 Good evening and Konbanwa from the International House of Japan. It is 5.30 in the evening here in Tokyo. A warm welcome to the very first session of the Leaders Shaping the Future of the Indo-Pacific Series. My name is Aiko Doden, special affairs commentator at NHK World TV, also the trustee member at the International House of Japan. Thank you all for registering and for joining the session. Let me speak very, very briefly about the aim of this series we are launching this year in 2021. As we live through the pandemic, we have had to respond to this unprecedented challenge in our own way, no matter where we live. This virus is such that it forces us to be physically distant from each other and it prevents us from reaching out to people, meeting people, when comfort and encouragement are most needed. There are concerns in the social and the global arena that the current situation can worsen division and give rise to anti-globalism, nationalism or racism, that would negatively impact the willingness on the part of the people to come together and to work towards a shared goal. That is precisely why at the International House of Japan we have decided to launch this webinar to provide a platform for people to get together, to share their views and insights and to demonstrate empathy and solidarity. Key figures who are making such a great difference in their own capacity in the region are invited to speak, to share with us their vision and experience. Topics will be diverse from democracy and governance, education and human rights, architecture and smart city and so on, focusing on the issues that matter to us all today. Very nice, it is sad that we won't have coffee breaks where we can continue conversation or take a walk in our beautiful Japanese garden at the International House of Japan but let's hope that we can all do that when the time is right. Our very first speaker today really requires no introduction. Audrey Tan, Taiwan's digital minister has graciously agreed to speak. Audrey Tan is, hello Audrey. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Audrey Tan, as you know, is Taiwan's digital minister in charge of social innovation. She is best known as one of the central figures of Taiwan's anti-virus efforts by implementing measures that made full use of IT as well as mask she's holding in an effort to bring virus under control. When she took office at 35 she was the youngest minister in Taiwan's history and Minister Tan has come to be known as Taiwan's genius but I know that she says the active use of IT is not just to bring a virus under control but that it is also about social innovation that shapes Taiwanese democracy, the Taiwan model. So Minister Audrey Tan, delighted to have you today and great to see you again. Very nice to see you again after half a year, right? If I remember correctly. Yes. And I'm really happy to share about the Taiwan model which is after all a all of society model that stemmed from our collective memory of SARS in 2003. And as a result is a people-public-private partnership where the best idea came from the social sector such as mass-creationing visualization as well as what I call humor over rumor. A lot of very memorable memes that reminds people to wear a mask to protect ourselves from our own hands things like that. So as you say it's not just about containing the virus but it's it's also about the social fabric social cohesion would I be right in saying that? That's exactly right. Our modus operandi is to fight the pandemic with no lockdown and fight the infodemic with no takedown. Lockdown or takedown might be of course necessary if things are spirit out of control but in Taiwan in the past year we've never had to declare a constitutional state of emergency meaning that we've been operating under the normal democratic control with the parliamentary oversight interpolation and all that and because of that we must work with the people not just for the people when it comes to all the measures that we must take during the pandemic. And latest COVID-19 situation in Taiwan shows 842 confirmed cases and seven deaths. Taiwan's effort has made it one of the the safest place on earth people say. Many countries including Japan wonder what lessons can be learned from Taiwan? I think first and foremost this is all about the speed of the iteration of the measures. I call this fast, fair and fun. The fast part is built upon this daily press conferences that the central epidemic conference answers each and every of journalists questions until they run out of question of the day but even after the live streamed press conference anyone can call 192 to the toll-free number as well as chatpots and so on to ask follow-up questions and a call center in more than 95% of the cases very quickly gives a scientific explanation and in the rare case like back in April last year when a young boy called saying you're rationing out masks to me and oh I get this pink medical mask what am I to do the very next day next 2 p.m. or everybody in CEC wore pink masks regardless of gender and so this is a very fast iteration cycle that I think could be learned by pretty much any jurisdiction of course the fairness the equitable access to PPEs and the humor over rumor these are also memorable points. But how is Taiwan reacting to this recent development of COVID-19 variants and what are the measures being taken? Yeah well no matter how it mutates I'm pretty sure the physical vaccine that's to say the mask will still work so we're all still wearing masks and washing our hands that said we did decide to tighten our quarantine measures for travelers coming in from Taiwan actually starting today everyone must either go to a quarantine hotel or a group currency facility made available