 Good morning, everyone. This is Scott Busby from the U.S. Department of State, and this webinar is Innovations in Open Government and Anti-Corruption in Taiwan. Very pleased to have you all with us today. Again, my name is Scott Busby, and I'm the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. And I want to thank everyone who is joining us from across the world and in different time zones. Indeed, among the panelists, we have Minister Tang from Taiwan, Shreya Basu, who is currently in India, and Connie Abel, who is currently in Germany. So we have and us here at the Department of State who are here in Washington. So we truly have an international cast for this webinar. As I mentioned, our first panelist will be Minister Audrey Tang, who is Taiwan's digital minister. Minister Tang is a leader on open governance efforts in Taiwan and globally. Minister Tang is tasked not only with making the island more transparent, but with finding new ways to use technology to engage citizens in the development and implementation of public policy. Our next panelist will be Shreya Basu from the Open Government Partnership, who is with us to discuss the Asia Pacific region and OGP's efforts to support transparency globally. And finally, we have Transparency International Senior Program Manager Connie Abel, who will provide a global perspective on the role of innovation and open governance in anti-corruption efforts and discuss her work leading TI's contributions to the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, otherwise known as the GAC. Thank you all for joining. Let me begin with a few opening comments. In the last year, people across the globe have been tested like never before. Confronted with a pandemic that knows no boundaries, faltering trust between citizens and their leaders, and social economic and political norms built around traditional in-person processes, many governments have imposed unduly severe pandemic-related measures that have curtailed open governments. These have included restrictions on civic space, government oversight, and access to information. Taiwan, however, has sought a different path, buoyed by a strong relationship with civil society, deeply held democratic values, and a keen understanding of the benefits of technology to innovative policymaking. Taiwan took early bold steps to engage citizens while taking effective proactive steps to stem the spread of the virus. Although the global fight against the coronavirus is far from over, Taiwan already has many positive lessons to share with the global community. Taiwan's commitment to open governance goes much further than its public health response to the current pandemic. In January, Taiwan launched a wide-ranging, independently developed national action plan and an open parliament action plan. These efforts were co-created with a wide range of civil society actors and reflect a deeply ingrained understanding of the ability of technology to remove obstacles to citizen engagement and to enhance responsiveness. Although Taiwan is not a member of the OGP, it continues to lead by example within the international community through the implementation of forward-leaning, citizen-centered transparency reform. Taiwan is also a leader in supporting anti-corruption efforts on the global stage and recently committed to making a significant contribution to the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, which is an initiative to accelerate the impact of civil society-led anti-corruption interventions by bringing together investigative journalists and advocates. The United States is a co-founder of the GAC and we are proud to partner with Taiwan in supporting it. Before we jump further into the substance of today's conversation, I would also like to take a moment to reaffirm the United States' support for the open government partnership both at home and abroad. U.S. engagement with OGP is based on four fundamental beliefs. First, that corruption undermines democracy, sabotages development gains, hinders economic growth, and endangers human rights. Second, that transparency is crucial to the development and protection of effective and accountable governance systems. Third, that civic engagement and the feedback loop between government and citizen is central to the development of effective public policy. And fourth, that harnessing new and emerging technologies is critical to efforts to overcome the challenges we face in the 21st century. More than eight years after its founding, the U.S. remains firmly committed to the OGP both as an implementer domestically and in our support for partner countries seeking to advance open government. We are in the midst of implementing our fourth national action plan, the first time we are implementing a national action plan across a political transition in our own country, to make government information more open and accessible to American citizens, to foster increased innovation, advance scientific research, and strengthen accountability within the intelligence community. In addition to participating in OGP as a member country, the United States also provides the initiative with significant financial support both to coordinate its global efforts and to sustain and strengthen country-level commitments. For OGP to be successful, however, much more is necessary. For starters, OGP's success hinges on the ability of civil society to operate without hindrance and on strong public participation and engagement. Being an OGP member means promoting an environment in which civil society, including human rights NGOs and watchdogs, can carry out their work openly and independently. It means cultivating respect for freedom of assembly, association, and expression, both at home and abroad. In addition, the initiative's success depends on all of its stakeholders, government, civil society, and citizens learning from one another regarding what works and what does not. In other words, the success of OGP depends on our openness to each other so that we might build on each other's efforts and work together to achieve our common goal of governments that are transparent, accountable, and which take advantage of new technologies to engage citizens and work on their behalf. Taiwan's promotion of transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic is a strong model for the rest of the world. Almost 10 years after its founding, OGP's track record is impressive. In countries across the globe, OGP has helped develop and implement reforms in anti-corruption, digital governance, civic space, and justice. It helps ensure that reformers consider the important but often neglected perspectives of women, youth, persons with disabilities, and the LGBTQI plus community. In the United States, we have leveraged OGP to implement meaningful reforms domestically, including to support whistleblower protections, create a professional career track for freedom of information specialists across our federal agencies, and address issues around police use of force through the Open Police Data Initiative. We also recognize that no country, no matter how big or small, is immune to democratic backsliding and that we must continually strive to deepen engagement with civil society, to institutionalize advances, and to address weaknesses wherever they appear. Over the next year and a half, the Biden-Harris administration will demonstrate our commitment to OGP and its underlying values through action. We look forward to working alongside a diverse and representational set of civil society actors to produce an ambitious yet feasible open government agenda, including as we look to co-creation of our fifth national action plan. We also look forward to working with South Korea as it hosts the next OGP Global Summit from December 13th through 17th of this year. The success of OGP hinges upon the ability of its members in the global community to learn from one another, to take into account best practices, and to benefit from each other's lessons learned. In that sense, we all have a lot to learn from our speakers' presentations today. Our first speaker, as I mentioned earlier, is Taiwanese Digital Minister Audrey Tang, a remarkable individual and a leader of the Open Government movement, both globally and at home. Minister Tang's countless contributions to the transparency community are perhaps best exemplified by their efforts to support Taiwan's fight to contain the coronavirus and the development of so-called mask maps that show citizens' real-time stock updates of masks at different vendors. These maps have allowed citizens to more effectively target when and where to purchase face coverings, and in so doing they have minimized in-person social interaction at a time when doing so has been critical for public health. More than 10 million people have used this app to date showing how transparency and open data can save lives and impact communities in a very tangible and positive way. Perhaps, just as notably, the idea for this effort did not come from just a government agency in Taiwan, but rather blossomed from Taiwan's close relationship with civil society and the technology community. It is a demonstration of the fact that leaders are more effective at innovating and ultimately serving their citizens when civic space is protected and fostered and when barriers to communication across sectors are minimized. And with that, I now turn the mic over to Minister Tang to discuss the role of innovation in Taiwan's Open Governance efforts in greater depth, including under the action plans published earlier this year. Minister Tang, over to you. Thank you. Good local time, everyone, since we're from very different time zones. I'm very happy to share with you some thoughts around Open Governance in Taiwan. And I would like to first say that while the mask rationing map is well known, especially in the U.S., but also in other countries, the same bunch of people, the same bunch of technologists from the civil society got zero and so on have co-created a privacy-preserving SMS check-in system for contact tracing in the 48 hours. And we just rolled it out yesterday. So we will have another example to talk about for crowdsourced pandemic prevention efforts, which so far has allowed us to counter the infodemic with no takedowns, and also the pandemic so far with no lockdowns and with less than 20 deaths. And so the point I would like to make is that radical transparency is the beginning of civic participation. And I would like to share some slides. Do you see the slides? Okay. I hope so. Okay. And so our national action plan is co-created as is standard in the OJP format with the civil society in a multi-stakeholder foreign fashion. The co-creation process went on for nearly one and a half year with 19 commitments. And I'll put some illustrative examples that shows how those co-creational commitments are arrived at and comments also briefly on how it relates to the counter-pandemic and counter-infodemic efforts. For example, our entire NAP co-creation received commentaries on the join.gov.tw platform. Our national participation platform was more than 10 million people using it in the country of 23 million. And therefore, we receive a lot of very good proposals. One of the proposals, for example, from the very beginning of the join platform pertains to our tax filing system. This person named George Yuan proposed our e-petition system and I quote, the tax filing experience is explosively hostile. Now that doesn't sound like a very actionable proposal but actually what's really at hand is that many people are now switching to use mobile phones and card readers are not that easy to access our citizen's digital certificate. So because we have engagement offices in each and every ministry, we call them participation offices or POs, it means that these POs can engage this person and say let's co-create our tax filing experience for the next year. And for 2017, the approval rate of the new revamped system was 96% because 5,000 or more of people contribute at least one post-it note to improve the digital service. And this system then because it's contracted through OpenAPI became the same system that we use to ration the masks during the pandemic so we don't have to build new systems, the cybersecurity audit and so on are very safe and the norm and the people's similarity with it because of the tax filing season is already there. So radical transparency when people complain, we just invite them in saying this is everyone's