn coins, you can, uh, earn badges, you can make friends, uh, learn stories, redeem it for the local drinks. Uh, and so on, it's called a tea serving app. And again, this app, uh, Hongdae, uh, in, uh, Dai Yi in, uh, Taiwanese, uh, language. And what this, uh, does is a kind of economy of networks. And it's only fun if like Pokemon Go, everybody around you is playing it. And if there's sufficient spots, uh, that allows people to check in, uh, and that's how the presidential hackathon works is that it convinces, uh, the gas stations, uh, and also private sector, uh, like banks and so on, or joining in, uh, to serve tea, uh, and be listed, uh, on this app using collaborative open data formats and so on. So, uh, I hope you, you can see that basically the economic of scale is what the presidential hackathon is offering to local scale, uh, social innovators. And that massively improves their positive impact and their willingness to declare their impact in similar to publicly listed companies. Uh, and I believe that's our main answer to question, uh, 20. Uh, and from, from what I understand, uh, in Taiwan, there is, uh, already, uh, the time of rare earth and rare resources industry alliance, uh, specifically, uh, uh, focusing, uh, on recycling and also on like recycling from unlikely places. So like upcycling. Uh, but I'm, I'm not a expert, uh, on this. So I'll just, uh, redirect you to the alliance webpage and then they have like meeting records and things like that. I'm sure that you can, uh, gauge, uh, the current supplies and strategies from the website that I just pasted. Uh, it's in Mandarin, but I'm sure the mission translation works. Of course. Of course. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah. Uh, yeah, the, the, the, your explanation of the, how the economy of scale and economy of network can help, um, scaling up. And I think this is something that, uh, startups or even like the innovation social enterprise in Thailand, they are struggling about like they got a good idea, good innovations, but no one use it or don't know how to scale up or even like the, the app by the government, which, uh, started with very good intention, but cannot convince people or cannot facilitate people to use this as much as we want. Yeah. And I, yeah, thank you very much for, for this, uh, various idea of how to, to scale up. Um, I think this is the, the goal that we should try to, uh, implement. Thank you very much. And, and then I would like to move to question, uh, number five. It is also about how to use technology and innovation to solve problem of poverty, uh, as well. Um, and this might also link to, to how, uh, uh, the, the social innovations, uh, is also create, uh, jobs for people as well. Yeah. Uh, so instead of saying solving, uh, poverty, uh, we're focusing on, uh, enabling, uh, people, especially young people, uh, regardless of their circumstances. Uh, you might know that in Taiwan broadband is a human rights. So even on the most rural place, uh, on the top of Taiwan, almost 4,000 meters high, the Yushan mountain, you're still guaranteed to have symmetric broadband connection, uh, at least 10 megabits per second, I believe, uh, for just around 15 euros per month with unlimited data. And if you don't, it's my fault. Like personally my fault, people write me emails complaining that they are near that mountain. Like that time, there was someone quarantined, uh, in the quarantine place near the Yangming mountain. Uh, and he wrote me saying, um, it took me half a day to send out this email. None of the telecom providers work. Uh, ministerial promised, uh, broadband as a human rights, but as a quarantined person for 14 days, I enjoy no human rights. It's a violation and things like that. So, uh, and then I work with the, uh, national communication commission and, uh, CH telecom, uh, to set up a repeater, uh, tower, uh, near the quarantine place in just two weeks. And then we solved the problem. But by that time, he's already out of quarantine. Uh, but he made a point of actually driving back, uh, running speed test to measure the new, uh, connection speed and posting on social media to hold as accountable. So, so when, when we say broadband as a human right, uh, like tap water or running water, we would really mean it. Uh, and then based on broadband as a human right, we then ensure that, uh, in primary school, uh, education, uh, starting this year, um, everyone have, uh, not just Wi-Fi and broadband in the classroom, but also, uh, tablets as well. Uh, instead of owning a tablet, uh, they can, uh, work with the teacher to, uh, work out how exactly best, uh, to utilize the tablet. But especially, uh, in the more rural indigenous places, they are, uh, allowed to take the tablets, uh, previously only in classrooms, uh, take them home. Uh, and then, uh, running various, skill-based, uh, education systems, uh, connecting them with the, uh, companions in other cities, in the country, and so on. Sharing, uh, their indigenous culture with the rest of society in co-creation classes, uh, and so on. Uh, they, they learn, uh, to express themselves and make new friends, uh, to connect to, as I mentioned, the global neighborhood, uh, as part of that, uh, tablet. And again, because the underlying infrastructure is already guaranteed, and then they learn, uh, useful skills, uh, right away, like, uh, telemedicine, uh, like telecare, teleworking, and things like that, that can then help them to, uh, make better choices in their career, and then connect them better, uh, to the opportunities around the world. I'm not limited, uh, by their vicinity, uh, by their town, and things like that. So, uh, I believe these are the kind of empowering moves that we do, uh, and the most important value is always that it's not, um, like, uh, training for, uh, skills or media literacy of just understanding what the teacher or the TV has to say, but it's, uh, idea of competence education, in that they can create their own shows, they can fact-check our presidential candidates during their, uh, debates, uh, and if they care about the local issues, such as many people, uh, on the, um, west side of Taiwan, west south side of Taiwan care about air pollution. They can set up their own, uh, PM 2.5 measurement network, the air box network that reveals how bad the PM 2.5 is, and even, uh, proposed, uh, the theories of change based on the actual data gathered, uh, by the primary schools, uh, and, uh, to also correct the wrongs of the industries that may have emissions, uh, that they, uh, were previously not discovered by the journalist, uh, and environmental protection authority, and so on. So the main lesson is that they can change their environment for the better even before they turn 18 and only, uh, enabled in this way could they actually find what we call purpose-based learning, uh, PBL, that is to say, uh, learning towards something that they know are also serving, uh, their community's best interests, not just, uh, their own kind of individual career ladders and so on. That's also very important. Wow. Wow. Um, so, uh, rather than, uh, uh, so it's empowering, right, empowering, providing the tools so that people can use their liberty, their freedom to, uh, uh, choose the way that they would like to live their life. And, uh, yeah, I really like your idea that this is not about just providing, uh, skills or training, but it's actually open more doors. It sounds to me that it opened more doors for people who might not be, uh, uh, in the environment that they can, can, uh, access to chances to widen the opportunity, opportunities and widen the chance. And, uh, this is very important that you mentioned that it has to be currentee as fundamental rights or human rights, so that people can, uh, know that if they do not receive it, it is actually, uh, something that didn't request. And I'm very impressed that he did not only request it for himself and actually the fact that he will be out of the quarantine in two weeks, actually if he only cares for himself, he didn't have to, to voice out, right? He can, he can just leave and then go on living his life, but he talks because he won't, maybe the others who might need to be in the quarantine, enjoy the same, uh, privilege, the flame rights. Yeah. Wow. That is very fascinating. Uh, and since we talk about quarantine, maybe this question, uh, let's move to the issue about COVID-19 as question number six and, uh, question number, uh, 16, right? So, uh, I know that you might have been asked about this, uh, a lot about the digital technology and COVID-19. So, how, uh, the technology innovation can, uh, uh, help prevent, uh, help to prevent and have to call this problem. You, uh, also already mentioned some examples about the QR code and also the, the, uh, facilitation of, uh, uh, mass and some things that is important in this. Uh, so, but do you have like, what are the lessons learned as like a two year pass after COVID-19? What can technology do? How far we can rely on technology and can technology really help us to stop infodemic, uh, or is it some way that we, we should, something that we should learn about this two years experience of COVID-19 and technology? Yeah. Thank you. Uh, I think the main lessons that we learned, uh, is that it always helps to trust the citizens, uh, because to give no trust is to get no trust. If we don't trust the citizens, we will say, oh, let's just force them to do something. They don't have to understand why. And then sooner or later, people enter a state of fatigue and they don't want to, uh, obey anymore, right? Because there's only so many mohas that you can force people to do, uh, certain things. But if on the other hand, uh, this solution, this innovation is created by the people themselves, then they discover the ways, the best ways, uh, the norms, the social, um, configurations that could actually enable this kind of, uh, counter pandemic measures to go on essentially forever. Uh, for example, um, around mosque use, which was one of the early contention points in many jurisdictions. Um, the social innovators, um, um, tried out all the very different ways to, uh, share the, the words, uh, about the mosque use, but then, uh, because we made sure that it's always under creative commons, meaning that, uh, whatever we publish, including in the, um, medical officer's daily press conference, uh, are licensed under creative commons. It means that people can remix, uh, those, uh, assets, those contents in whichever way they like. And so just like virus, right? Some goes viral. Some didn't go viral. Uh, some made, uh, it's to the social network. Some are so boring that people don't bother, uh, looking at it. Uh, but, uh, without, um, taking down anything, we can let them people, uh, look at what actually has worked and what really convinced people and so on. Uh, so for example, of course, I already shared that the pink mask convinced a lot of people, uh, uh, and later on rainbow mask, uh, as well. Uh, and then, uh, the, the cute dog, uh, the fun part, the cute dog, uh, tried their own child, the spokes dog of the CCC, uh, shared many memes that are co-created, uh, with the people, especially YouTubers and other creatives in the, in the society. For example, the physical distancing. Uh, this one on the top left says, when you're indoor, please keep three shibas away from one another. When you're outdoor, keep two shibas away from one another. That's very easy to remember. You can't unsee this, right? Or, uh, on the bottom right. We finally settled down something that says, um, um, during the COVID times, uh, don't, don't be so scared that you eat your own food. Uh, this is a very, very funny joke, a meme really. So we, we piggyback on an existing meme. Uh, and then, uh, this meme says, um, wear a mask to protect your own face against your own unwashed hand. And this is brilliant because, um, it says nothing about altruism. Uh, and it says nothing that are not founded, uh, in something that people can immediately check, right? Instead of saying protect the elderly or protect the vulnerable or whatever, it says, um, your hands may be unwashed. It protects against your own, own hands, uh, and nobody can dispute that. And, and so, uh, this message has the highest basic reproduction number, the highest R rates. Uh, and that then, uh, we focus on getting the message across. So basically we use social media as a way to co-create with the people. It's not just about, uh, making the official statements, uh, useful. It's also making it fun and also enable people who want to make fun of us, uh, to make fun with us. Uh, I believe that is the most important thing. And, uh, around the infodemic about countering this information, it always helps, uh, to have systems where we can actually, uh, look at what are the kind of trending, uh, this information and do some contact tracing, uh, about it, uh, again, modeling it exactly like, uh, epidemiology. So in Taiwan, uh, we have this co-facts, uh, initiative where people can report on the line platforms, uh, what rumors they have received and receive real-time clarifications. Uh, it partners with many, uh, like Trend Micro, Who's Call, these are, uh, leading antivirus and, uh, also, um, cybersecurity, uh, industries. Uh, and it also partners with, with the international fact-check, uh, network. So, uh, anytime you see this information, you can just forward to this line bot, actually any of the four or so line bots. Uh, and then just like flagging things as fun, it will feed the information to a global dashboard of, uh, the trending