or if they decide to stay at their residence they must fulfill this one person per residence used to be per like flat with their own bathroom but now it's per residence other than that we've also tightened up penalties for people who get noticed that they're not wearing masks in the public crowded spaces and if they refuse to put on the mask there's now a fine so these are the two more important measures for our winter measures. But you know we've lived through this pandemic for about a year now and I've spoken to you the previous time about a half a year ago and I have felt that perhaps just you know mechanical social distancing won't be enough you know what I'm saying is that there has to be some conscious understanding that protecting yourself means protecting others you know the loved ones the society the essential worker would I be right in saying that? Definitely in Taiwan we very interestingly has a place where it's cheaper less expensive to go to a pharmacy and get a mask and then go to a nearby clinic and get a diagnosis it's even more accessible and inexpensive than the drive-through tests in other jurisdictions because of the single payer healthcare system and so we said that it's everyone's duty to take care of themselves even if they develop COVID like symptoms even if it's not COVID it's still safer to just go to a pharmacy to get a mask and go to a clinic to get a full check just to protect everyone involved. But how come how has Taiwanese people come to acquire that develop that understanding collectively? I think this is entirely almost entirely because of our experience with the SARS in 2003 everyone above 30 years old remember how bad SARS was and I remember like personally the municipal government saying different things to the central government it was quite chaotic people rushed to panic by N95 medical grade masks the barricading of the herping hospital and announced and so on and so because I guess people above 30 years are still the majority of the population people do remind each other the importance of wearing a mask and washing hands and social distancing. And vaccine obviously is good news but we will all be safe only when know that there is fair and equal distribution around the world how does Taiwan seek to ensure its people that there will be a fair access to vaccine? Well because that single pay national health ISE card covers 99.99% of citizens not just citizens actually but also residents immigrant workers in Taiwan we plan to use the same mask rationing ideas to ensure a equitable access of course that depends on the specific vaccines like the temperature the storage logistics and so on so at the moment I don't have like the algorithm details but it's very likely that it will be something like the mask distribution and it will be built upon single payer national ISE card of health care. So would you be making most of the the scheme enabled by IT? That's exactly right the especially the NHI the national health insurance app saw more than 10-fold use downloads and so on so that people understand that they can get the real-time information not only about masks and so on but actually about all their previous diagnosis their previous visits to doctors and dentists and so on all in a single app and this is a kind of new awareness enabled by the pandemic in the Taiwanese people. Now during our last conversation you have said that the IT is not a magic wand that IT alone won't provide solution to problems and if trust between the government and the people is the integral part of what you call Taiwan model how do you nurture that trust? Yeah IT only connects machines together digital connects people together and so I make the distinction because really if you look at the live stream conference or the toll-free number the call center and so on these are not very high-end IT right you only require a radio television station and a landline a phone right so this is not cutting edge on the other hand the use of these is cutting edge so when for example we first started rationing out masks in the beginning of February there's a such innovation on the civic tech side that showed the availability of masks in the form of a map on the other hand the pharmacists also innovated among themselves and invented take a number system where they collect the IC card on the morning hand them the numbers until the citizens to go back in the evening in return to your IC card back with their allotted masks so that they can process the IC card during the lunch break now individually these are great social innovations but taken together this is like Mentos plus Coca-Cola it explodes because on the mask map you will see the pharmacists that hand out take number systems like sale nothing on the morning and sales everything during the lunch break right and so for a long time it will be inaccurate so much so that there's a nearby pharmacy near my resident that simply said in the front of its window saying don't trust the app now of course we had to adjust and we did adjust by listening to the pharmacist but first we apologised like very swiftly like the next day and then show the competence of taking in the suggestion from the pharmacist namely on the map display one field for the collection of numbers and one field for the collection of the mask and we wrote out the very next Thursday and eventually a couple of Thursdays from then we started brainstorming how to make it even more accurate so that we invented a system where the pharmacy can press a button and disappear from the map soon as they hand out all their numbers for the day and so on so those two social innovations start working together so I would say that first the collective intelligence have a way to listen at scale a rapid