 So, can you tell me what your name is and what your title is? My name is Audrey Tang and I'm Digital Minister of Taiwan in charge of open government, youth engagement and social innovation. Can you tell me what a minister without a portfolio is? A horizontal minister is someone in the cabinet. There's nine of us. We're above the 32 ministries which all have a vertical minister and the nine horizontal ministers are in charge of working with those ministries to ensure that people have common values despite their different takes and positions and aspects of society. What falls within your portfolio? Can you speak a little bit more in depth of what some of those residents involved in your day to day? Sure. Open government rests on the idea of us bringing technology to where people are instead of asking people to come to technology. So, I can work anywhere, I tour around Taiwan, indeed, around the world, but mostly to listen at scale at what the local people feels that needs the various different ministries to solve. It could be, for example, about biodiversity. It could be about the local people suffering a systemic injustice. It could be the local people that doesn't have access to broadband, which is a human right in Taiwan. And so, anywhere in Taiwan, if you don't have 10 megabits per second, that's not fault. So, a digital minister and digital democracy are pretty innovative approaches for government. How did Taiwan evolve to have these purposes in your opinion? Back in 1989, Taiwan was, for the first time, experiencing personal computers as the rest of the world. However, that's the first time that we have the freedom of the press, freedom of the assembly, and also the freedom to form political parties. Before that, it was decades of martial law. So, in Taiwan, personal computer and personal freedom of expression occurred literally in the same year. And then later in 1996, that's the first year of presidential election, our first election for president, but also the first year that the worldwide got really popular. So, in Taiwan, internet and democracy instead of two different branches are interwoven together, and we participated in the creation of democracy as any social technology that's part of the internet community. Can you tell me about what the sunflower movement was and what its influence is today? The sunflower movement, which occurred in 2014, was 22 days of occupying the parliament as a demonstration to deliberate the cross-strait service and trade agreement, which at a time, the MPs were refusing to deliberate, citing that this is purely an administrative measure, and the students occupied not to protest, but rather to demonstrate how half a million people in the street and many more online can come to the set of demands, not one less, for the parliament. And the parliament did take those consensus and said occupying was a success. How has government changed since the sunflower movement? At the end of 2014, in a mayoral election, everybody who supported the sunflower movement got elected mayors, sometimes to their surprise, and people who did not support open government lose their mayor elections. So right afterwards there was a cabinet reshuffle and the occupiers and their facilitators and mentors were then hired as reverse mentors to the cabinet, and the cabinet engaged on the civic technology community to collaboratively build projects such as V-Taiwan and join those new projects that can listen as skill much as the occupiers did during the Occupy, but without having to occupy the parliament for each and every subject matter. Can you define Civic Tech? Civic Tech is technology that facilitates civic participation and the technology itself is co-created by everybody in the social sector. Can you describe your relationship to being part of government and part of the Civic Tech community? I'm working with the government. I don't consider myself working for the government as a part of it as a kind of someone at a Lagrange point, a midpoint between the movement on one side and the government on the other. My role is to facilitate channels of communication to make sure that people can focus their energy on the common values instead of on the different showdown of opposing positions. While we understand of course people have different positions, there are certain values such as sustainable development that captures everybody's common understanding, and we focus on those common understanding and develop co-create solutions based on these. What is the relationship of Civic Tech government and journalism in Taiwan? Civic Tech government and journalism? Yes. Well, a different order in your online so okay, go ahead, it's okay. The relationship of Civic Tech and journalism in Taiwan goes way back. As I said, the journalists first caught their freedom of the press around the same time the personal computer entered into the world and so because of that there's a lot of traditions of technologists working, for example, blocking and now micro-blocking and so on has a very deep root in the Civic Technology. Indeed, the largest foreign PTT here which is similar to Reddit is open source operated by Civic Technologies without any commercial endeavor behind it and we see them sorry, wrong role. So okay, let's do this again. The Civic Tech movement in Taiwan started around the time that personal computers become available, but that's again the same time that freedom of the press starts becoming available in the Taiwan society. So there's a lot of emphasis on the Internet as a public space for discussion in Taiwan. For example the largest bulletin board for public forum like Reddit in Taiwan is called a PTT but it states open source, open governance without any proprietary or commercial interest behind it and a lot of journalists worked with the Civic Tech community to deepen their investigative journalism, their fact-checking as well as data reporting capabilities and in Taiwan because we consider the journalists' words always with equal or more than the ministers' words. So we always make sure that we introduce