rumors. And then the fact-checkers start to work on those, usually now, uh, within 60 minutes, uh, which is great because, uh, it's, uh, shorter than the news cycle. So it means that, uh, the daily news, uh, the kind of morning news or the, um, the news on the, uh, lunchtime or dinner time would not kind of amplify this information if we get the professional journalists, the balanced reports, uh, usually in a funny form. And they, of course, will also dedicate airtime to the funny form, uh, of the countering this information. And so they would not, uh, serve as, uh, kind of accidental super spreaders of this information, right? So, so quick contact tracing, very important. Uh, and then our, uh, antidotes, our vaccines of the mind, uh, is essentially just taking the viral parts, the kind of mRNA and change the kind of spike protein. So exactly how the vaccine works. So for example, there was a rumor, this is before the pandemic. This says, uh, people are being fined $1 million for perm or hair many times a week. And then, uh, this says it's not true. And then our premier, uh, but his youth, uh, right picture. So a picture when he was young, uh, was here, says, uh, I may be bought at the moment, but I would not punish people who looked like my youth, uh, which is very funny. Uh, and then a library in the sense what we're introducing is just a label and requirement for hair products, not for consumers. Uh, and then, uh, on the bottom of the poster, which I didn't translate, is this, uh, hair blower, uh, and the premier as he looks now, uh, who says, however, if you perm your hair many times a week, it will not damage your bank account, but it will damage your hair. You may end up looking like me. So I think this is really good humor because he makes fun of himself. He is quite bald, but he doesn't mean in an offensive way. Uh, and it appeals to intergenerational solidarity. Uh, and, and so people share it. Uh, it's much more viral than the origin of this information. All the evening news and, uh, morning time news love it. Uh, and so we didn't get hurt by the disinformation at all because people start to laugh about it. And then once you laugh about it, it took the outrage away, right? And so people don't feel the same outrage that he made for them to kind of mindlessly share and, uh, that goes to hatred or discrimination and so on. So that's, uh, our principles. Uh, they're fast, they're fair and they're fun. These are the three principles. Wow. Wow. It's not only fast and fair, but this is also fun as well. And adding this humor elements into things make people feel more, uh, solidarity because we can, uh, laugh together and in positive way, not, not like, uh, in the way that we looked at looking down on each other. Wow. Wow. I, I, I, yeah, I didn't expect like this human centric answer to this question at all. But, uh, it seemed to be like, uh, the way that we use the humanistic side of our, uh, self to, to solve the problem. Wow. Very fascinating. And, uh, I would like to move on to another issue on gender equality. There were many questions on this and, and, and, uh, some asked about how technology, uh, I think it was, uh, question number 14, 15 and 27, uh, that, uh, how technological tools can enhance gender equality in the society and, uh, also like the success of Taiwan as the first country in Asia to approve sex marriage. Uh, is there anything to do with the culture or with the culture of accepting diversity or was it something to do with the technological advancement in the country and, uh, um, also how Taiwan overcome the gender barrier and become more like, you know, welcoming, uh, different gender into the important public positions. Okay. Well, these are all very good, uh, kind of seminar level questions, uh, but I understand that we have limited time, so I'll be brief, uh, in the, in the answers. Um, I, I think, uh, what we are seeing, uh, in Taiwan is that, uh, it's not just about, uh, fighting for the freedoms and the rights and so on for the so-called minority, uh, uh, of the population. We don't frame things this way. We frame things more in a kind of intersectionality kind of way, like leaving no one behind, like universal design and things like that, and also affects the way that, for example, I, I talk about my own gender experience. Uh, as you probably know, I'm the world's first, uh, openly transgender minister. Um, everyone else may be, you know, in the closet and still transgender. We don't know if I am openly transgender. Uh, and so, uh, the, the point I'm making to the, uh, public sector in the HR, uh, about my gender experience is not that I identify as this or that. Actually, if you look at my Twitter, um, my pronouns are whatever, like, like literally whatever you can call me, whatever. Uh, and then I, I would say, for example, I had my first puberty experience when I was 13 and my second puberty experience when I was 24. But instead of excluding half of population and later on the other half of population, I would say, uh, I share some common experience with you and then I share some common experience with someone else. Uh, and, but it doesn't bring us, uh, more apart. It brings us together because we can talk about our shared experience, uh, during the puberty and so on. So, basically by focusing on intersectionality, it became less of a labeling exercise, but more of a seeking out common values exercise. Um, in Taiwan for, for decades, we thought Thailand would be first to pass, uh, marriage equality. I believe that everyone in Asia thought that, uh, but in Taiwan, we were able to overcome that precisely because, uh, we redefined marriage, so to speak, uh, in a way that's respectful, uh, for each, uh, different generations and their traditions. Uh, we, uh, discovered that no matter people are pro or against, uh, same sex marriage, uh, they all agree that, uh, kind of, um, long lasting union between two individuals are important. Uh, but their difference is only about the family values in it because, uh, people who married after 2008 in Taiwan is always by registration and they tend to see marriage as something that's between the two wed persons. It's a kind of, uh, civic registration that concerns rights and duties. Uh, but before 2007, um, many people wed, uh, their families. That's to say they held a public ceremonies of two families joining together. Uh, the two individuals are, are just like the representatives of their families. Uh, and it's more about kinship, uh, father-in-law, mother-in-law relationships, uh, than, than anything else. Uh, they don't have to register to the government. They can't register later. Uh, the analogy was that it's like the, the child is born. Of course, it's born. Uh, and then what you register, uh, is, uh, for the household registration, uh, can take some time, right? So, um, there's two different, uh, experiences of marriage in Taiwan, depending on which generation you are in. Uh, and basically by legalizing marriage equality to be just about the by-law relationship, the rights and duties, but never about the in-law relationship to same-sex couples when they're wed. They don't form kinship, uh, with the other families. Uh, we make sure that we respect both traditions while honoring the common points about the, uh, cherished values of, uh, committed relationships, uh, between individuals to catch. And then after a constitutional court ruling and two referendum, uh, people are fine with that. So, uh, while there were, of course, some tensions before the referendum, uh, by saying, no, we're just legalizing the by-laws, not the in-laws, uh, we create something that people can live with and it doesn't feel like a compromise. It feels like a innovation. So, this is how, uh, innovation or social innovation contributes, uh, to this revolution of marriage equality. I believe this is very important. Now, back to the technological tools part. I believe one of the most, uh, important, uh, technology, uh, is open data. Uh, in 2014, when Taiwan pushed, uh, for open data, uh, we set up many, uh, platforms about the open data, uh, national platform, uh, that won, I think, three consecutive years top, uh, at the open data index of the Open Knowledge Foundation, uh, before they just stop, uh, measuring all together. And, uh, and, and we also, of course, as a, uh, uh, signatory, uh, voluntary signatory of the CEDAW, uh, of the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, uh, we make sure that we have, uh, a, uh, system, uh, that's tracked all the genders participation called a significant gender statistics, takes database. And this, uh, significant database is really, really comprehensive because in the public service all the, uh, all the laws in draft form, all the multi-year projects do not receive approval or budget until they do their gender impact assessment with the Gender Equality Committee. Uh, and so no matter whether you work on the Minister of Labor or Finance or whatever, you may think your job has nothing to do with gender. Uh, some, uh, friendly civil society organization are going to help you to measure for the impact to ensure fair representation in stakeholder consultation in civil one. Uh, and the number that's being tracked, for example, the percentage of, uh, leadership positions, uh, the percentage of parliamentarian, uh, for example, at the moment is over 40, right, for, for women. It didn't start at over 40. So, uh, whenever people start measuring this, it just doesn't stop. Uh, we just keep measuring, uh, for these gender related, uh, sex and gender disaggregated, uh, statistics. Um, and so it forms after, um, nowadays, um, more than 10 years, I believe, of Gender Equality Committee's web, a very solid theory of change that people can then introduce policies while being very aware and an evidence-based way of whatever, uh, stakeholders who are going to, to, to, uh, touch upon, uh, they are ready also to talk, uh, with you on how to implement this in the most inclusive way. And then that also brings us to, to, uh, 27. Because then, uh, this intersectionality is already kind of gender mainstreaming, already part of our public servants culture. So soon as the two referendum results are out about marriage equality, our public servants know exactly how to implement it because after, uh, more than a decade of gender mainstreaming work, they know exactly how the solution space looked like. Uh, and so for example, uh, when I set up my own office, uh, at a social innovation lab, as a real office used to be a, uh, Air Force Headquarter. Uh, and, uh, uh, of course, the Air Force didn't, uh, care that much about universal, uh, design or things like that, uh, LGBTQ inclusion because after all they were constructed, uh, almost a century ago. Uh, so we do a lot of remodeling, uh, reshaping it to the social innovation lab. Not only do we, uh, include people of all the different needs, for example, uh, this soccer field here are co-created with people with Downs syndrome, with trisimate differences. Uh, we want to make sure it's not just wheelchair accessible or elderly accessible or, um, white keen, uh, seeing difficulty accessible, but also neurodiversity accessible. Uh, and, uh, because we tore down all the walls, it also need to include the input of everyone, uh, living nearby, uh, and because they're going to use it and they do, uh, as a public park. And so, uh, inevitably, uh, the restaurants, uh, question came, right? Uh, so how many restaurants in which configuration should we build on the ground floor? Uh, and fortunately, uh, because of gender mainstreaming work, the Ministry of Interior already know the answer to your recommendation, uh, from one of their earlier consultations. Uh, so, uh, just on the other side of, uh, actually, uh, no, just nearby, uh, this soccer field, if you extend, uh, horizontally, the four corners of the soccer fields correspond to four restrooms. Uh, one for ladies' room, one for gentlemen's room, one for gender neutral, and one for wheelchair accessible. Uh, and they're built with exactly equal area. Uh, and there's no, uh, no one left behind, so to speak. And so, this is how we can then say, well, then, uh, it maximizes, uh, people's convenience. Uh, it provably shortens people's queue time, wait time, as compared to its previous configuration. And again, they are incremental improvement. It leaves no one behind. It doesn't make anyone feel less safe than before, or make anyone less convenient than before. And that is how we, uh, become more openly inclusive in all the space-related configurations. Hope that answers the question. Wow. Wow. Um, so I think this is very important lesson that, uh, change doesn't happen in, in a night, in overnight. So maybe, uh, when we talk about, um, Taiwan's sex marriage law, we would look at the, we usually look at the constitutional court ruling and then the referendum. But actually, just as you said, that the history started well before that, right? And with the mainstream, with gender mainstreaming work. Can I ask a little bit more about that, like, where, where did it start? Like, how did it come into the scene? And, uh, of course, you tell us about how it is, uh, became, how it became the common theme of public servants. At least, even, uh, agree or not, at least they became very, uh, familiar with it. So how did it start from the beginning? Yeah. Uh, a lot of it, uh, were, uh, the work of our previous, uh, vice presidents, uh, noted, uh, feminist, uh, movement, uh, leader, uh, Annette Lu, uh, Lu Xiaolian. And when she, uh, became, uh, uh, vice president, I