response like oh and apologize when there's a incompetence discovered and then show the competence to remedy that within the next iteration cycle in our case within the next Thursday so social participation the civic participation sounds like the key and both the government and the the public do have to to be careful because such trust can be eroded so fast when something goes wrong that's right yes see and some people are still skeptical though with regards to the use of it they say it can work negatively in perhaps creating a further digital divide or social media can also become a tool that you know deepens polarization you know in a democracy how do you try and find the balance between reaching a consensus but also respecting the the views of the minority yeah for example when we started racial elder masks there's a lot of people's suggestion that those real name rationing can be implemented on top of mobile payment systems on the other hand because the elderly and the people who are less effective with their mobile phones probably are not going to enroll in that uh the numbers show that if we implement that instead of the national health ic conch then we will only reach about half of the population but in order for the r-value to be at their one we really need more than three-quarter of the population wearing masks and washing their hands so we did not use mobile payment as the real name rationing system but instead chose to work with the community pharmacists who do have the trust for their communities and more importantly the elderly people already know how to refill their prescriptions and so we designed the process to work exactly as the familiar process that the elderly people already had with the pharmacy so this spirit is to bring technology to the people instead of asking the people to adapt to technology this called appropriate technology and then we work also on pro-social messaging like humor over rumor so that we are not stuck with the more anti-social side of social media that can build our own pro-social side of digital public infrastructure i i sort of bundled two questions into one and and the latter part of my question about uh in the democracy system if democracy is all about consensus building a consensus how do you balance consensus and um respecting the views of the minority i think uh one key insight is that there's more than one way to do it to do digital service delivery uh when Howard Wu from China City shared the mask rationing map availability map that's one way to do it but then Fingem Kiong built another map out of open street map technology very quickly many other people such as Frank from the HTC DeepQ team built a chatbot that is more friendly for people who are more used to the line ecosystem and then people with voice assistants that speak different languages as well as so-called analysis dashboards for the planners out there and so on and so at the end there's more than 140 different applications based on the same real-time data of mask availability and so we understand that no single app can fulfill the need of every population on the other hand because the open API is there for everyone to use anyone who think of a different application can just go ahead and do it um more broadly about the system within the democracy like in Taiwan um the country Taiwan has legalized the same-sex marriage for example um how did you balance the the consensus versus the views of the minority actually there is a consensus when it comes to the one constitutional court ruling and a two referendum on this matter in that pretty much everyone is okay with marriage equality that marries the bylaw relationship that is to say individual to individuals but many people are not okay with the in-law relationship that is to say the family-to-family relationships just like in Japan right when two persons wed their families also wed and for marriage equality what we have done is innovate just like Taiwan is called between the Eurasian plate on one side and the Philippine sea plate on the other and they bump into each other and Taiwan raises like literally the top Taiwan raises two and a half centimeters every year we see the tension between the individual to individual view and the family-to-family view and when they bump together we innovate and say hey let's legalize marriage equality by saying for homosexual couples they only wed as individuals marrying the bylaws but not their families that they're not in-laws and that made everybody happier if not perfectly happy it's not like very fine consensus but it's a rough consensus that everybody can live with and so the key is to find common values that unites those different positions together but how do you balance inclusion and diversity yeah inclusion to me means making sure that the diverse values and diverse sounds and voices of the people are taken in a way as i mentioned it in a way that's taking all the sides so we personally tour around Taiwan prompted by social innovators youth advisors or reverse mentors and so on and for each of those controversial issues instead of just saying hey there's a diverse representative we make sure that each representative can actually tour around the multiple stakeholders and take all the sides and argue things from the different viewpoints of the different affected stakeholders and only then can we synthesize their views and deliver the sort of innovation that works better for everyone why is diversity and inclusion both so important to taiwan in taiwan we have more than 20 national languages that is to say we have more than 20 ways of interpreting history of interpreting the society that we all live in on the other hand all those 20 plus coaches agree on basic things such as the single