our government technology based on Civic Technology without decimating the journalist's understanding or legitimacy. Could you say it is a value and important in Taiwan for government to maintain an equal power dynamic with civil society and journalists? Definitely. The decades before the lifting of the martial law already saw a lot of social sector organizations gaining a lot of legitimacy on the community building front and there's a decade between the freedom of assembly and the presidential election. So the large civil society organizations have a head start of at least ten years before the president and so they still now have more legitimacy than the administration and because of that the government here always is very careful about not to encourage under rise and the legitimacy of the social sector leadership and the social sector leadership still assembles and organizes the interests of people to solve social problems without waiting for the government to come up with a plan or a policy. So for the administration it's always about we cannot beat them so we must join them then being the activists. Would you say that democracy is being threatened in Taiwan? I would say that across the globe people are seeing that the newest wave of social technologies namely social media is making the amplification of anger into outrage much easier than before and because of that democracy which rests on the public discussion and public opinions based on the shared access to facts is being threatened everywhere in the world. Taiwan of course is no exception. So to point disinformation or fake news or misinformation is a global issue. Can you define that for us? In Taiwan we don't use the term quote fake news unquote because news and journalism translates to the same manner in words seen when. So there is no way to say quote fake news unquote without affronting journalists. Because both my parents are journalists I out of filial piety I cannot use the F word just the next second. So in disinformation in Taiwan has a legal definition that means intentional untruth that causes harm to the public. Emphasis is harming the public such as the democratic process such as around public health and so on and not harming the image of a minister which may be just good journalism. And so because all three criteria need to be satisfied concurrently for it to be qualified as disinformation we make sure that our counter disinformation efforts do not infringe on the rights of making a parody, mating satire and things like that. The main harm of disinformation is to discourage people from participating in democratic discourse. It is to make sure that people who believe different things keep believing those different things and lack the agency to talk to one another. And so in very concrete terms for example currently like right now there is a disinformation circulating around that says the central election committee choose to use an ink for the ballot process and if you use that ink to cast your vote that vote will not be counted and that is to discourage people from going to the voting booth. How in your position in your role how is it that you are not going to vote? In your position in your role how is it that you address disinformation? Sorry could we just window that in a little bit? Sure. Sorry, I always give a bit of a news. Those airplanes, I know, screaming people, I know. It's like during an emergency. Oh yeah. Maybe they're just coming for lunch and they always want to get the traffic out of the way. They probably call it delivery or something like that. So can you explain some of those specific ways that you and in the past you have addressed disinformation? As I said my work is an open government and social innovation. The open government idea hinges on us making a clear and timely response whenever there is a misunderstanding or misinformation because people is okay to suspect things about public policy but if we don't come around and say something clarifying within an hour or two then disinformation can still discord by looking at the divisions in the misinformation and then further segment the people and so we always make sure whenever there is a trending piece of information we roll out funding, mimetic engineer pieces of clarification that are organically funding meaning that when people look at it they don't reinforce their stereotypes or rather find it fun so they're willing to share. Are there policy changes that you think that the tech industry should consider whenever it comes to good value disinformation on the platforms? I think honest advertisement is very important. In Taiwan we have a separate branch of the government called the control branch in charge of publishing all the campaign donation and expense and so for the previous election and this upcoming one they publish the raw data, the individual record of donation and expense and that is controlled by the separate branch to ensure that their legitimacy and because of that we have a very firm norm that we communicated to all the social media companies saying that in our jurisdiction you're required if people place political advertisement to disclose at least to the same standard as our control branch and they largely complied and whoever did not comply for this upcoming election did not run political advertisements. Can you speak to what some of the tech platforms are doing around this election? You mentioned awarding for example, can you speak a little bit on to that? In the coordination with the general public as well as with stakeholders a very important part is for the large social media platforms to sign what we call a norm package or in their words is a counter disinformation self-regulatory policy and part of that policy is to communicate with all the interest stakeholders in the timely election whenever there is a large scale social event and election of course is a large scale social event so as we understand for example FB have set up people in Taiwan as a war room to provide fast rapid response and communication with all stakeholders like