believe, uh, around the turn of century from 2000 to 2008, uh, she worked with her, uh, feminist, uh, movement, uh, partners, uh, kind of civil society and constructed this very brilliant design that we're still using today for the open government, uh, national action plan steering committee, uh, of the gender equality committee. Uh, and, uh, the design is very simple. Uh, all the impact assessment have passed through the GEC, the equality committee, and the equality committee, uh, is most of the ministries related to, uh, this work, uh, but, uh, equal number of civil society organization station leaders, uh, plus one. Uh, so the CSOs always have one more vote when it comes to a vote compared to the minister. So it's a multi stakeholder conversation with civil society at its core is a social sector first, uh, design. And, uh, if the ministers, uh, are, are more men than women, uh, then proportionally the CSO leaders are more women than men. If the ministers are more women than men, uh, this so far have not happened, but hopefully soon, uh, then, uh, the CSOs will, uh, change it. It's gender proportion, um, proportionally. Uh, and so it's always strive for a kind of in and young balance. Uh, whenever it took any which way in the cabinet, it would tilt exactly the other way from the civil society. And I think that's really brilliant institutional design. Wow. Wow. Very interesting. And, uh, yeah. And listening to, to your, your, uh, story, uh, we heard a lot about the, uh, civil society, the importance of civil society and how the grassroots movement can people participate with, uh, the, um, both governmental work development and new solutions. Then I would like to jump to the question about civic hacking or, uh, civic, uh, participation movement, uh, based on technology, uh, number 31 and 32 before we break. I mean, maybe we talk, um, of course you are famous for leading this group of civic tech and also integrate them into, uh, uh, the many works of the government. How could you please, uh, tell the story of this and how it became so impactful with the, uh, policy innovation? And, uh, of course we have this question about what is the, actually the difference between civic hacker and civic participation? Sure. Well, uh, civic hacking is, uh, uh, one way of civic participation, but it's, it's of course not the only way. Uh, and, uh, participation can, of course happen on many different, uh, ways. For example, people may, uh, collaborate to set the agenda, right? Uh, our question and answer today is crowdsourced. And so this is about defining the agenda, agenda setting, uh, problem definition. So those are on the earlier stages. Uh, and then the later stages would be, um, for example, solution identification, um, developing things once we already have some common values together. So this is the, the implementation, uh, part. But on the other hand, there's also the evaluation oversight, which as fellow civil service, of course we know that's actually the most important, uh, part in making sure that whatever decisions must be carried through, or at least, uh, providing an account of why it didn't quite happen the way that we designed it and so on. That's also very important. But civic hacking adds a twist to it. Instead of, uh, demonstrating against something, protesting the lack of oversight or evaluation, uh, people can simply fork the government. Fork, uh, is a, uh, technical term that means taking some things already there, not writing it off. But while it's tried to grow to a certain direction, you fork like a fork, uh, into a different direction. So you can take an existing digital service and then change it to what a way that you want it to work instead, uh, usually for the better, hopefully for the better. Uh, in Taiwan in 2012, uh, there, uh, was this, uh, still is a, uh, very important movement called GovZero or GZero V movement. And the GZero V movement's call to action is very simple. For all the government web services, uh, that always ends in something that gov.tw, the GovZero people find the ones that they didn't like. But instead of protesting, demonstrating against it, they demonstrate. In a demo, uh, to build a, uh, website that's exactly the same, except the O has changed to a zero. So something that GZero V, the TW. So instead of the citizen participation portal, join the Gov.tw, change your O to a zero, get to the shadow government, join the GZero V, the TW and so on. Uh, by systematically looking at all the government services and fork it for the better, it creates a new venue for people who are fed up with digital services by the government. Instead of, uh, showing, uh, that people are angry, um, this turns outrage into co-creation. So in theoretical terms, uh, civic hacking is a kind of civic participation that is co-creation on open innovations, including open source, open hardware, open design, open access, and many things. So basically all the GovZero creations are also open in nature so that people who don't like GovZero services can fork it again and make something more. Uh, so for example, what you're looking at is the real-time mask availability for more than 6,000 pharmacies. People, when they queue in line, can check those numbers, uh, and see exactly how many masks do the person queue before them just purchased. Uh, and so this, uh, made people feel very safe and very swift as well, uh, because people, uh, then don't buy in the conspiracy theories about the mask going nowhere or being hoarded or things like that. People can see it's actually working as intended and they don't have to queue in vain. If someplace turns red or gray, just don't go there. You can go someplace that's a little bit farther by green, uh, and so on. But the important thing of GovZero is that because it's open and based on real-time open data, more than 100 different tools, maps for people who want to use maps, for elderly people who don't want to use a map, simply chatbots based on the line application. People who are seeing difficulties will voice assistance and so on. So people with different needs get to fork the digital service in all those different directions to ensure maximal access for everyone who are concerned about the way that the masks are rationed. And then this helps the evaluation because when we offer, uh, the real-time inventory every 30 seconds, this means that the public servants are never to blame. This is, this is counterintuitive. So I will, I will expand on it a little bit more. Uh, certainly you have a freedom of information access, FOIA process. But if you publish statistics only a quarter, uh, after the fact quarterly report or yearly reports, or after FOIA access usually takes two months or so in order to find out the information and send it back to the FOIA request, already the situation is passed. And if people's memory don't agree with the number they receive from you, well, you are to blame because you are the gatekeeper of that information. But by saying no, uh, in the pharmacy, whenever they sell, uh, some rationed mask, the system automatically updates, uh, every 30 seconds. Everybody understand there's no way our public service can review the numbers, every 30 seconds in more than 6,000 pharmacies. So obviously no public servant has, has looked at those numbers. And therefore if the numbers are wrong, we are not to blame. If the numbers are wrong, we collectively figure out what's wrong because nobody are the gatekeepers. Um, and so very quickly after this, uh, mask rationing map is published, the open street map community, uh, which is active in many jurisdictions, uh, discovered there is a serious data bias, uh, because when we designed the system in Taipei, uh, our capital city, we say, yeah, it's very equal because, uh, it's very much overlapping with population centers. We make sure that our distribution of masks corresponds almost one-to-one to population. So each person in Taiwan on average is of a very equitable distance to a nearest available mask. And we're quite happy about that. But the open street map community says, um, that is not true because not everyone own a helicopter. What looks like the same distance on the map translates to different travel time, especially if you have to take public transportation, uh, taking the metro, that's maybe just 20 minutes, but taking a bus, especially a rural place, multiple buses, the same distance on the map, it will take three hours to get through. And by the time you get to the pharmacy, the pharmacy is already closed. Uh, and so obviously the numbers are wrong, but instead of blaming our public service, we get to sign, well, you have the same numbers. How can you do better? And the open street map community via AMP, Commander in Parliament, uh, bring this up in the interpolation. Uh, and then Minister Chen simply said, uh, legislator, teach us. And the legislator, because she was VP of data analytics at Foxconn, uh, she, she can't say no, I don't know. She's actually an expert on this. And so she said, yeah, you just do this and that. And then we implemented a better rationing scheme and also introduced pre-registration 24 hours after this interpolation. And so this changes the relationship between the citizens, representatives and the public sector. We're no longer the only one that can be held accountable. We can also say, yeah, provide a better account. Why don't you do so? After all, you have the same data and the same source code as we have. And, and people do do that. And then of course it creates a much more trustworthy relationship. So trusting our citizens is only possible by enabling the civic hackers to really make a difference and commit to, if they truly have a better idea, implement that idea as soon as possible. Hope that answered the question. Wow. It does really answer the question. And I think, oh yeah, we, we, we sense the, now we see the very example of how de-centralization can help, uh, develop more, uh, co-creations or even like, uh, provide better solution over that. De-centralization doesn't always means fragmentation. It can means co-creation as well. Wow. And in Thailand as well, we see a lot of, uh, problem of data transparency. People want to know more, different governmental agencies say different things. And, and yeah, many people also suggested that, yeah, if we have the same set of data, then we can at least work on the same, um, ground and then we may suggest different way of analysis or different angles to look at the issue. At least we do not have to, uh, argue about the facts, right? So, so, wow, very, very good, uh, example because explanation over there, very clear. Um, thank you so much for the first half. I think time flies. Uh, we already, I think we are doing very well in terms of time. We did cover about the vision on tech, the specific issue that tech can help solving. Also, we covered the, um, gender equality issue, COVID-19 or environmental issues and also very importantly, the participation by citizens to improve or to enhance the digital or tech innovation, social innovation. Um, let's have a break. And then after that, we will talk more, we will shift to the issue of new technology and also digital education, looking forward, looking toward the new, uh, upcoming century, what, uh, years, what we should do, how should we take this new technology? There are so many questions about the new technology, exciting one. And then maybe we can talk about your leadership as well. You did already, uh, explained many things that's already impressed a lot of people here. I can see that they're first, they're nodding heads, but maybe we can, uh, dig a little bit more over there about how, what is the leadership needed for this century? So maybe we have around 15 minute break, would that be all right? Okay. And then we come back together again at, uh, two, 30, I'm sorry, it's not, it's not two on your side, but then 15 minutes later. Yeah. Okay. So see you in 15 minutes. Coming up in the chat box as well. And, uh, very nice to, uh, sharing some more links, uh, that we can exchange on the related to the issues that we are talking about as well. So, uh, for the participants, please feel free to, uh, put in the chat box your questions or your feedback or comments, or, and, and I will open the floor, uh, for more questions as well. Or you can also, uh, uh, you know, specify that you would like to, to ask question live, then we should have that session. And please, please feel free to do that in Thai language as well. Uh, will, uh, facilitate if necessary. Okay. A minister, please, uh, let's, uh, go directly to the next issue that we have right now, which is an exciting one, uh, new technology. Uh, uh, maybe we start from the questions of meta words, uh, which are the questions number one, number 12, and I think also number 13. Uh, so of course we, we know this is the buzzword of 2021, right? And that might be, uh, another buzzword for this year as well. And, um, the questions are, what is your opinion? How Taiwan prepare for it? How possible it will be applied to our life? And do you believe full immersion VR possible and how long it will take for this technology to be realized? Yeah, I mean, for, for many people, uh, they, they saw the term meta words in 2022 and it feels very new. But for me, that's, uh, three decades old, uh, term. I, I encountered the term, uh, like many people reading Snow Crash, I believe published in 92. So actually three decades have passed. Uh, I think I read about it in, in 93, 94, uh, when I was just, uh, very much into internet, uh, and, uh, multi-user