payer health system the universal access to education and brabant as human right and so on and so there are a lot of work put into the transcultural point of view that is to say i'm not only bound by the culture that i'm born into but i can choose any of the other 20 or so cultures in taiwan and view the same policy making through the different lens of those cultural identities so we wouldn't make progress that only work for one single culture at the expense of the other coaches can you tell us a little about a little bit about the the teaching from your mother which you often quote that each and every culture has its own unique value one is neither superior nor inferior to others now would i be saying in understanding that in essence it is a message about creating a society that is both diverse and inclusive i think that is an excellent summary and basically the message is this what we have is a transcultural republic of citizens and by citizens i mean people actively participating in the polity so not just like people in general but people who are part of the civic or the social sector is that how civic participation is encouraged and strengthened definitely instead of saying hey you have to be 18 or 20 years old to participate in democracy actively contributing to elections and so on in taiwan actually people who are as young as 15 or 16 are actually the most active they're responsible for more than i think one quarter of all the petitions start in the join that go be the tbr national e-petition system for things like you know banning the plastic straws and things like that and so i think even for the very young people actually maybe especially the very young people they are less burdened by the business as usual the usual way of doing things and they care a lot more about the future and the sustainability and so on so they form natural alliance with people who are like 70 or 80 years old the both age groups care the most about the long-term future would you call that taiwan model as well well i would say yes definitely taiwan model is fundamentally about people public private partnership the order is important so anything that is led by the social sector that has people working with the public sector and then the public sector amplifying and then working with the private sector i would say it shines through the taiwan model for not just really pandemic or infodemic but also on climate change and other issues has the the the teaching from your mother the idea had an impact on you in encouraging civic participation and in creating a society or a system where everyone has a say yeah definitely my earliest memory was my mom like co-founding a environmental group the homemakers union and they later on formed a consumer cooperative and work a lot with participatory accountability for organic farming and other environmental friendly agricultural products and things like that so i guess i am immersed by osmosis in the cooperative now they will call it the platform cooperative infrastructure that's part of our social sector when we think about the the way forward we say you know we are all in this pandemic together but disparity and inequality still persists you know even when you know we all have to work collectively to tackle the problem what are the challenges and opportunities facing us as we live the new normal yeah we're very fortunate in that doctor simon promised and we delivered brahman as a human right in her first term as a president because if not for the fact that more than 90 percent of pharmacies have fiber optic lines to the national health insurance we will probably not be able to update the masquerading in real time or process those ic cards in such as with an efficient fashion and so brahman as a human right really is a challenge and we see during the pandemic in jurisdictions that do not have brahman as a human right and not only do the health suffers but also learning but also civic participation or really just a livability suffers so that's the main challenge and then opportunities that grows out of brahman as human right is definitely more international cross-discipline and transcultural collaboration because once you have brahman as a human right in addition to the knowledge sharing that we are now doing you can share a lot more with brahman you can share the place you live in you can co-create in virtual reality you can form long-term like relations through the virtual reality augmented reality and things like that and I become a much more regular user of VR technologies during the pandemic even co-creating art with people in the museum and so on using this XR space which has a built-in 5G chip and can be controlled by hand gesture alone without a controller and my latest art co-creation was on the virtual tip the peak of metahorn mountain in Switzerland and so that shows the possibilities of transcultural relationships across the virtual augmented realities no in spite of the fact that we have been in this pandemic for over a year now your forward-looking thinking and almost optimism where does that come from yeah I think a lot of this optimism comes from the visible impact of each and every small suggestions made by the social innovators in Taiwan it could be about pink masks about rainbow masks it could be about using traditional rice cookers to cure the virus but doesn't cure the mask and things like that and very swiftly they get amplified through the through the social sector and through everyone in collaboration even the business district in the nightlife district like the host and hostess boss were part of the counter-pandemic team by co-creating the real contact system where the patrons are still anonymous from the state from the government but still leaves a