business so it requires everyone's help and so is the National Action Plan. We established the Open Government National Action Plan Task Force and we finalized the 19 commitments with a lot of participants in the civil society. And the idea is that when we convened this, usually by OGP standards, there need to be one half government and one half civil society organization leader. So we have a joint convener from the Ministry of National Development Council and a joint convener from the Wetter Risk Explorer and I'm somewhat in the middle because I say very publicly that I work with the government, not for the government. So I'm like in this midpoint between the civil society on one side and the government on the other side and so I'm kind of this middle point convener. And this is not just symbolic. I would like to share my favorite quote from our President Dr. Tsai Ing-wen's inauguration speech in 2016 where she said and I quote, before we think of democracy as a showdown between two opposing values, but from now on we need to think about democracy as a conversation between many diverse values. This to say this is not a tug of war, rather this is a link that links the civil society and the government together. So this is literally my office in the social innovation lab and every Wednesday everybody can meet me for 40 minutes at a time and we talk about pretty much anything, but the only requirement is that it needs to be published as a transcript or recording on publicly available platforms, the OGP supportive say it platform actually, and then for everybody to see in the future. It's very interesting because the nature of conversation changes when lobbyists and so on go and have a conversation with me when they know that there is a tape recorder, there's a video recorder that stands as the watch of future generations. They always make the points, the benefit of future generations of becoming good ancestors, you know, global goals and all that, and nobody make the points that will benefit only them on the short term while sacrificing other people's benefits because they will look really bad on the transcript. And so because of that we were able to get a co-creation going through radical transparency means and the mission of the NAP MSF is of course the formulation, evaluation and presenting the reports and the proposals as you can see is very balanced and the member of task force can also add new commitment proposals and ratified by the community. I think the additional one is about environment sensing and around especially climate action because it become a new priority since our original consultation. And so we can divide them into five major categories. First is about open data and freedom of information and it strengthens digital privacy and personal data protection building a better what we call a social sector based data collection mechanism so that people first have the norms of for example sharing the mask availability on a publicly available map and then through what we call reverse procurement they would then demand the government to produce open API to make sure this map update in a timely fashion every 30 seconds actually. So then that's enabled the ecosystem of developers to put more than 100 tools that shows not just the availability of masks to reduce skewing but also the long-term trend to detect data bias and allow us to ration the mask better last year. And so this social sector first approach is only possible because people understand there's a strong personal data protection when publishing the radically transparent data set. We also focus on involving young people actually more than 100 cases more than one quarter of all the past petitions in the 100 collaborative meetings were started by people who are younger than 18 years old. That is to say even before they are of the legal voting age they can already propose something that change our public policy. For example there was someone with a pseudonym because we use sms based authentication will allow pseudonyms. The pseudonym I love elephants and elephants love me was the pseudonym proposed that we gradually ban plastic straws for our national identity drink the bubble tea in takeouts. And it went wildly popular and then we met through collaborative meetings to discover she's just turned 17 and is a senior high school student Wang Shenru and we asked why are you proposing this and she's like well it's our civics class assignment our civics teacher just assigned starting a popular petition that involves thousands of people as the civics class assignment so again lowering the threshold participation led to this kind of collective intelligence and action and in fact Wang Shenru now 19 years old is one member of our multi-stakeholder forum she's part of our task force so that shows our engagement to the young people who are previously excluded from the representative democracy process. We also promote gender inclusive dialogue and participation. Taiwan as you know is Asia's only jurisdiction to allow full marriage equality but it goes beyond that there's also gender mainstreaming going on. My favorite example is actually from the CECC the Central Epidemic Command Sansa. Every 2 p.m. they held a press conference where they answer all the questions and we have this 192 to a toll-free number that everyone can call and suggest new ideas. So last April there was a young boy that called and said well you're rationing out masks which is great but all I got was pink ones I'm a boy I don't want to wear pink to class all the boys in my class have navy blue medical grade masks and the very next day the participation officer of the Ministry of Health and Welfare suggested the CECC everyone in the including the Minister Chen Shizhong or pink and Minister Chen even said pink pants there was my childhood hero so now the boy became the most hip boy because only he has the color that heroes wear and the heroes hero wear I guess and so this is a great example of gender mainstreaming of setting the agenda saying that it doesn't matter which color as long as it protects you and it also promotes people's inclusiveness when they just call 192 to with each and every issues they witness between the pandemic response strategy and what's actually