dungeons or mud, uh, development, which you could say is a text based metaverse, I guess. Uh, and then, uh, so it brings, um, to me a sense of nostalgia, uh, like, uh, the, the good days, uh, of the nineties. Uh, and, and, and probably not alone in this, um, in, in my, uh, first, um, startup in 96, uh, uh, we, we caught our projects to Cyber Eye because, uh, cyberspace, uh, was the buzzwork back then. It's, uh, synonymous, uh, with metaverse, I believe, uh, says the same thing. Um, and it's, uh, the shared reality part of my job description. It means that we should be able to take not just what we type, not just what we say, uh, or the, the two-dimensional camera, but we should, uh, just pack, uh, our entire ambience, uh, and then ship it, uh, to other people in other places. And then we can share our reality, and then, uh, actually talk about the weather, not just talk about the microphone levels as a proxy of the weather, right? So that's the original motivation, uh, uh, of metaverse. Now, I believe this became a buzzword again, uh, because something happened, uh, between the nineties, uh, when everyone can be their own web master, uh, writing their own web log, and so on. Uh, and, and, and now, uh, which is everyone's homepage, look pretty much the same because they're just hosted on a few major platforms. Uh, and, uh, back in the day, um, people, uh, were operating, uh, with their, their own communication providers, but we relate them together. Uh, that's the internet relate chat, uh, which became, uh, the XNPP. Uh, nowadays the instant messengers, uh, many of them still use XNPP, but they don't, uh, relate anymore. Uh, so our phones, uh, our instant messengers can't really send to other instant messengers, uh, recipients. They become silos and so on. So, uh, the, the centralization, the re-centralization of what used to be a decentralized technology, namely the internet of our web, is what happened, uh, between the time when Metaverse and Sebra Space, uh, first became popular and now when it become popular again. So for me, it's calling back, uh, to, they're truly nostalgic, calling back, uh, to the nineties, uh, ethos, uh, that is to say, people should be able to arrange their own realities, uh, should be able to share, uh, reality as we configure it. We should not be, uh, limited, uh, to the kind of colorless imaginations or single color, monocolored, uh, um, relationships, uh, as envisioned, uh, by, uh, a social media company was just a, a like, uh, to press. Well, now they have five or six different emotions, but you know what I mean, right? So instead of a, a something more, more monotonous, we want to go back, uh, to the old days, uh, where it could be a true plurality, uh, plurality versus a multiverse. Um, and so, um, the, the difference nowadays, of course, is that emotion takes a, a variously different form, uh, as compared to previously in the nineties when, uh, really the only, uh, low latency medium is, uh, text and maybe smileys, uh, and animated give, but nothing more than that. Uh, we really want to animate our avatars, uh, in shared realities as well. We want to bring more of ourselves and our environment in, especially after the, um, sometime harrowing, um, experience in the past couple of years, uh, because of the COVID, it increased the appetite, uh, for truly social immersive reality. So I don't think Mark Zuckerberg, uh, imagined it. Uh, I believe the credit goes to Neil Stevenson, uh, the author of Snowcrash, uh, and many other, uh, science fiction authors, uh, around that time. Uh, and I think Taiwan prepares ourselves, uh, for the meat of us, uh, by ensuring, as I mentioned, uh, people feel competent, uh, in arranging their realities. That is to say, uh, as competent, uh, as we are to look at each other's spreadsheets and changing the formulas, uh, to fork each other's spreadsheets. I'm sure many people here knows how to do that. Uh, many of our children knows to, uh, play interactive video games that they found on the scratch, uh, programming platform and then change the color, uh, to be their favorite color, uh, or to change the avatar of the protagonist of the hero to look like themselves, uh, or to change the background music or whatever. Many young children's first programming exercise, uh, was arranging together a open hardware Arduino Raspberry Pi, uh, or some open software like in scratch, uh, and so on. Again, uh, we need to preserve, uh, that feeling of people, uh, having the capacity like we can arrange our furniture, uh, furniture in our, uh, homes and offices. We need to have the same confidence in arranging our relationships, uh, in the meat of us. And truly we then, uh, become a shared reality, you know, multiverse, uh, not just, uh, another top down world garden that doesn't interface with anything else. Now, uh, the thing about fully immersive VR, it's already there, right? That the future is already there. It's just not evenly distributed. When, uh, Neuromancer was written, I believe, um, already the author has experienced, uh, fully immersive virtual reality. So the technology, if you're a, uh, fighter, uh, jet pilot, already exists for a long time, it was just either very expensive or you can only stay in it for a very short amount of time, uh, because of, uh, issues about, uh, the, the, uh, orientation, the foveation and things like that, that prevents, uh, long time exposure on virtual reality. Uh, so immersion is already there. It's just for how long would you like to be immersed in it? And I happen to believe that, um, only way that people would like to immerse in virtual reality is that it's extending our existing reality. That is to say it has a kind of fully adjustable opacity mode, uh, because if we spend our time in virtual reality to the exclusion of our bodies, um, this, this embodied feeling actually doesn't feel good, uh, and people don't want to spend, um, hours and hours without a body. It feels truly, truly weird. Uh, on the other hand, if we can bring, uh, our vicinity in, uh, like live streaming, uh, our, uh, vicinity so that people in different places can, uh, kind of sit, uh, uh, alongside ourselves, actually, uh, sometimes create, uh, some painting, uh, sessions, uh, initially using tilt brush, uh, relax, sculpturing or sculpturing virtual reality, uh, but, uh, making sure that, uh, I bring into the scenario what's actually in this room or in the, uh, vicinity in the community. And for example, when I arrange a conversation session, uh, in shared reality at a time using the open source tool, high fidelity, uh, when I was in Paris in 2016 with a bunch of, uh, high school and primary school students, uh, in Taiwan, uh, we made sure that we not only brought our own avatars in, but I shrunk myself to the height of the children so that in the familiar ground, they don't have to look up to me. Uh, they, they treat me literally as their equals of equal height. Uh, and, and so that we can share the reality from their perspective. Uh, I also work with some art, uh, university students in Gaoxion, who at the time were a collaboratively designing a project of walking down the memory lane, uh, with very old people, seniors, uh, in the community. Again, they scan themselves into the 3D avatars, apply some, um, uh, deep faking technology, to make themselves look young again. Uh, and then they take as a tour, uh, to the community, as they remember in the old streets and so on. Uh, but not as a solo trip, but as kind of touring guide, uh, to bring the nowadays young people to the young people of their own memory, just themselves, uh, like talking like a young person to another young person, like showing them around, uh, in a different configuration of the same streets that they both have been to and so on. So shared reality is not, uh, kind of abstract thing. It must stem from the actual reality either in our memory, in our vicinity, from a different perspective, and so on. That, uh, warrants to be shared, uh, to people who care about each other, to, uh, take each other's size, to step into each other's shoes, uh, so to speak. And this kind of immersion is on a people-to-people term. I believe that's the only kind of immersion that's worth pursuing. Otherwise we'll just be trapped in our solo realities and we'll actually be isolating even more compared to the two-dimensional video conferencing we're having now. Hmm. I see. Wow. Yeah. Uh, that sounds, uh, with your examples, I think, uh, make, uh, immersion technology seems to be more realistic or extending from our human reality. And I really like the word you use, shared reality. Thank you very much for that. Uh, uh, uh, you know, this is a very good start of exciting technology. And since we, and I think, uh, your, uh, uh, narrative, uh, of looking at the internet being trying, people on internet trying to, uh, decentralize again, going back to the very beginning of it is very interesting. And I think there's also linked to the issue of cryptocurrency as well. Um, the previous meta-worst question also covered question number 26 already too. And we also, uh, have some questions regarding cryptocurrency. It is number, uh, 22, 25, uh, also 19. And, uh, yeah, so, so this, uh, three questions that we have regarding cryptocurrency. So how do you see it, uh, future, uh, does this decentralize on the financial side? Uh, how would it impact our society? Or is it, what, what are the challenges regarding this? And what is the plan for Taiwan on this as well? Yeah. Um, in 2010, when I first became a, uh, independent contractor, uh, with Apple working with the Siri team, um, I negotiated my, my rate to be one Bitcoin per hour. Um, uh, of course in 2010, that's, that's nothing, right? It's, it's not, uh, what it costs now. Um, but I've been contracting under one Bitcoin per hour for many years. Uh, 2013, 2014, uh, of course my consulting rate increased kind of naturally when measured in Fiat. But, uh, by the time I become a minister in 2016, I had to say no, actually I don't take crypto, uh, as payments. Uh, and Apple never paid me crypto anyway because they couldn't figure out how to, uh, wire, uh, crypto back in 2010. Uh, so we just based on the contract date, uh, to settle on exchange rate and they paid me in, in Fiat. Uh, and I, every year I have to do my public declaration of my assets and I have to keep saying that I own no crypto assets because I don't want to be seen as doing money laundering or, uh, doing some investment advice or things like that. Uh, and in the past couple years, uh, I, I say that with more urgency because it's becoming then very clear, uh, that Bitcoin is not helping, uh, the climate situation. I'm sure you, uh, are well aware of this. Uh, and so, um, back when Vitalik Buterin visited Taiwan, he's the first guest that I received in my residence as a teleworking minister in 2016. Uh, I also talked to him about the climate actions that's required, a hard fork even, uh, that's required and so on. So I'm really glad that I think this year, uh, the sustainable transition, uh, will hopefully be completed, uh, by Ethereum, uh, to prove a stake, uh, after which I can in good conscience say, uh, now I heard cryptocurrency again because it's not going to damage, uh, the destiny of our next generation. So, um, it's quite clear that, uh, because people's interest in crypto has skyrocketed, uh, people are becoming increasingly aware of the negative environmental or societal, uh, impacts that it has had, uh, toward income inequality, uh, based on asymmetrical information and things like that. And I'm, I'm happy that people are, uh, dedicating time, uh, to, to work on these issues. So, uh, in, in my job, my day job as a digital minister, I make sure that I make a distinction, uh, between cryptocurrency, which I'm not yet touching because, uh, sustainability reasons, uh, but, uh, the distributed ledger technology or DLTs that underlies the cryptocurrency, the financial application, but we do use DLTs. Uh, DLTs are very useful. Um, you may have, uh, already heard me mention in the previous half of the talk, uh, that we treat the more than 100 Musk availability visualization like notes, uh, in a ledger, uh, apparently immutable, uh, or that, uh, people can measure in their primary school, uh, the air pollution, air, uh, PM 2.5 levels, again contributing to a distributed ledger, uh, without it being a actual cryptocurrency or blockchain and so on. So just like, uh, relational databases, decentralized databases, uh, that is apparently an immutable, has a variety of uses. And we, uh, use many of these innovations coming from the Ethereum community in our daily, uh, public service work. For example, the presidential hackathon, uh, won the popular acclaim precisely because the, uh, more than 10,000 people voted using the new voting method quadratic voting from the Ethereum community. Instead of one person, uh, one vote, uh, which if you have run any internet voting campaigns, uh, you know that it's guaranteed to make a majority of people unhappy. Uh, we decided to vote so that each person have 99 points and in more than 200 different projects, you can allocate the points to any number of projects, but it's quadratic, meaning that, um, to vote one vote, it costs you one point, two votes, four, three votes, nine, uh, four votes, 16. So with 99 points, you can vote at most nine votes, but not 10 votes to any particular project because that would cost 100. Uh, and many people don't want to squander their votes. So after voting for their friends or family's pet project, nine votes, they still have some