 So to discuss the state of civic tech and gov tech, we have the huge opportunity to be joined by Audrey Tang. Thank you so much to be with us on the show today. Hello, I'm very happy to virtually be here. So you actually co-signed the Sustainable Democracy Initiative with make.org. What are you aiming for and is there such thing as a sustainable democracy? Yes, for sure. The t-shirt I'm wearing is the symbol of sustainable development goals and that's the global goals that the entire UN agreed on for the year 2030. And the key thing with democracy is that it's the only way moving forward to make sure the sustainable economy, sustainable society, and sustainable environment is not at odds or fighting with each other but actually reinforcing each other's positions and that's only possible through a democratic process. But how can it be achieved through technologies? The technologies are always in assistance to the democratic institutions. The most important thing of course is trust. If you have no trust from the government to the citizen, if the government don't trust its citizens, then of course the citizens won't trust the government. So through radical transparency, through open government, through all the different ways that we make sure that people understand the context, the why of policymaking, not just the what of the result of the policy, we ensure that everybody is included in the discussion and that makes it possible for democracy to truly work. So it's definitely a question of trust but also a question of full transparency which is definitely your motto. So what do you answer to do the thing that transparency can be a dictatorship itself? So my answer is that transparency is good to a degree. For example, for all the meetings that I chair internally, even with career public service, we publish the full transcript to the internet after two weeks. But during those two weeks, it allows everybody to go back and review each other's positions. Sometimes people just tell me, oh minister, after reviewing, we for the first time actually understood what the other side has to say and we don't need another meeting anymore so that's the positive. But also it enables people to edit for professionalism so that people can see the professional side of a public service and the part that are in jokes or things like that, which is not relevant to the discussion anyway, are edited out. So it's a transparency, it's radical transparency, but it's within the humanity and within the tolerance of the public service. And before being appointed Secretary of Digital of the Taiwanese government, you've been on the front line of the Taiwanese youth uprising back in 2014 during the sunflower movement. So do you think revolutions can't happen in the 21st century without the internet and social networks? How do they drive the change? Yes, so the revolution during the sunflower movement, I always refer it to a demonstration, but the demonstration is not in the sense of a protest, it is in the sense of a demo. A demo is a showcase of how actually to talk about the same thing with half a million people on the street and many more online and still get more consensus every day instead of like many other occupies where people just diverge into nowhere. In the sunflower occupy after three weeks we actually converge on a set of five points of consensus that then the head of the parliament actually agreed and be bound to. And so the idea of the demonstration is not about overthrowing the old system, it's demonstrating a new system that essentially renders the old system obsolete in certain circumstances. And yet as a government official you're sticking to your activist principles. So would you say that can be quite schizophrenic sometimes and how can elected official or member of the government stick to their words? Right, so basically I'm at a Lagrange point which is a midpoint between the civil society and the movement on one side and the government on the other side. So I'm not partial to any side. I'm more like a channel that amplifies and make possible to understand the why, the context of policymaking on one side but also social justice and social activism on the other side because from the government's perspective it's not always clear what are the feelings, what are the sentiments that provoke the people to go to the streets for example. If we can listen to people well before they take to the streets then it makes it much more easy for people to actually agree on each other's feelings. And once we listen deeply to each other's feelings we find common values despite different positions and given the common values just like the sustainable development goals then we can be bound by our words in response to those shared values and not to any particular ideology or any particular sentiment. We're discussing earlier the crucial state of trust and technology adoption is all about trust. Would you say the very same thing when it comes to politics? Yes, I think so. I describe myself as a poetician. That is to say I write mostly poetry and also using computer programming. The notes are like logic but the melody are the social spaces that people can interact without fear, uncertainty and doubt. My main work is on creating safe spaces for people to add to each other's voice without taking away anyone's contributions. And so this is not just about trust but it's about co-creating the trust. The trust is not for blindly trusting Audrey Tang as an individual but rather creating spaces that makes it possible for people who join the space to put their trust on the space and on each other in the relationship built in that space. Audrey Tang, poetician, thank you so much for being with us today on Tech2.