going on in the grounds and we usually fix our policy within 24 hours because of the inclusive gender and ethnic group dialogue in multiple language we have 20 national languages including the Taiwanese sign language and we also of course enhance integrated policies enhancing political donation transparency in one of the counter infodemic efforts we classify social and political advertisement on social media platforms such as Facebook as equivalent to campaign donation and interestingly we did not achieve that with a new act but rather with civil society demanding Facebook doing so because they've already occupied the national auditing office to liberate the data and then they did the same to Facebook's threatening social section if they don't publish the real-time social and political advertisements and so for our presidential election season we see much less political interference by the campaigns on the social media so that norms against set by the social sector is a great example of the people public-private partnership and so in addition to the anti-money laundry, beneficial ownership and the financial transparency of religious groups to close AML loopholes I would like to conclude by saying we're really really happy to see that our governments decided as Scott mentioned to contribute 200k USD per year to support the GACC for this year and next year demonstrating our contribution commitments to participating in the global efforts of anti-corruption transparency and good governance thank you thank you Audrey for that illuminating presentation I want to turn now to our next speaker Shreya Basu Shreya is the deputy director for country support at the open government partnership and leads delivery oversight and team management for the OGP's work in the Asia Pacific and eastern partnership regions Shreya is based in Singapore but currently is in India she is responsible for improving the services offered by OGP to governments and civil society in member countries and working across teams on the design and delivery of new strategic initiatives including within OGP's burgeoning work with local level municipalities before joining OGP Shreya worked at publish what you fund where she led the research and monitoring work stream led the annual aid transparency index development and successfully advocated for some of the world's largest donor agencies to make their aid transparent in addition Shreya has substantial experience within the private sector conducting fraud investigations and delivering fraud risk management and anti-corruption compliance programs Shreya as someone who has substantial global and regional experience can you draw out some of the regional or global trends you see reflected in Taiwan's own vision and plans thanks for the opportunity Scott so let me first start by congratulating Taiwanese civil society and the government for launching its first open government national action plan you know it's really great to see something that's been in discussions discussed along the sidelines of OGP summits and gov zero summits come alive and materialize it to something concrete with a vision for the future so congratulations go to you know Taiwanese civil society and government colleagues and of course to minister Tang for her personal leadership on this agenda so the OGP support unit we're just beginning to look at some of the trends we've seen in the latest round of a member country's action plans delivered in the 2022 period admittedly a smaller cohort than usual because of delays to OGP processes owing to the pandemic but still I think broadly reflective of what we're seeing across the partnership for the last few years so one one trend is that inclusion has really become an area that's come into focus in OGP both globally as well as in the region in recent years and today more OGP members are implementing commitments related to gender inclusion than at any point since the partnership was launched that's of course building from a small baseline so there's a long way to go and it's really great therefore to see such a strong focus on inclusion in Taiwan's plan what personally strikes me is very interesting is the many different dimensions of inclusion it focuses on from youth to gender to indigenous peoples ethnic linguistic groups immigrants a common challenge here for both Taiwan and for other OGP members lies of course in going beyond inviting traditional left out groups into policy making processes and tackling the harder piece and what it means to fundamentally shift power dynamics in these processes so that the work that needs to be you know the policies that are made genuinely reflect the diversity of the societies that you know we live in so here there's an opportunity of course for Taiwan and other countries working in these areas to learn from each other's efforts and collectively advance the inclusion agenda with an open government further a second sort of common trend theme if you will is of course that corruption remains a major concern globally certainly so in the region transparency international international global corruption perimeter for example has shown that this continues to be a concern and it has deepened the impact of the pandemic in the region so on anti-corruption we are seeing a growing number of countries take on important issues like opening up procurement one of the all-time popular commitments in OGP beneficial ownership where we're seeing you know 30 odd countries within the partnership now make commitments in the last two to three years and we're really beginning to see a coalition of countries work together with partners to advance global norms around some of these topics and at the same time we only have about a third of OGP members currently implementing commitments related to political integrity so we are heartened to see Taiwan's commitment on political donations transparency and hope it will allow others to follow suit so here again I think a plan that is reflective of some of the emerging trends but also some of the needs clearly both in this region as well as globally in terms of areas that the open government agenda really needs to you know tackle front and center yet another trending theme if you can you know call call it that in