left, right? They have 18 left. So they're compelled to find another project of sustainability related, uh, goals and learn about it and maybe vote four, which is 16 and they still have two points left and so they learn about at least two more projects and maybe they discover some synergy. So they take some of the nine votes back, maybe they do a seven and seven and so on. So the design is that, um, every, uh, marginal return of each vote, uh, when it comes to impacting the result is the same as the marginal cost in points. So people are compelled to actually evaluate and vote truthfully, uh, and not kind of gaming the system. And at the end of the day, when we chose the top 20, we now have a synergy map. So the, uh, 200 projects that didn't make the cut know which project of the top 20 do they, uh, um, they're compelled to join because of the popular demand of the synergies of their deliverables. So at the end of the day, nobody feel they have lost, uh, out of the five or six, uh, project you have voted, uh, much more likely than not, uh, that at least one or two made it to the top 20. And even if they didn't, uh, those didn't, they can rejoin the top 20 teams based on this, uh, positive sum, uh, voting design. And this came, uh, straight from the Ethereum community. And we use many, many, uh, democratic designs, uh, from that community so much so that I say, you know, democracy is a social technology. Uh, and Ethereum is a kind of higher bandwidth, lower latency way to experience with consensus making technology. So they are like our research arm when it comes to governance, uh, which may or may not, uh, blow up spectacularly, but of the design that did work, uh, we then become their developments on, uh, to try to scale it out and scale it up to make sure that the governance of the cryptocurrency can also be the governance mechanism that improves our day to day democracy. So the skills required, I believe, are exactly the same as the ones that, uh, serve the public, uh, in the, uh, public sector. That is to say the ability to listen, um, actively, uh, at scale and design together with the citizens. And these are the most important skills. Wow. Wow. Very fascinating. And, and yes, that's, uh, your, your story make it, uh, make mathematics sounds very, uh, sexy right now. Yeah. Because it's, it's contributed to, to the, the, uh, behavior of people. And again, very human centric. Uh, we, we, you, you explain about how we can apply technology in the way that will not, uh, define the human nature or the, uh, human, uh, instinctions. Right. Very, very interesting. I think we have another new technology, uh, left in our list on number, question number 34 on quantum computing. Uh, it is anticipated that this will disrupt all business and industrial sectors in the future. What is your perspective and how Taiwan prepared for this challenge? If you see this challenge. Yeah. Um, of course, it is a challenge, uh, especially on the cryptographic, uh, France. Uh, we're now already working on post-quantum, uh, algorithms, I believe in the U S based NIST, uh, challenges. Uh, two of the final candidates, uh, have contributions from Taiwanese teams. So we have pretty good contributions in this area internationally. And some of the post-quantum, uh, lattice related math also contributes, uh, to applications now, not waiting for a quantum computer. Uh, for example, it contributes to, uh, this, uh, fully homomorphic encryption. That's a mouthful. The, the FHE, um, way of thinking about computation. I'm sure that if you've worked with public cloud providers and private data, you know, there's a fundamental dilemma in that maybe the citizen trusts you and you trust the cloud provider, but a citizen doesn't trust the cloud provider. And if you, uh, do computation on the cloud provider, you end up losing some citizens trust. And if they don't trust you, they don't get you, uh, accurate or timely information. And so at the end of the day, everybody loses. Uh, and there were no, uh, good way to fix this problem, uh, until the event of homomorphic encryption. Uh, so using post-quantum, uh, algorithms, our national center for high speed computation is already deploying, uh, ways that, uh, allows us to decouple raw data storage and access with computation. So the idea is very simple. Uh, we have some private raw data from our citizens, uh, stored on site on premise. We encrypt that by putting it in a safe lock it. And then we send the encrypted one to safe, uh, to the cloud provider. Uh, and then the cloud provider knows nothing about what's within the magical. They can do computations on its content. Uh, like if the safe contains many, uh, stacked legal blocks, you can say, oh, let's shuffle it. You can shuffle legal blocks within the safe without, uh, knowing how many blocks there are, of course, it's intuitive, uh, because it introduces entropy. Uh, but using post-quantum cryptography, uh, counter-intuitively, uh, it turns out you can't do any kind of computation like solving a Rubik's Cube, uh, outside of the safe without learning anything about what's inside the safe. So it's really quite magical. And once it's done, it's sent back and then you decrypt it and get the result. So it allows you to perform arbitrarily complex computation in public cloud providers without ever disclosing even just one bit of private information, uh, to those, uh, cloud providers. And that is one of the early fruits, uh, of our investment into post-quantum algorithmic research. I'm sure there's many other research on this front. So, uh, we, uh, both, uh, invest in fundamental, like basic science and math, but as you said, uh, math could be sexy, uh, in its application. So we also make sure that we record popular Instagram, uh, videos, uh, or whatever, uh, comic books and manga and so on that talks about those sexy applications and privacy enhancing technologies. Wow. Yeah. So not only the sexy part of application, but also the fundamental research, right? That would be the basis of, uh, the how to, how a society can, uh, get along with the new technology and challenges. Well, thank you very much on that end. And then we can, uh, move to another big topic, actually. Um, we receive around four questions about digital education and digital divide. Uh, so it is question number nine, number 21, uh, 23 and 33. So, um, um, I think we can expect that during this situation that, uh, new technology is coming, what are the skills required for the next decade? Uh, what, uh, what should we do for the digital divide is already happened in, uh, city and rural area and maybe internationally as well. And also, uh, what can, what are the skills that, that, that we should teach, uh, students or we should try to have the learning process and also the question of how, uh, school or university, especially university, uh, should reinvent itself in the day that, um, something that we teach today might be already outdated, uh, uh, once the student graduate. So could you please chair your wheel on, uh, digital education and the problem of digital divide? Certainly. Um, so I think one of the, uh, most important thing that I learned as a, um, autonomous learner, um, is that it's not about home schooling. I actually spent, uh, very few hours of the day in my home when I, uh, quit, uh, the school when I was 15 years old, when I was, uh, on the, um, eighth grade. Um, indeed, uh, I spent most of the time at a nearby university, uh, at the research labs, uh, and things like that. So, um, although the question is correct in saying that I've not been graduated from a famous university, I've come to learn that it really doesn't matter that the professors, as long as my research interests align with their research interests, uh, they don't care if I, uh, am paying tuition in the university or they want our research partners. So, so, uh, what, what matters is that you have a good grasp on a open research problem that many people cares about. Uh, so, uh, when I was 15 years old, for example, uh, I was, uh, very fascinated, uh, with this idea of swift trust, of why people who've never met each other just because a hashtag is correct or a picture looks right, uh, come to trust, uh, a lot, uh, about, uh, their closely need community or trust each other so much so that they treat themselves, uh, like the best friends of each other and so on. It's inexplicable. It never happens, uh, in, uh, real life, uh, maybe just in movies, uh, but online, we see that, uh, happens a lot. On the other hand, uh, a, uh, badly designed anti-social, social media also manufactures swift distrust. So, previously, best friends, uh, end up blocking each other very quickly on certain, uh, badly designed social media. So, uh, it seems that it polarizes people, uh, towards swift trust and distrust. Uh, so, so why is that? And that was very fascinating. Uh, but, but I don't, uh, know any particular school or any particular, uh, major, uh, in any university or any degree answers that question. At that time, the idea of a kind of information society, uh, communication theory and so on, were still in its infancy. Uh, and it's not very clear, like which major, uh, should I declare myself, um, to be in if I want to learn about swift trust. So, I end up just, uh, attending like nine, uh, different disciplines, uh, classes, mostly on the graduate level, uh, learning about interaction design, game design, uh, linguistics, philosophy of the mind, uh, and things like that in order to kind of, uh, get a hold, uh, on this open research problem. But, uh, my, my pitch or my research brief, um, it is very appealing to all those professors that I encountered, uh, even across, uh, or especially across the internet, right? Uh, when I write to, uh, like, um, prominent researchers like, uh, Douglas Hofstadter, uh, of Gruda-Escherbach, uh, he not only replied immediately, he even fixed my Mandarin. He actually speaks Mandarin and so on. So, we fully leveraged, um, this swift trust phenomena, uh, to build, uh, a camaraderie, uh, with, uh, leading researchers on philosophies of the mind and cognitive sciences and so on. So, um, I think anything that makes, um, the 15 years of Audrey's life easier, uh, is good, uh, when we talk about education reforms. I'm talking about, of course, open courseware, uh, and many other open access efforts. I'm talking about Project Gutenberg and many other, uh, free access, free cultural works that, uh, liberates, uh, from the library, um, the out-of-copyright works, uh, so that, uh, a young Audrey can actually read all the classical works, uh, at least those outside of copyright protection, uh, once written before the First World War. Maybe that's why I'm so optimistic. Anyway, so, so, so, also, all these, uh, are important, but the most important, uh, obviously is the flexibility, the agility, uh, of the researchers working in institutions in working with, uh, the stakeholders outside of those institutions. And in Taiwan, we call it University, uh, Social Responsibility, or USR. And we have a dedicated USR office, uh, that talks about how university makes a positive social impact through outreach programs, uh, such as this, uh, through working with, uh, the local community builders, uh, to empower, uh, the people, uh, who are part of their lifelong education or, uh, younger, uh, people, uh, who want to, uh, get ahead, uh, of the, the curriculum as I did, uh, and then, uh, accommodate them, uh, within the frameworks of the higher education. So I think that, uh, worked pretty well. And if you're interested, you can look into the USR, uh, portal, uh, of our, uh, National Ministry of, uh, Education. Now, um, I, I believe, uh, the digital divide, I talk a little bit about, uh, broadband, uh, access tablets, uh, companion learners, and so on, uh, as a human right. And I also want to highlight that for example, when we're, uh, deploying 5G technologies, uh, we have to slogan, uh, that, uh, the more rural it is, the more advanced it is. That is to say the latest, most cutting-edge technology. It could be drones, uh, delivering medicine, uh, or, uh, it could be all sort of, uh, telecare, um, based on, uh, self-diagnostics, with a group of different specialty, um, doctors visiting together, uh, through video communication and so on. Uh, all the enabling technologies like 5G that would enable this kind of work were first deployed in the rural places. And the theory is very simple because the social entrepreneurs working on these technologies are not yet benefiting from the network of scale and they couldn't really price their offerings very competitively, uh, because of the high investment costs, high upfront. But the state already are under a, uh, obligation, constitutionally even, to deliver, um, health service, education service, uh, to those places anyway. So as long as those social entrepreneurs can deliver it, uh, at a slightly smaller, uh, cost expense compared to our very expensive way, but still we have to deliver it, uh, then, uh, if they, they are, um, eligible, uh, to get the state, uh, awards and grants and so on. So, uh, this is a very old idea, uh, called pay for success. Uh, that says we should focus on things that government is subsidizing anyway, uh, and then work with entrepreneurs to do it but, uh, without forcing them to just enter the market, uh, for capitalistic, uh, for competition because at those, uh, uh, the early adopter curves, uh, there's no sufficiently, uh, symmetrical, for market mechanism to work and many innovations would, um, would not have the investment if, uh, they