like pay sim card or a throwaway email address that allowed them to be contacted and if there's no local outbreak for weeks and it all gets shredded and so on so it's this very simple to creation with the people not just for the people that gives me the optimism the democracy is indeed deepening even during the infodemic and pandemic so do you think making a paradigm shift in the global pandemic is possible yes it is and it shows the direction of as I mentioned transcultural international and also across age groups inter-generation of solidarity thank you thank you minister Tan I think we have questions from the audience as well the the first question I have my notes here I will read it to you comes from International House Nitobe fellow Hiroyuki Yakshi director planning and t-cut process division african department jica japan international corporation agency now what role can digital technology and innovation can play in building a resilient society many people around the world have lost their jobs new educational opportunities and hopes due to this covid crisis deep backed on the poor and vulnerable groups such as women and children is particularly serious now what is your thoughts of the role that digital technology and innovation can contribute to empowering those vulnerable groups what would you say well in our experience especially on a stimulus part in the taiwan's playbook that is to say after we moved from the alleviation part to the stimulus part the very young as well as the especially women entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises that are of course the hardest hit but they show the most resilience and are the most eager and capable in learning digital technologies the government not only provided the stipends such as the triple stimulus vouchers that encourages those face to face commerce to resume after everyone gets used to the online e-commerce and delivery we say no if you go out and shop like face to face for three thousand and eight dollars the state reimbursed two-third of that back and it's very popular almost everyone in taiwan as well as people with permanent residence certificates enjoy the use of the triple stimulus vouchers but again this is built upon our decades-long digital opportunity center programs our digital companionship programs our extent of the women entrepreneurship supports through the small and medium enterprise agency and so on so I think what really pays is to invest in such digital public infrastructures during the time before the pandemic so that people still feel that they could digitally transform during the pandemic and no already a group of people the mentors and so on that they can reach out to so such social infrastructures are also very much worth investing after all of us gets vaccinated in any jurisdiction you know our previous conversation you said that I'm sorry I don't remember it correctly but you know every every rock has a crack and that the light can shine through yes there's a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in is from Lena Cohen and can you elaborate that for us definitely so the full quote from the singer-songwriter Lena Cohen was in a quote ring the bells that still can ring forget your perfect offering there's a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in unquote now to me forget your perfect offering this stanza once I learn about it it cures my perfectionism I used to be a little bit perfectionist and I don't easily share my work until it's polished but after I learned this from Lena Cohen I'm like yeah of course I'll just publish the imperfect ideas and then of course people will offer criticism but then I would just invite people who criticize for example as I mentioned the pharmacist that criticized the mask availability mob or vice versa into our co-creation scene and that's how the light gets in because without an imperfect copy to work from there really is no way for the public to co-create thank you and the next question is from Jaideep Hardikar who is a freelance journalist in India also I house Asia leadership fellow program fellow he says in the 1960s and 1970s the developing world faced issues with regard to communication imbalances driven by control of the west over satellite technology today it is the data highways that are controlled by a few corporations which in turn virtually control a lives and privacy on all spheres and aid the regimes and the regimes in power in different countries are tinkering with the very notion of democracy do you think we need a broad global regulatory regime with nation-specific protocols to bring some semblance of rights and justice for the citizenry how are you dealing with it well we right if the question frames it as a privacy issue i'm not sure that it is truly controlled by just a few corporations i mean we are using sysco webex at the moment but we could as easily use i don't know gc meat either as meat right or microsoft teams or any of those suppliers and there's many free software open stores alternatives as well to the sysco webex technology that we are using and i say this because in taiwan for example dr lee went down from wuhan's message that there were and i quote seven sars cases discovered unquote was disseminated in taiwan not on facebook not on twitter not even online but on pt t which is the taiwanese equivalent of reddit and the pt t belongs firmly in the social sector because it's not a company it doesn't have shareholders it's literally like students pet projects that run for decades from the national taiwan university and it's all the infrastructure is essentially subsidized by the university and the ministries of education and science and technology and so what i'm trying to get at is that if we debate