the partnership today one we are also seeing uptake off in this region again given the the needs around this is justice so about 60 percent of the partnership today is implementing commitments related to justice and while we don't see this area directly reflected in Taiwan's open government plan I am aware of the work that's happening around transitional justice for example in the country and these might be areas for future consideration so that big priority topics don't remain you know outside of the open government vision for the country a frontier theme not quite as much a trend as we would like it to be is of course digital governance where we are seeing a small but growing number of countries that are working together now to protect digital rights tackling issues from regulating how digital platforms interact with democratic processes to accountability of automated decision making systems used in the public sector so here again it's great to see the emphasis on privacy and data protection alongside the commitments on open data and freedom of information in Taiwan's open government plan but of course Taiwan has much more to contribute than just these areas and also learn from the you know efforts other countries are making in addressing some of these other areas of digital governance use of AI use of automated decision making systems and the public domain and clearly you know stands in a good position to show the way forward for the rest of the region where we've seen uptake on digital governance issues again not as high as we would like it to be one troubling trend that we see globally is that of declining civic space so creeping restrictions got that you mentioned in your introduction on civic spaces ability to organize assemble protests are harming the ability of activists and journalists to hold governments accountable of ensuring that you know information reaches people so that they in turn can hold their you know governments and elected officials to account of course Taiwan is the only country in the region considered to have an open civic space rating according to civic issues monitor but given the alarming declines that we've seen in places that we would a few years ago never have considered to have restricted space or the ways in which emergency powers have been invoked in restricting space during the pandemic certainly in this part of the world one thing to be one thing for Taiwan to consider as it looks forward is perhaps future proofing civic space so for example considering reforms that might ensure that any future restrictions on civil rights caused by crisis responses have appropriate legal basis protections and oversight you know so it doesn't just count on the momentum of reform and reformers to carry forward this the civic space and this dynamic that we see in Taiwan today but really that this is something that can outlast political administrations that can outlast the kinds of changes we see with political cycles an area where I would love to see Taiwan buck the trend also is perhaps the low uptake of commitments on strengthening public accountability and oversight mechanisms you know it's great that we see you know increasingly transparency commitments both within the partnership and in the region being complemented with participation opportunities for civil society and citizens at large this wasn't true always but one area where we haven't seen as much uptake and you know we would love to see Taiwan again you know set the pace for others perhaps is ensuring that there are ways in which their formal mechanisms can be created for citizens to be able to hold their public officials to account and that there are measures to ensure that you know there is an impunity when things don't work as they are intended to um so while we are here discussing the executive yuan's efforts and open government today we are of course cognizant that the legislative yuan has also opened up and has adopted the open parliament's agenda and so here we would love to see how that openness can be extended to include ways to strengthen how the public can exercise oversight on government functioning through their elected representatives but also ensure that accountability mechanisms such as audit institutions ombudsman and other oversight bodies include formal mechanisms for citizen oversight and accountability so these are just you know it's hard to summarize trends and open government in in you know globally as well as in the region that's a a short tour if you will one one reflection sort of you know taking a step back from all of it is I think repeating perhaps what I said in the passing earlier which is you know clearly Taiwan is enjoying a moment where you have reformers across government working alongside reformers outside government producing some really you know fantastic innovations that can be shared with the rest of the global community both in response to the pandemic but even beyond but one troubling trend we certainly see in this region is how quickly reforms get undone so even as Taiwan begins the process of implementing this plan and the initiatives contained within it you know we would urge you to look to the future and see how these you know how you can institutionalize these to outlive this moment because ultimately that's where we've seen this agenda fail time and again sadly in many parts of this region and we of course would love to learn from Taiwan's experience through that journey thanks god thank you very much Shreya our last panelist is Connie Abel a senior program manager for transparency international and leader for TI on the global anti-corruption consortium working from Berlin Connie has been instrumental in strengthening transparency international's network of national chapters as regional coordinator and advisor for eastern and southeast europe from 2008 to 2017 she oversaw operations of the national chapters in 16 countries in eastern and southeast europe turkey and israel supporting civil society development and engaging in national and regional advocacy work on anti-corruption and good governance she has also worked in the communications and technology departments within TI Connie we are very excited about Taiwan's contribution to the global anti-corruption