couldn't, uh, substitute their early return for investment for social return of investment. So we allow many entrepreneurs, uh, to get those grants, uh, and awards, uh, by proving their SROIs even without a ROI case. And this is, again, very important if you are to promote social entrepreneurship and direct technologies to look at civic technology instead of just industrial technology because that's how, uh, you can discover the, the truly useful, long lasting application of 5G and maybe later on 6G, uh, only the frontline people, empowering people closest to the pain, can you actually discover the, the use case that makes sense? So I hope that answers the question. I have to answer very abstractly because I understand the time constraints and also because it's really a seminar level question. But if you have follow-ups, I'm happy to answer as well. Yeah. Thank you very much. I think, yeah, yeah, that, that, uh, the idea of inviting, uh, a social entrepreneur to, to, uh, help solving, solving issues. And of course, this go back again to how it will plug in with the, the government to work already. And I have a following, a follow-up questions on that. Um, sometimes in Thailand we see that, um, uh, the technology or the new innovation, when it come into the scene, uh, to the, the, uh, the stage of deployment, what, uh, many, uh, governmental officials, uh, are afraid of is that it might fail. And then if it fails, then it might mean responsibility of, um, you know, the, the officials in charge. Um, but when we think about startup or technology or, or innovation, failure is something very common, right? It's, it's technology, innovation can fail. So, uh, how do you, is there any mindset like this in the public sector in Taiwan? Or if that is, how do you change or how do you encourage people not to fear, uh, fear or how to cope with fear? Yeah. Well, if, uh, you deliver a service or product and the market tells you it's not a fit, uh, but you're very open about it. You share with your, uh, entire ecosystem of this signal in an open way. And you allow those people who point out and complain about those misfits, uh, to help designing a new iteration that works better. Uh, then it's not called failure in a startup world. It's called a pivot, right? So basically, uh, what we're saying is that we, we need to have this pivoting, um, uh, mentality, this mindset that whatever we're rolling out is a perpetual beta. And this is the, the trick of working with the gov zero and many other civic hacker community. If you deliver something that takes ages to build and is perfect, then actually there's no job for the civic tech community to do. Uh, as I often quote, uh, Lena Cohen, uh, there is a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in. So if you shift things that has no cracks, that has no failures, uh, there's no way for the citizens to keep engaged because the government is perfect, right? Uh, so what was important here is that don't take it personally. And maybe because, uh, I've worked with the Siri team, uh, for six years since 2010 to 2016, uh, I've learned to take nothing, uh, seriously. So, uh, in many governmental projects, uh, many people when they first tried out and they found, uh, many difficulties and so on, they complain on social media and they blame me and so on. Uh, and, and I don't see them as personal attacks. Uh, I just see it as corpus, uh, right? Uh, that's what we say in computational linguistics, like novel uses of, uh, the Mandarin language or the English language. I'm like, oh, wow, this is very innovative, very creative writing. Uh, and then I hugged the trolls, right? Engaged the people, uh, on the part that's authentic, that's actually contributing, uh, to our understanding of the actual meta. Um, so for example, one example, very quick, is that when we roll out the mouse creation map, uh, in 2020 February, uh, although it looks quite good, right? Uh, when we, when I share this map, um, actually there's a few pharmacies here that are colored green that's already running out of masks. So the numbers were wrong. And the reason why is that they were collecting people's national health IC cards and handing out numbered cards and telling them to come back in the evening, uh, to collect the masks. Uh, so they do it in a batch processing and not really a queuing processing. Uh, and during lunch break, uh, they process the IC cards and update the map. Uh, so, uh, independently, I mean, the map, very useful innovation. Uh, the, uh, numbered cards, uh, very good innovation, but together they're like, I don't know, Coca-Cola and Mentos, uh, they explode because it results in, in neither are being useful, uh, to the other. So much so that there's a nearby pharmacy near the place that I live, uh, that posted on the front window, very big font saying, don't trust the app. Exclamation mark. Uh, and then exclamation mark is 184 papers, a very large font. Uh, so, and when I look at, uh, I feel heartbroken, uh, but, but I don't take it personally. I just go back, uh, and I just slept, uh, for, I think nine hours or something. Uh, that's what I do when I, uh, face anxiety or things like that. So I just sleep. Uh, and then I wake up, uh, with a slightly better mindset and I walk in, uh, and I ask about the crack, right? About, okay, so, oh, you're handing out those numbers. What would you do? Uh, well, if you're a main, if you're the digital minister, what would you do? And they consulted with their fellow pharmacists and they discovered, uh, a cybersecurity issue in our mask rationing system. Turns out if you receive, uh, like 200 mask in shipment, you enter 200 and your inventory grow by 200, but turn out you can also input negative 10,000, uh, in which case it drops to negative inventory. So it's like white hat hacking. Uh, and then our map doesn't handle, uh, the negative numbers. So once you do so, you disappear from the map. It's like a cloaking device. Uh, and of course, uh, when the next day, the new shipment comes, you add back, this number. So they found a way to hack the system, uh, and not, uh, be put, uh, to the adverse effect of people calling them to say, Hey, I see the green light. Why do you say you're out of mask? Are you hoarding the mask and things like that? So I then went back to a national health insurance administration and told them about this episode. And then we work together to create a button that they can just click to cloak for the rest of the day. And then there, there's no bias anymore. Uh, when they take out, uh, the, the IC cars and hand out those number plates. So I answered this in quite some details, because I think that is the spirit we need to have. Uh, this is a failure. This in all senses is a failure. Uh, but if I just remain shocked, uh, in a kind of shattered glass in my heart, when I look at those A4 sized, uh, paper, um, then that would be the end of the story. But because I tell myself that there's a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in. I then went in and asked the pharmacies, okay, now be the light. How would you like us to solve this? So this is empowering people closest to the pain. I think this is something that all the public servants need to be aware that there is at least one or two people who complained the loudest precisely because they know the solution and you weren't listening to them. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Very, very good story of engaging people. And then just because you wish, you wish to engage, then there's a way for the solution. Well, and I think this, uh, links to our, uh, last topic on the leadership issue. Uh, there are some, uh, questions, many questions actually on leadership, uh, which are question number 17, 18, 29, and 30. Uh, so, uh, these, uh, these questions ask about your, uh, role as digital minister. Uh, what are the challenges that you, you, uh, encounter? Of course, you, uh, talk a lot about how you solve or how you engage with people. But then what are the challenges that you, you had, uh, maybe also with, uh, collaborating with other sectors or other ministers. And how do you imagine your, uh, organization will be in the future and how you, uh, uh, upheld, uphold this spirit of transparency accountability? What is the important, uh, factors over there? And then in general, if you think about the next era, everyone talks about leadership. What is, what type of leadership is needed for, for, uh, the world tomorrow? Yeah. All very good questions. Um, so when I talk about swift and safe, uh, I draw from my own experience when I was a, uh, 11 year old, uh, I studied in Germany, uh, for a year. Uh, and my mom used to, uh, drive, um, to take our family, uh, to a trip on the Autobahn, uh, which is the highway of Germany. And the Autobahn is known for having no speak limit. Uh, and, uh, paradoxically, my mom told me at least, uh, that the faster you go, the safer you are because the fellow drivers on the Autobahn are also well trained in driving on very high speed. Uh, and so having the firm infrastructure, the German, of course, are very good at construction and highways, building and so on. A very good, uh, civic infrastructure, a very good automobile, um, production, uh, and safety standards, uh, also very qualified talents driving, uh, those cars. Uh, it ends up in a kind of virtual cycle of people learning to not arbitrarily limiting each other, but, uh, encouraging each other, uh, to, uh, driving at full speed, uh, so to speak. Uh, so that is, I think, the most important factor, uh, in leadership, in not blocking the freedom of innovation from other sectors of the society, just because you cannot keep up with them, because that's, that's what we do often, right, as regulators. Uh, we tell them, don't innovate that quickly because we can't comprehend what you're doing. But, but, uh, on the other hand, uh, the, the kind of civic participation and accountability like the masquerading map or the SMS based contact tracing are precisely the regulatory technologies, the supervising technologies, uh, that also taps into the social innovators before regulatory and supervising purposes. Uh, and so if you can't engage the startups, the social entrepreneurs, the same way that those innovators in decentralized finance or whatever are engaging with the startup people, then you are on par with their speed, in which case you don't have to put a speed limit, uh, on the innovators. You can just cruise, uh, on the fixed length, uh, right after the leading edge innovators. And sometimes, uh, of course, they, uh, break down and, uh, you learn to, uh, you know, draw something that says, please take another route, this is a work, uh, or of course they pave a new road, in which case you, you're Christian, a new name to the road, right. And so, but regardless, uh, you're not asking them to put a speed limit. So I think that is the most important, uh, factor for succeeding, uh, especially, uh, when the main call is to use transparency and accountability to serve people's needs when the emerging situation in a pandemic or infodemic and so on are literally changing day by day. There's no way that we can set up a system that works, uh, for the foreseeable future. Actually, when it comes to, uh, pandemic, it only works until the next Greek letter, right. So whenever the next Greek letter comes, we have to do, uh, our design over again and know, uh, well-planned, um, plans, uh, survive. That contact was a new Greek letter we have to actually reside, um, in the collective intelligence, the innovation of the public, uh, by being agile, as agile as the civic innovators and the private sector innovators. So that's my answer to question 29 and innocence, uh, 16. So, uh, I'm not, uh, in any particular direction, uh, but I care about the bandwidth of innovation and the latency, the agility of innovation, uh, to make sure that all the innovators enjoy universal broadband. That is to say high speed access, uh, to the resources and data they need and also the short latency from a good idea to its nationwide implementation. That is what I care about. And, uh, values around this are, of course, the sustainable, uh, development goals, uh, in, in general. Now, the question, uh, about the, uh, challenges and how to deal with problems at work. Um, as I mentioned, I crowdsource, uh, all the solutions, right. So whenever I encounter any challenge, I just went very publicly about it and say that I don't know what to do, help me and then people, uh, think of good ideas and, and, and new ideas. And I think that's, that's, uh, really important in that we must not have this perfectionism, uh, that led us, uh, to pretend that we have all the solutions. When, when the new emerging computer virus or biological virus mutations come, we really don't have the solutions. And it's perfectly okay to say, we're still figuring it out because then the civil society, the private sector knows how to help you to fix this together. And then you can focus on just making sure the stakeholders, despite their initial different positions, arrive at common values so that the innovations are delivering upon those common values. So I believe that is, uh, again, a kind of meta answer, but that is really how I work. Yeah. Wow. Fascinating. I think this all, all your answer already reflected in many stories that you answered to us previously. Um, so we had, uh, up until now we have so many examples that we can, uh, that prove that your, your, your answer about how to work the way that you work, the way that you crowd saw us or the way that you be very