all political parties and so on if there is anything unexpected happening the day before election for example. Would you also say that proactive approaches like government transparency good government communications or good distances that other governments can use against information? Yes in the government work as I mentioned the clarification the real-time context the day-to-day participation including participatory budget and petition all makes sure that there is sufficient communication and diversity in the civil society so that whenever this information or propaganda came it cannot capture the imagination of a lot of people because most people understand the whole context. On the social innovation side we're also seeing a boom of fact-checking networks and a lot of institutional media are now working with the community to provide for example real-time fact-checking during the presidential policy forum and the policy debate. What citizens in civil society do in other countries to encourage these principles in their government these differences in their government? I think there's two lessons that we learned the first is that institutional journalism is our best friend try to make sure that institutional journalists who are able to establish their own fact-checking mechanism and so on share broadly how they are going about doing the fact-checking to the entire society because with broadband as a human mind in Taiwan everybody is a media. Everybody can start a live stream with no additional cost. In that people's media literacy is not as important as people's media competency because everybody is a journalist potentially and so just to democratize journalism and making sure that people can participate in institutional journalism's fact-checking process is the first lesson and the second one is to make sure that whenever there is a grassroots large-scale fact-checking platform going on we make sure that we communicate with all the stakeholders about what this actually does and the government must support but does not control all these grassroots efforts. This question is not included in the list but you mentioned that you spend time observing other governments and with other governments globally. Have you noticed a difference in foreign influence in disinformation elections in other country contexts? I wouldn't name names but okay. According to the Human Rights Association Civicus Monitor, Taiwan is the only jurisdiction in Asia now that remains fully open when it comes to the rights to assemble and the freedom of the press. I think one of the reasons is that the disinformation crisis actually made it kind of attractive for nearby jurisdictions to go the path of a ministry can for example take down a journalist's word. That seems like a shortcut but on the long term it decimates people's capability to do critical thinking and creative thinking together and so I think Taiwan provides a viable role model to make sure that people have in their own capabilities a fact-checking network without relying on certain administrative branch agencies or units or ministers to perform that role. That other countries are kind of being affected by disinformation in the same way as Taiwan? I think across all jurisdictions as long as people have free access to the internet and freedom to post things on the internet and share things on the internet without even reading through what they're sharing of course there is a large effect of disinformation because the mobile form factor makes it easier for people to look just at one picture or one part of the data before reading through it they just instinctively think that this makes me angry and angry is a negative emotion so pressing share turning that anger into outrage is a very easy psychological outlet and so that psychological response I think it's just part of homo sapiens and so anywhere in the world we're looking at the same thing. Has trust in the democratic process and in government declined because of foreign influence in Taiwan? I think in Taiwan the democratic process is generally seen as something that people can co-create and so we have a lot of new forms of democracy such as participatory budgets such as sandboxes, petitions, the presidential hackathon referendum you name it and because of that there is still a lot of aspiration in the younger population but also across all age groups to co-create new forms of democracy and that made us more resilient I think than the more institutionalized or historical forms of democracy because people still that they can make something better if the old form of representative democracy is somehow threatened. You mentioned this I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more specifically about why other countries are trying to influence Taiwan's elections and the Taiwanese people. There are of course always commercial interests and this is as old as the email there's a lot of spam and scam in email back around the turn of the century so much so that there are serious proposals saying that we need to start charging postal stamp for each email otherwise our inbox is flooded with spam and scam. However, the solution in Taiwan eventually is not passing any law against spam but rather joining international networks such as Spam House making sure that everybody have the capability to flag something essentially donating a piece of information for people to analyze together and if they match that pattern then on the next email they land into people's junk mail box without landing into people's inbox and so changing the commercial incentives of the spam and scam emails so that's the commercial interest and it's always there but part of the commercial interest overlap with the political interest for example based on the spam and spam we see that the top approach that people look at this information is to see whether they concern their families health. If they don't concern their families health people don't tend to share it but if it's about food safety for example in Taiwan people will share it very vigorously and so then