consortium could you provide us with an update on that initiative and contextualize the importance of transparency efforts such as Taiwan's within the global fight against corruption of course god that will be my pleasure just maybe to start with a little bit of a warning so as you understood we were moving a little bit away from the open government plan and and directly the initiatives that the Taiwan has been taking under the open government initiative but i think it still fits to talk about the global anti-corruption consortium here an initiative which is also equally innovative and which was launched at an open government summit in 2018 at the time and and as you heard we are very grateful Minister Tang right like to Taiwan joined the group of countries that is supporting this initiative so let me explain a little bit what this is all about because the name doesn't really tell you anything right the global anti-corruption consortium this is a cooperation between investigative journalists and and mainly the organized crime and corruption reporting project at this point in time and transparent international and the civil society side and maybe i don't know it doesn't might not sound so innovative to you in the beginning but if you think about it these are two very different groups we might have the same maybe similar aims and we go in the same direction and to oversee our power and the society and so on but it's actually two groups that that move at very different pace paces and had to find a way to to first come together to leverage each other's work for more impact and for change for positive change so that that's maybe one side so what what we are trying to do with this cooperation is to see more impact from from investing from journalistic investigations and to to leverage them in a way that that that moves change at a faster pace that that moves the anti-corruption world faster like so i want to explain that a little bit but with an example maybe that that's best to be done so one one campaign that the global anti-corruption consortium was running right now is called the golden visa europe campaign and i don't know who many how many people have heard about golden visas and what it means there are these investment citizenship or investment residency programs and there are definitely legitimate legitimate programs of this type in many countries but which which allow for foreign investment and which allow for creation of employment but there's also programs that actually just allow for citizens with enough money to come in and buy a new citizenship by themselves in some countries it's only residency but in some countries it's really buying citizenship with all the rights that come with it and there's a number of those programs running in europe now while that sounds maybe sounds maybe interesting and you know intriguing it also comes with a lot of risks it comes with corruption risks because maybe the people who have sufficient funds and sometimes it's quite significant be it a million or so to buy a citizenship they might not have gained that money in the most legitimate way it might be you know it might have come through corruption and and they find a way through these programs through a new citizenship to to move the money to move the illicit funds to invest them in a different way so it's quite a problematic thing when we started this campaign in 2018 it was a time when when hardly anybody like when especially the european institutions didn't see it as as their their cattle of fish i mean they they were not the one supposed to take that on this is a member state issue and and many people definitely didn't see most people didn't see the risks to corruption and crime and it was a terrorism that come with those programs that are that are brought into the countries so and just just to say how it started at the start of the campaign the organized crime and cultural reporting project they published about 10 stories from 10 different countries across europe how these how these programs are running and what the risks are like giving really concrete examples we we spoke in brussels we we brought in brought the decision makers and increased the pressure and it didn't take very long actually so that the european commission saw saw itself in a position where they had to they had to look at those programs they had to study it they announced the formal study which they were working on for almost a year and so this this started and it started to change change the dialogue for us in a at a very speedy way like within a year the european institutions went from we don't know if this is something we can even talk about risks of what kind of risks to saying okay these programs are definitely problematic we have to regulate that or we have to look at how to potentially regulate that so it went within a year so this has been going on since march 2018 a little bit slowed down in the last uh maybe year and a half year like you know there was a working group and and dealing with the issue but then uh what gave it another push was again journalistic investigations this time the cyprus papers published by aljazeera which came with with the wealth i mean many of you might have seen it with the wealth of concrete examples of very questionable individuals using those programs uh buying cyprus cyperians citizenship but not really being interested in cyprus right we're just getting into europe using the banking system in europe and and moving money around so um this again gave it a huge push and actually like so in autumn last year cyprus uh stopped its uh its golden visa program and the eu finally uh the the european commission finally took action and is basically taking legal action against malta and cyprus at this point in time um for their programs uh to be stopped so this is still running i mean these things take time but just to say for an advocacy organization like we're working on advocacy two years moving the discourse in this way is its high speed for others two years might sound long but this is definitely high speed or maybe if i i don't know if i have the time to give another example but um so to maybe talk about like how how does this kind of cooperation just the the the interaction between