opened, uh, uh, is the answer to these solutions, uh, the solution to this problem. Wow. Thank you very much. I think we come to the very last question from, uh, the, the, uh, at once, like, uh, submitted question. And we are doing very good on time. So we have some time to do the interaction, direct interaction with our audience. So for those who have questions in mind, please feel free to, to, uh, uh, uh, raise your hand or type in your questions. Uh, so the last question is number eight, uh, who is your role model and why you regard this person as your role model? This is a little bit more of, uh, of this personal story. We heard your personal story a little bit about how you become autonomous learner. But yeah, so this might be another question. Yeah, sure. Well, I'm influenced by, by many philosophers, uh, Wittgenstein, uh, Ludwig Wittgenstein in particular, uh, but also, uh, Laozi, uh, the Taoist, uh, original thinker, maybe a group of people sharing the same pen name, we don't know. Uh, and my dad used to teach me, uh, using this method called the Socrates method due to Plato, I believe. Uh, when I was a child, um, I could, um, like, um, shout and, uh, demand all I want. Uh, but he would not cave into my demands until I offer a argument. And once I offer an argument, uh, he never offers any counter argument. He just keeps asking questions. Uh, and then the questions are sometime very meta, like, uh, you make this assumption, but didn't you just say that, that this proves the assumption? Or, uh, you said everything is like that, but did you just have a example that proves it's not quite like that? Uh, you said this because of that, but isn't this just, uh, a correlation, uh, a time series correlation, not really a causation because of what you just said. Uh, and so, and so basically he, he would do a lot of, um, I don't know, Judo or Aikido or whatever, uh, uh, my arguments, uh, but, uh, all the energy come from, from me, uh, from my own argument, from my own words, uh, until I can truly, uh, take all the sides, uh, to think through all the repercussions of any particular argument, not from one particular position, but from all the related, uh, positions. And so I think the, the one thing my dad taught me, uh, is not to, uh, blindly follow any authority, including, uh, my dad. I think this is the, the root of the kind of, uh, creative thinking that informed my own learning because then, uh, I learned to kind of, uh, fuse my horizon with the horizon of many different thinkers and writers without taking a side saying, oh, this is my position. I'll just reject other positions. I would instead take all the sides. Uh, so that's the kind of role models, uh, since I was very young. Wow. Wow. Very fascinating. So we, we see your, your route there within your, your answer, right? Thank you very much. So we have already have some, uh, three questions in the chat box. Uh, um, so I'll, I'll just follow the, the order of that questions, but, uh, for the audience, if you would like to have a direct, uh, interaction with minister, please feel free to raise your hand. You still have an half, uh, a half hour, uh, left. And this is, uh, I would say this is a very precious chance that you can ask question directly to minister. So, uh, maybe we start from the first question. I'm not quite sure where I sit now. I just copied that. It was, uh, uh, Kunirintan from, uh, uh, Thomas Hart, uh, university asking about, uh, could you kindly provide us with information regarding Taiwan's e-government, including its policies, governance, legal framework and policy too. So maybe that the place to be, I did provide the two links. Ah, okay. Already. Oh yes. Yes. That's true. That's true. So two links over there that we can go and, uh, get, uh, uh, more information. Yeah. Thank you very much. And then another, uh, question, uh, on, uh, the common problems between Taiwanese and Thai, and, uh, what are the common problems that you, you, you see, uh, uh, and, uh, how to solve the problem effectively with digital technology. So this one is quite. Yeah. Um, of course, there are worldwide common problems that is the pandemic and the infodemic. But I think, um, in our coaches, um, a lot of the question that I heard was that we also want to reconcile our culture, which is much more human centered, uh, much more kind of social relation centered, uh, with the kind of authoritarian nature of the, uh, emerging technologies such as AI, so-called big data and things like that. That's almost naturally, uh, let decision making power become automated and, uh, let bias become more difficult, uh, to appeal to as compared to, uh, human assisted decision making. And also it made things much less transparent, uh, to, to many people. So, uh, I think this, this kind of inherent centralization of data and power that's caused by especially multinational platforms of social media, of course, that's the most, most, uh, visible example by many other, uh, algorithm related examples as well. I think it's, it's, uh, quite heavy on our minds, uh, the, uh, based on the question that I heard, uh, from the pre collected, uh, questions. And so, uh, I think, uh, we really need, uh, when we want to say let's deal with it with technology or digital technology, uh, the key is really to rethink what technology means. Um, to me, um, science includes social science and technology includes social technology. Uh, it may not be much, but actually, uh, things like nonviolent communication, like open space technology, like dynamic facilitation, the community building skills, and these are technologies too, because they're applied social science that you can teach people. Uh, and so they are technology, but, but it's very, uh, very seldom that we invest in such infrastructures, the way that we invest in industry related infrastructures on the digital realm. So while on the physical realm, we understand we can't just have the entertainment district or business district. We must also have public parks. We must have town halls, campus, and so on invested. This is common sense. Everyone could agree. Uh, but, uh, on the digital realm, it's very often that we end up not investing in the digital equivalent of those public infrastructure that will let social technologies do their work. And instead, the social workers on the digital realm is forced to go to the digital equivalent of the nightclub of the entertainment sector on Facebook. Um, where everyone is shouting, you have to shout to get heard when, uh, there's smoke filled room, uh, literally addictive drinks being served. Uh, well, not literally, but addictive advertisements being served, uh, private bouncers and so on. So, so in many senses, it is a nightclub. And don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the entertainment sector, uh, but we should not do our community building work, uh, or our town hall deliberations, uh, in those districts. Uh, we need the equivalent of that. So, uh, I believe, uh, in Taiwan, um, and I think since last year in the U.S. as well, uh, there's this call to classify the kind of budget on digital infrastructure also as infrastructure. So, not just broadband as human rights, but broadband and every public civic service that could be delivered over broadband also as, um, the budget money from the public infrastructure money. Um, and so previously prior to 2015 in Taiwan, um, only concrete buildings, uh, for the public goods, uh, are eligible for the, uh, infrastructure funding. Uh, but now, uh, even those that are not concrete, like not made out of concrete, but made of bits, but serve the same common purposes. Um, it could be that kind of digital model, uh, that enable people to plan, um, their urban planning better. Uh, it could be a interactive experience that led people to empathize with more, uh, with people with neurodiversity and so on. All those digital curations and creations are now also receiving infrastructure money, uh, from our office, uh, of our, um, auditing office classifying into infrastructure because we understand if we don't provide that, people will be forced to choose advertisements supported counterparts, which are not strictly speaking counterparts, uh, in those services. So, uh, think about technology as social technology and also think about infrastructure in the digital realm and invest in it. I believe these are what we need to do in order to make sure that we still have a functioning, uh, relationship with civil society in the digital era. Wow. Thank you very much. I have, uh, a following, uh, uh, question on the issue that you mentioned about, uh, where to, to build our community, like digital, what would be the, uh, right platform. Um, one thing that, uh, we noticed here in Thailand and maybe other, uh, countries as well, but in Thailand this is quite, uh, uh, how to say, uh, this is quite outstanding in the sense that, um, many communication platforms in Thailand, uh, it is quite diluted to, to the place of, um, entertainment or like, you know, the informal, like the more informal, the more people want to engage in. And we end into, we end up in this dilemma that, okay, so we have to, to go to social media platform to communicate for formal work or something that is like really needs some more, you know, uh, author, authorize, uh, words or authorize order. Uh, if you put that in the governmental platform, it might not be heard at all. So you have to put it on the social media and then all the interaction would be something very informal. And then, you know, rather than using the, the formal process of requesting or asking, uh, the government, then, um, social media is better a way to show. But again, you have this problem of like dilemma of, um, this might not be the best place to build community. And, um, and, uh, one, one observation that we, we heard is, uh, is because, for example, Thailand, uh, before we digitalized or we, before the digital life came to, uh, become very ordinary, we didn't use a lot of computer, like personal computer. We started our digital life with the mobile phone era. So people are very familiar with using like, you know, private, uh, devices and kind of like mixing between private and public life or private and work. Like, do you see these as problem or is this some, some kind of like transitional, uh, uh, period that at the end of the day, we know where to put the boundary? Well, I think, um, that the commons, the idea of the creative commons, may help a lot here because then, uh, it decouples, uh, the idea of a platform, uh, and, uh, the communication material or the relationship you want to build, uh, which should be independent of the platform. So, uh, for example, all the conversations with me in the social innovation lab, it could be from a lobbyist and so on, actually this very seminar, I'm recording only my screen, not yours, uh, but your voice as well, uh, into something that it could then later publish, uh, on YouTube, uh, into the commons. And because it's in the commons, uh, everyone can go through it and remix it however they want. Uh, but because it's going to into the commons, so no lobbyist would, uh, make a lobby that's only good for them, but to the expense of everyone else because it would really, uh, look quite bad in the commons when people start quoting it, right? So the radical transparency does have its benefits and it extends not just to the textual or numeric wax, right? Like my, my portrait photos are also either creative commons and people make a lot of memes out of it. Uh, the, the, as I mentioned, the 3D model of our presidential office is in the commons, uh, our national dictionaries in the commons and so on. So that enable the people who are good at creating, as I said, a relaxed content to take the governmental materials and then remix it, uh, based on their YouTuber channel or whatever in a way that goes the most viral. So it become a pro-social relationship with social media creators. And they also understand that we're working off something that's authentic, that is already clarified, uh, by the governments. And also equally important is to work on the gamification on the game-like interactive platforms that makes public, uh, participation fun. I mean, everyone has two minutes of goodwill. Uh, and so if you can engage them in just those two minutes and say, hey, you can change the, the policy in 2015, it was about Uber, uh, about, uh, UberX, uh, when somebody don't have a professional driver license, drive to work and back every day, pick up 10 strangers on the road, charging them for it. Uh, how do you feel about it? Now, this is a very relaxed way of putting the question by sharing just a simple fact, an anecdote and asking you how would you feel about it? People usually have two minutes to share how they feel, uh, either typing or recording, but then very quickly, good ideas come. And so, uh, when we look at the Polish platform, which is free software and is, uh, indeed public infrastructure because of polish.gov.tw, but you can set up one yourself very quickly, uh, is a survey that is crowdsourced. So on the Uber issue, for example, you may see a fellow citizen saying, oh, I think passenger liability insurance is very important. Now, if you agree, uh, your avatar move closer to me, if you disagree, you move farther away from me. So there's no way to kind of, uh, shout down a voice. All it's measuring is the plurality, the different kind of feelings around the same topic. And there's no reply button. So no way for trolls to grow because once people start trolling, it's not fun anymore. So