and deliberate in the public spaces like the hide park right or in my office the social innovation lab which is also a park then people expect to behave in a way as the public infrastructures on the other hand if people debate about public issues and deliberate in private company spaces that would be like holding a town hall in a drinking bar that sells addictive advertisements or addictive liquors and things like that and it would be a kind of misuse of the sort of the private sectors aces for public infrastructure purposes and so i think because taiwan has a very little to man very strong social sector so i'm more optimistic on this regard but i do agree in jurisdictions where the public infrastructures are essentially taken over by private institutions then we do need to think about how to expand the governing mechanisms to make for more cooperative governing as well as to make more choices based on free software movement principles um i sense that the jitip might be concerned with the the the powerful countries having certain amount of control over information or or it can often be a few just a handful number of corporations which can become an actually powerful what would you say to that the same answer i gave to the diversity and inclusion question right there is a diversity in the choices and it is the social sector as well i guess the public sector's job to contribute to them in taiwan for example the joint platform for e-petition that is entirely social sector and it's what i call pro-social media because the replies are in two columns both supporting and maybe a different opinion to the petitioner but there's no way to reply to each other in a thread or call each other names and as a result of that deliberate design there's no way for trolls to grow and if more public institutions use public infrastructure design for pro-social interaction then the corporates will also get pressured to be more publicly minded in a feature set an algorithmic accountability and transparency that they offer but if you do not have viable alternatives then of course the negotiations with those global corporations are not that easy at all so viable alternatives in the public sphere using free software principles hosted down to the metal level in the places that we trust like the national center for high-speed computation and so on that is necessary as a response to jideep's question thank you we have questions from the the audience who've registered for this event i have four questions so far with me here but i think we have time for more than four the first question would be could you elaborate on why you are interested in local initiatives and in what ways can they be connected to global initiatives yeah i think the local initiatives are the most important because just as i mentioned the pharmacists who will serve mostly their local community have the most trust they're the most trustworthy when it comes to medical advices imagine if we roll out maceration in first inconvenient stores the stuff in convenience stores are probably less trusted even if they share the same information about hesitation and appropriate mask use and so on and so a local legitimacy infrastructure built upon daily interactions with the respected experts and so on i think this is fundamental for the social sector to grow on the other hand because broadband is a human right all the pharmacists have access to the latest information by the central epitome on sensor and their counterparts in international scientific community and whenever there is a new invention happening uh they could also share it with their online like digital counterparts that connects people together regardless of their actual physical distance and so i would argue that if the social sector grows strongly locally then the activists would not feel alone in their endeavor and they are much more empowered to then connect to the global community with something to contribute and the next question is though it has created terminal and tragedies it could also be said that this pandemic has made people aware of other people's feelings i hope digital technology will be used to convey people's mind and feelings what do you think would be desirable changes in how sns will operate in the future yeah i think the pandemic really changes uh the way sns is used because showing off for example is considered inappropriate now during the pandemic and i hope for good right so the sns s status symbols is replaced by reminding each other to stay healthy to stay safe to live long and prosper and so on so the more pro-social work of the social networks i think that is definitely what we see in the zeitgeist during the pandemic now going forward i think this will also be used to bring more solidarity to for example the climate crisis and things like that to bring people who suffer the more from the climate crisis to people who maybe live in places that are less affected and so on and so i think yeah indeed this is a groundbreaking change if i were to ask a follow-up question in what way do you think the digital technology can contribute to to tackling global issues including the the climate crisis yeah as i mentioned the dashboards the maps and so what things that makes it possible for data coalitions and collaboratives to form is essential in taiwan we have a lot of primary schoolers just working on air quality measurements and so on using very inexpensive air boxes that together form a distributed ledger that forms the backbone of our sibo iot system sci.taiwan.gov.tw and when everyone is a data steward everyone can learn not just about literacy but also competence how to make use of the numbers how to tell the stories based on those numbers how to make art to from those