there came the political campaigns to sell this court specifically about agricultural products about the trade relationships with certain other jurisdictions about food and things like that and those become politicized and that is one of the key venues that oversee actors are trying to capitalize on the common cause about the food safety issue which seems very benign but you can actually see a lot of this information operations just based on food safety and agricultural products. Do you see parallels between what is happening in Hong Kong and what could happen in Taiwan? So as part of our sampler movement a lot of our work is centered around the idea of a so-called leaderless movement making sure that everybody in a large scale movement doesn't wait for somebody's order but rather can just improvise based on the situation and share it with everybody else on the same street so that they can learn from each other's tax practices. Back in 2014 it's not really leaderless it's like 20 different NGOs as leaders so polycentric but not decentralized but in Hong Kong we're seeing easily more than 2,000 different leaders on LIHKG and on telegram and so on and so they're I think further than what we did in 2014 when it comes to true leaderless movements. Could there be a remedy for foreign influence? I would say that civic tech is a great way to ensure that people understand the context, the why of policymaking not just what of the laws and regulation that gets passed and with the understanding of a common context people become much more resilient for like one-sided, lopsided conversations or propaganda or these kind of accusation and things like that because once you understand the whole context the various different stakes of the multi-stakeholder approach and people become inoculated against oversimplification and oversimplification is indeed what this information is relying on. Regardless of election and outcome what would you say is most important for the Taiwanese community to remember during the day after the election and value during the selection process? Much democracy is a social technology that is still evolving so if people find any part of the democratic process amenable to change there's plenty of ways for people to effect that change especially now that we've moved the referendum to alternating yes as election will have a representative year and a participatory year and a representative year and a participatory year in that tempo so anything that people feel that need to be changed as part of the election process they can actually initiate an e-collecting actually it's going to be possible for the next referendum as well so feel free to start an e-collecting to change any part of the democratic process that you're thinking of changing. So this video will be viewed by Democrats and social activists everywhere. What would be your advice to them as they are combating disinformation in their country? Humor is the most potent antidote. If people can turn their anger into fun and joy and humor it's a mutually exclusive pathway to outrage so if you have laughed about something it's very hard to feel outrage about that and vice versa and so a key learning in our work is to work with mimetic engineers also known as professional medians to make sure that the information that we wrote out is funny but without making fun of others but rather making fun of ourselves in its own delivery and in that sense it will not enforce the stereotypes that people have in their mind but rather make sure that they can also listen at scale to the people who feel differently from them and that is the power of humor. She has to be the next Hong Kong. Not about the movement so much but like is what you're seeing happening in Hong Kong with them protesting because they want democracy, could that happen in Taiwan one day? Could Taiwan be the next Hong Kong where China is going you know what? We're taking over and you're going to have to fight for democracy. So I'll incorporate part of the question. So just like in some flower movement after the anti-elab protests the Hong Kong people who participate on the street eventually won the district level elections but unlike in Taiwan of course there is a ceiling of what they can do based on their quote one country two system and quote arrangement with Beijing and so it is very rare actually the first time in Taiwan's presidential election history that all the candidates are against quote one country two systems and quote Hong Kong story told us that we must not let something like that happen to Taiwan but rather we would like today's Taiwan to be tomorrow's Hong Kong indeed the freshly elected district councillors in Hong Kong often visited Taiwan I've talked with a few to learn about our community building and grassroots democracy efforts because they understand in Taiwan also took a few decades to get to where we are and they have to start building their legitimacy much as how Taiwan's social sector builds their legitimacy even before the lifting of the march. Anything else that you think would be important to say? What about just could we talk about this obviously someone's going to win the election but like it's going to be one or the other but at the end of the day does it really matter the fact that everyone has a voice is that what's more important? A lot of people is going to win we're a we're electing members of parliament too so lots of winners so I think people participating in the democratic process understand that even if their elected MP isn't quite the person they put on their ballots or if the presidential candidate that they like did not eventually become the president there is always two years later a mayoral election and in between those two elections a referendum year where they can change the rules also by e-collecting and so this co-creative process ensures that people can always participate in the constructive manner into the democracy as a social technology instead of just relying on existing institutions we can build ones that are better and that's great thank you