it keeps engaging and keeps this funness. So you keep clicking agree, disagree, agree, disagree. And then, uh, you are also prompted to share your own feelings about this issue. And before long, because people understand that, uh, the game is convincing people of different clusters, not to get 2000 people voting exactly the same way because we were measuring plurality. So 2000 people voting exactly the same way, the group C, for example, may, uh, have an extra zero. Uh, but the shape doesn't change and it doesn't change their agenda setting power. It really needs to be convincing all the clusters in order for it to enter our public sector discussion. And so after three weeks of resonating of this game of interactive consensus building, we always see that just 5% of this ideological statements like it's a sharing economy, no, it's geek economy. Uh, well, people don't spend calories on it, but rather people spend time on the 90% of the things that people agree with each other on most of the things. Most of the time was most of their neighbor and they didn't know it because the mainstream and the more anti-social media amplified the 5% much more than the 95%. And so then we get the sense of the social consensus. We get a sense that people say, oh, not undercutting existing meters, empowering local temples and churches with their own fleets, making sure the insurance is covered and so on. Well, these are things widely agreed. And then we get a stakeholders live stream of conversation and Uber and taxi union and so on all are committed to those same principles. And we're done. We literally just regularized the the legislation platform of the Taiwan on the idea that Uber already committed to those common consensus that's agreed upon by their own drivers also. So they risk losing drivers if they don't say, yes, we agree. And so nowadays there are a taxi company, the Q taxi in Taiwan, and we make sure that the local temple and churches are empowered using search pricing and so on. So that the point of the story is that at no point are you asked to commit more than two minutes time. But yet after many like one more round, one more round of committing two minutes, people end up spending tons of time on this platform, maybe more so than many other social media platforms. And we then at the end of the day get a really good signal that is a co-created consensus. Wow. Thank you very much. I think this is I have heard this story from the similar story from you before. But again, listening to this is this very, how to say it, it makes us realize that that debate can be healthy, debate can be constructive if we do not amplify the most the angriest 5%. So then we can look at the common things that we hold together. That's right. Hug trolls don't amplify them. Yeah. Yeah. And then I have one another question from our audience on using on fighting with COVID-19. So the audience asks, so Taiwan is a country with advanced technology and most people own smartphones. So as a result, the fast fare fund, Taiwan main strategy to fight with COVID-19 has been very successful. But in opposite to the poor countries lag behind in terms of technology or devices, how would you serve COVID-19 pandemic under limited technology and internet access? I think this question is very interesting. I don't think it's about smartphones. I shared the story of a young boy calling 1922. I'm pretty sure he was using a landline and the SMS based contact tracing also works with flip phones like the ones that doesn't have a camera or a touchscreen. You can manually text the 15 digits and that still counts as a check-in. You don't have to scan anything. So the thing is about this gradual accessibility that whenever people learn a little bit more or it's more versed with the using of smartphones, of course, they get higher bandwidth access. But even on flip phones, even for people who are still stamping their way in and dialing landlines, because we have consulted the senior people, the elderly people from day one of the design. So it's always inclusive. You are not forced to use a smartphone or a advanced machine for that matter. I remember when we introduced the pre-registration of mosque inconvenient stores, well, in answering to the OpenStream app community, we initially wanted to use ATM, automated tele-machines inconvenient stores because everyone has a debit card and it's more popular than smartphones. And we want to say, you insert your debit card, transfer just, I think, one or two US dollars to the center for disease control. You have a receipt and you can redeem medical-grade mosques using that receipt in a few days and so on. So we think it's a pretty good system. And then I consulted with my own grandma, my father's mother, who is almost 90 years old now. And she said, well, she said, I don't think this will work. I'm like, why? And she said, yeah, she has many younger friends. And so she said, let me introduce you to my younger friends who will explain to you why this wouldn't work. Well, her younger friends are almost 80 or 70, so only young two to her, I guess. And so those elderly people, in particular, grandma Yang actually showed me how she operates because she doesn't have a smartphone. So whenever she wants to scan something or show something, she has this huge tablet that doesn't work outdoors only in Wi-Fi mode, so anything must work offline. And her debit card is only used to withdraw money and never to wire money. She said she always go to the counter and write in pen and paper because this is serious business. If she types something wrong, she will lose her savings and so on. And I mean, I'm pretty sure that many 77-year-olds think the same way. And that's the reality. We can't deny the reality. And so when she said, yeah, so if you insist on using ATM, I'll go back to pharmacy and queue for three hours and curse the government. I tend to believe her. And so again, I asked the same question. Okay, so if you're the minister, what would you do? And she's like, is there a way to convert this kiosk to accept my health card so that I can treat it like an automated pharmacist machine? So there's no money exchange involved. I can pay in coins over the counter. I can count exactly 52 Taiwan dollars around two US dollars. And I don't have to worry about my savings being gone because somebody over the shoulder have to look at my PIN code because the IC card doesn't have a PIN code that needs to be entered in pharmacies. I'm like, I've never thought about this way. But if you put it like this, there's nothing technically blocking it. So we work with more than 12,000 convenience stores to ensure that their card reader firmware and everything are upgraded. And then it's done. People started pre-ordering medical grade masks using health cards without having to enter PIN code. And they get to pay in cash if they so want. And then Grandma Yang was delighted. I mean, she convinced everyone younger than her, maybe 66 years old, in the community because she's a key opinion leader and she's a co-inventor of this government's mechanism and so on. And then we don't have to worry about convincing the elderly or people who don't use the smartphone because obviously we've taken their wisdom to account. But if you don't include these people on day one, then of course they complain and then maybe they will sow anxiety and fear and uncertainty. And then before long, the members of parliament, the city councilors starting to cancel your budget because you left the elderly behind, right? So it always pays to cancel the elderly, but not just to ask, if you feel good or bad, but ask if you're the minister or what would you do? Thank you very much for a very nice story. I think there's one audience who would like to ask questions directly, is that correct? So for those who would like to ask questions directly, could you please raise your hand or maybe just turn on your microphone? Yeah, unmute yourself. The most important thing in democracies. Yeah, that's true. I'm not quite sure if Dr. Xi Liang Li, I'm sorry if I pronounce your name incorrectly from the University of Malaya, do you want to ask questions directly? Hello. I have heard someone. Hi, I see you unmuted yourself. Hello. Yeah, we can't quite hear you. You're breaking out a lot. This might be the internet connection. Maybe the human rights situation. Sorry, Dr. Li, I think we hear you, but it's not very clear. Yeah, you can maybe type your questions. Yeah, we'll be happy. Thank you. Okay, so maybe we wait for Dr. Li to type his question on the chat box. It might be related to the... Yes, yes. Okay, I have a problem with my video. Okay, so I think maybe we wait for the question in chat box if Dr. Li is typing. Yeah, may I use my privilege as a moderator to ask you another question before we... Of course, of course, go ahead. Yeah, I will. Because you talk a lot about intergenerational solidarity. And I think that there's also a problem in many countries as well. And in Thailand, we do have this issue of different generations seem to understand each other, become very harder to understand each other. And there are many values that they hold differently. So, do you have any idea of how to create this intergenerational solidarity? You share with us the system of reverse or interring. Is there any other things that we can introduce or we can encourage this intergenerational understanding or solidarity? Yeah, definitely. In our e-petition platform, joint platform, a lot of the petitioners were people younger than 18, probably because that's the only way they can affect the policies instead of going to vote. They don't have right to vote yet. But the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds, while being very active, are only as active as the 70 and 60-year-olds. So, these two age brackets are the most active ones on the joint platform compared to their usual internet usage, of course. But the reason why is that they tend to care more about long-term effects, more about sustainability, more about the next generation. On one hand, the 17-year-old is literally the next generation. And unlike people who are still in a business and so on, who tend to worry about their own sector, they take naturally a more multi-sectoral way because they don't identify so strongly with any particular sector. And maybe for the 60-year-olds or 70-year-olds, they have multiple sectoral experiences already in their lives. So, the point here is that we need to create spaces such as this so that they can discover each other, just like how people raising their hands do not know when they're raising their hands, whether the question is shared by the everyone else, or just a minority or majority in the audience, systems such as Polis or Join and so on, let us see each other as kind of pseudonyms and only focusing on the values that we care and with our trolls. And once these are set up, then we have, for example, a petitioner a couple years ago named I love elephants and elephants love me, a petitioning that we ban plastic straws, our national drink, the bubble tea takeouts, and gradually ban plastic straws altogether. Now, that went viral, I think it's because of a picture of a sea turtle choked by a plastic straw. But anyway, it went viral. But many people who joined are of a more senior age and they spent a lot of time campaigning for environmental actions and they saw this brilliant idea with this really good viral picture and they just associated themselves on it. But when we finally met the petitioner, well, she was just turning 17. And when we asked her, why would you like to start this conversation with the environmental protection administration? She's like, well, it's our civics class assignment. So there you have it. We have in high schools civics class assignment that encourages young people to start nationwide petition that take care of things that the elderly people care about. That's kind of a natural incentive to our intergenerational solidarity. And of course, we would end up implementing her suggestions and she would end up becoming at 19 years old commissioner one of the National Action Plan Committee for Open Governments. So it all checks out, I believe. I see. Wow. Thank you very much again for such an inspirational story. I think we have quite a long list of questions from Dr. Lee. And maybe I'm not quite sure if you have this. Yes, please. Yeah, perhaps I just, yeah, I mean, I just those are my questions for the session earlier. Yeah. So actually just one to ask if I because I'm maybe maybe just just write me. Okay. I think this is easier. And I'm just going to share my work email and or feel free to reach out about the CVR. I think we will do it in the future. Thank you very much. I think that's a better use of our time at this particular moment. And I can also refer you to the civil IOC colleagues who can answer more like technical detail questions. Thank you very much. And thank you very much, Minister for your time and also your insightful stories and I think we learned a lot today. And maybe we can have more exchange and collaboration in the future. Thank you very much for the organizer. Thank you very much for the audience who participate and ask a lot of questions. And thank you very much. We hope we can welcome you in the future and person in Thailand next time. I've got my booster shop. I can travel anywhere. And I learned that you relaxed the quarantine measures freshly for people like me. So I'm really looking forward to meeting in person. And until then, live long and prosper. Bye.