these cases coming out investigations really strongly making the push in the public and uh advocates like us being there ready with potential solutions with recommendations at the same time how this can set the agenda actually so maybe just to say in march 2019 oscip published uh the truck a laundromat i don't know if you're familiar with the word laundromat but a laundromat is basically a system of how to how to wash money and how to wash illicitly gain funds and and invest them somewhere else or just take them out and it's it's through a lot of offshore companies and and you know the different different ways to disguise where this money came from so nobody can actually trace it back so that's that's a laundromat there's a certain system there's a number of them you might have heard about the russian laundromat the azabajani laundromat many of them are also exposed by oscip so when oscip came out with this we had had time to analyze the information that would be coming and to to look for like okay what would be a proper recommendation to counter that and at the time the i came out with the idea and said okay obviously the issue is that national national banks and oversight of those banks like it's usually central bank overseeing is not strong enough it's not functioning right these these kind of laundromats they can they can work they can go on for years and nobody is stopping it so what we need is is a tougher banking supervision at the european level i mean in europe again we have a different we're in a different position than in the other parts of the world right where we have sort of a super national system of bodies so that at the time nobody besides a small other other small thing thing was talking about this idea and not to drag things out but like now about two years later we know that uh and after a lot of of of course after advocacy going on we used a lot of cases coming out the fincent files again uh showed how this is this is necessary that there's a tougher oversight of of bank and banks and supervision for those in july the european commission is going to suppose it propose exactly such a body to be created again within two years something moved really fast we couldn't have done that on our own at all the journalists probably couldn't have done it on their own because somebody has to come with the idea and has to move and advocate it for but this is i think this is really the innovation of this program how we function together and how how we move for change maybe i'll stop here for thank you connie for that perspective and for your update on the consortium we're now going to transition to the question and answer part of this panel and i would ask that any participants who have questions or comments submit them in the chat and we will try to get to them if there is time but i first want to pose a question to all of the panelists and that is are there themes or areas of work where ogp members and the international community could collaborate with or learn from taiwan's experience that's open to anyone maybe i'll say a couple words but i think the co-creation for our nap is really a joint effort with the international open government community i personally attended quite a few ogp summits and in the one summit because of passport issues i couldn't personally participate i send a telepresence device so basically the international community helped us setting the tone of the nap and i think this collaboration because consultation for naps because it started with national i guess is usually quite domestic and it's usually aligned with the internal bureaucracy the city governments in sub-national now the local level and the national level and with their kind of a little bit up-down agenda but because of our strong link to the international community pretty much all the civil society proposed commitments starts with some handholding or some comparative study of saying see the rms that some other country did this really well there's a strong sense that we should adapt that here or the right to know for the climate action for example the right to explanation for like climate decisions that affects the future that came also from the international movement especially in the past couple years around climate action and so on so i think that there's a real chance here because our commitments are more than two years there are three years and a half ish and extends to the end of the taiwan's presidential term so three years from now that means that we do not actually suffer from this kind of mid-prudential term issue and we align the co-creation process so during the transition period to the next president because dr is our first term second term right now so the next president will be able during the transition term to again work with the international community to set the priority areas and this is sounds like a trivial logistic thing but in the international expert that we consulted they all pointed out it as very important so i might as well highlight it thank you adri shreya or kane do you have anything to say about ways in which the international community could better collaborate with taiwan or learn from taiwan's experience yeah i mean absolutely i mean i think obviously the the one that comes to mind right now is just openness in the in the response to the the pandemic and i think particularly over you know the this sort of current resurgence that taiwan is seeing again at this point in time you know how it maintains the openness that we saw in the first wave unless and that can be learned from you know taiwan would certainly be i think welcome i think there's an openness to hearing from all corners where there are good examples right now after the pandemic in a way that perhaps wasn't quite the case before the pandemic so that might be you know silver linings um i think also you know there are a number of open government teams that will ultimately depend upon the international community working together because the nature of those um the nature of those issues are across border right so beneficial ownership for example strikes as as an example where you know it would make sense for as many countries as and as few as they are right now to join hands in both shaping the global