numbers on visualization and communication and things like that which were very difficult to teach if you work in a literacy mindset but very easy actually if everyone is a producer of media and of data and the the next question is what do you think would be the hardest challenge for you to tackle in the next coming five years yeah one of the issues that is very very difficult is as i mentioned the shift from literacy which is ultimately a radio and television style one way mass media communication to competence which is listening at scale because in all the different jurisdictions there are already existing hierarchical infrastructures that's more designed in a way that's top down and of course it used to be the vertical hierarchies and communications were the most effective before the white use of mobile internet and broadband as a human right but nowadays we exist in a space where it's actually more easy to broadcast to non-specific people and then listen at scale rather than to choose specific people on your vertical report line to communicate with and so this shift from the more vertical way of intelligence and command line recommend change to work to a more broad augmented and assistive collective intelligence this is the way that the society is indeed shifting but the larger institutions such as the government if they do not make the digital transformation this way then they may be rendered less relevant than if they were before talking about the hierarchy within the system I understand you have introduced the the reverse mentor system can you elaborate yes exactly so yeah for I think we are at the third assembly of the youth advisors the reverse mentors to the cabinet now and each reverse mentor is mentoring one or more of our cabinet ministers they are always under 35 years old and they point the new directions for the ministry to work with it could be for example reviving cooperative structures in the time of social innovation and platform economy it could be for example for the world skills competition champions to enjoy the same national day celebration as well as the integration to the university courses and also basic education as the olympic athletes and things like that and once they point out the direction we work with the ministers who are older and older than 35 right so the older ministers work with the younger reverse mentors to both learn from those new policy directions and how to engage the public and then implement using the resources that the ministries have as I think this is a great way for intergenerational solidarities to form because the young people do not just criticize right they bring viable new directions but that might be considered the revolutionary or even radical in many asian countries where a seniority or the hierarchy matter quite a bit have there been any like negative reaction from the people in the system well the trick is that in taiwan too of course we yield to seniority as a norm but we yield also actually more to written regulations so the point is that we need to institutionalize it and write a very formal regulation that costs the reverse mentors not any informal names but they are actually cabinet advisors right so people yield to their institutionalized position once they are known as cabinet advisors then of course we yield to their position and the seniority is a second concern but if we do not have a very solid regulation to enable them in their position then of course seniority and other characteristics enter the picture that does that also mean that the conventional wisdom will not provide all of the solutions in the new normal I think conventional wisdom is very important in making sure that the inclusion part that is to say this idea will be integrated into the social norm but we also need radical social innovations in both the of course more visible natural science and applied technology for industry but also for the social sciences and novel ways to organize people together I think these two are like the you know right and the left wing of an airplane and that's together it balances the need for conserving the conventional wisdom as well as the need to react to emergent phenomena and then another another question from the viewers how do you keep your calm posture in the midst of turmoil I sleep for eight hours or more every night and that's it and that's it but but your work must keep you terribly busy though that's right but after work I don't bring my laptop or my iPad to the residence in my day-to-day work and so I am not captured by the touchscreen I'm not a perma work person and so if I don't have time to sleep for eight hours that night maybe I sleep only seven and then I make sure that I sleep for one hour during the lunch nap but most of the time I think six days out of seven a week I do sleep for more than eight hours and that ensures a calm integration of the various positions that I hear during the day into a cohesive integrated value when I wake up okay another question with various information at hand how do you select the right ones and make a decision yeah I think the most important thing here is to crowdsource the intelligence we make sure that people crowd moderate similar to the join petition system where people can out-vote and down-vote any ideas we use polis which is also out-voting and down-voting P-O-L-I-S the GOV.TW is now part of our government public infrastructure but it's also a free software project that's freely available to any social sector organizations so using polis the best ideas are not the one that get most votes but rather the best idea are the one that resonates with the most diverse groups of people and if you design the algorithm to reflect this rough consensus only people who propose ideas that work across aisles will be highlighted and that is how we solved for example the uber-x regulatory dilemma back in 2015 and also how we worked to open up our mountains open up our oceans and so on all thanks to this listen skill AI assistive intelligence conversation tool another question what would you do if you would like to make amends with people who are hostile or aggressive to you yeah I thank them for their contribution I appreciate their novel and creative use of language and then I invite them to co-create the most likely question I will ask to actually a upset pharmacist at the beginning of masquerading is what would you do if you are the digital minister and then they actually offer some really good ideas another question which is quite long as one of the world's greatest thinkers in STEM and a person who identifies on the non-normative gender and sexuality spectrum how do you see the relationship between personal identity and science given that conventional wisdom seems to regard science as neutral and value free can you please comment on the role of a future of diversity on the part of science as you see it yeah I get asked this a lot like you're a digital minister how can you to be non-binary so I often remind people that digital comes from digits and I have 10 digits right it's decimal it's definitely not binary being a digital minister I see digital which in Mandarin is the same as plural is more than one there's more than one way to do it there's more than two possibilities when it comes to gender and there's more than 10 I guess different cultures and national languages in Taiwan so my main approach to STEAM because I add art also the creative field to it which England also designed to it I approach STEAM with the idea of taking all the science again I think STEAM is this great canvas on top of which that everybody held a piece of the puzzle and only by completing each other's puzzle can we actually have a overview of the actual picture in science technology engineering art and also in mathematics I see I think time is almost up I'd like to ask one question to you Minister Tan people say this pandemic has been a wake-up call in many ways what what do you think we are waking up to I think we are waking up to a planetary solidarity that is to say for the first time we are facing this same issue that is of common urgency regardless of where you are on the planet no one is left behind no one is exempted from this issue not even the Antarctica evidently and so because of that now that we form a planetary workforce to tackle a common issue we can extend that to tackle infodemic to tackle climate change to tackle the digital governance issues that people brought up and we will work on that with renewed solidarity across cultures and nations and generations one follow-up question from the audience your your idea it's a very practical question minister's idea fast, fair, fun is what I think Japan needs to know needs now how do you make your citizens understand it and change their behavior in Taiwan we make sure that it's not just me who spread those ideas we have people responsible for engagement of participation officers in each and every ministry and maybe the questioner already know the answer but I will secret anyway the participation officer of the Ministry of Health and Welfare lives with the dog Shiba Inu and so instead of the PL themselves making the public speeches it is the very cute Shiba Inu then the Song Chai making such announcements such as when you're indoor keep three Shiba Inu is away and out are two Shiba Inu is away wear a mask to protect yourself against your own and wash hands and things like that and so work with humor making sure that the humor has a higher r-value above rumor and before long the citizens will start remixing those ideas in the commas and the ideas were spreading with blood faster thank you that that would be something that we should remember as we fight through this pandemic I have nothing more to add than to thank Minister Tan for generously making the time for this webinar and to all the participants for for joining this webinar our conversation reminds us that neither IT nor vaccination alone can put an end to the spread of the virus the pandemic no doubt will continue to be a challenge for all of us but as Minister Tan elaborated we can turn this into an opportunity perhaps to work towards a more resilient and caring world where no one is left behind and I do hope that we will make some progress into that direction this year in year 2021 so please give a big virtual round of applause to Minister Audrey Tan thank you very much thank you thank you and live long and prospering thank you that would bring us to the end of the conversation with Minister Audrey Tan and we've covered quite a bit and there's so much to take away from this conversation today I'd like to thank the co-organizers and sponsors I would like to thank the series is made possible by Asia Society Japan Center Mitsubishi UFJ research and consulting shahani associates the Japan Foundation Asia Center MRA Foundation Tanaka UK Japan Educational Foundation and our next session is scheduled for next week on January the 21st 22nd from 6 o'clock to 7 o'clock Japan Standard Time and the topic will be on education in the COVID-19 world we will have a video message from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yusuf Azai and speakers include Ms Ling Kobayashi who is co-founder and chair of the board United World College Isaac Japan and Ms Kathy Matsui board member of Asian University for Women Support Foundation so thank you all for joining the session please stay safe and healthy I hope that you will join us again next week thank you and goodbye from Tokyo