norms around this but also helping advance them um digital governance is another one i think you know there isn't a standard set template on how you regulate misinformation how you deal with democratic controls over you know private companies and you know what's the limit between you know privacy freedoms and and the kinds of oversight mechanisms you want to see so there are a lot of emerging areas that really um sort of cut to the heart of the success of open government reforms of anti-corruption reforms that are across border or that really fundamentally threatens civic space and threaten you know the rights of people to participate in their democracies freely and without interference which again require sort of collective thinking and cooperation because again these are not necessarily regularly easy to regulate you know in one jurisdiction at a time so those are the obvious ones but you know across across some of the other areas open data for example Taiwan is a leader in the region i'm sure there is a lot that countries in the asia-pacific would learn from Taiwan in this area as well as deliberative democracy in other area which isn't sort of reflected in the plan quite squarely i think it's mentioned in the youth commitments but you know we've seen it's an interesting idea wherever we've you know talked about it but there's a bit of hesitation and reluctance in getting very divided polarized societies to come together and try and create policies on the things that you know concern us most so here again Taiwan has had some interesting experiments that you know of course ojp countries would benefit from you know learning about but equally i think you know in in countries like the uk australia new zealand equally interesting work happening where there is obviously as always a benefit from you know the reformers working on on these to learn from each other regardless of you know how geopolitics might get in the way of the formalization of any such collaboration i mean from my end i cannot i cannot really comment on the implementation of the plan in Taiwan because that's simply not my area of of knowledge but i mean certainly sounds good the cooperation with civil society and what's of course very important for programs like the global intercaptureal consortium is the availability of data so making data available transparent being being open there so that that's hyper important right to advance also the advocacy in the answer sounds good thanks khani let me now direct a question to minister tongue and to shreya developing the first open government plan is one thing implementation is another what challenges should taiwan and civil society be preparing for during the implementation period what's the key to credible implementation audrey certainly um as i mentioned because uh during the pandemic most of the so-called gov tech actually has its blueprint set up in the civic tech community especially gov zero this creates a very different dynamic uh it's almost like reverse procurement where the social sector sets the norm and the public sector implement the norm uh that the citizens wants but i think for successful implementation to also work in other commitment areas that doesn't have as much public attention as the pandemic itself or the infodemic these are like the two things on people's minds um maybe i'll add climate emergency but in addition to those three things and because those three things are so structural international they demand a lot of attention already i think what's important is we make sure that the public service people working on the other areas for example indigenous engagement and so on see this not as a extra form to be filled a extra chore to do a extra msf a extra meeting to a hold but rather something that can increase the quality of their conversation i remember the haka uh council um uh delegate to the multistakeholder forum a public servant said uh that's the first time to learn that it is possible to get the younger people to care about the haka culture in participatory way because after listening to other msf in other commitments they discover if you make it fast fair and fun then young people are willing to voluntarily join and provide quality improvements to policy making and so i think engagement strategy that can be carried over to our um other public service to reduce the risk to save their time and with success story we can point to from the counter pandemic infodemic and climate mitigation uh methods that's uh really thanks adri shreya anything to say in response to that question yeah a couple of things i think that we've learned from you know the last ten years of ojp in terms of what you know why commitments fail um in you know between intention and and implementation uh one is of course if you look at you know the the structure of thai ones open government plan or a new ojp members plan um you know it's it's a it's a summary overview of what needs to happen in very big reform areas and often the design of how you're going to get from you know those words on two pages of paper to actually rolling out every aspect of the reform um there isn't necessarily a robust process that is participatory that involves the right stakeholders that's regular and iterative because obviously you know um it's one thing to have a plan it's another to meet the reality of implementation and course correct as you go along so one would be to to to sort of be mindful of this tendency to think of planning is over and now implementation having begun it's almost a continuous process of you know implement plan review assess that needs to happen and not just something that happens at the end of you know a two or four year period of a plan uh the other piece that we've often seen affects the implementation is the lack of interagency coordination um so while you might have commitments around open data that might be owned by a specific line ministry um you know adhering to the principles of what the the reform of the commitment sets out to do does actually end up requiring all other line agencies to um you know follow suit or you know to implement common standards or frameworks that are taken into account so that's another one set you know ensuring that there is that kind of interagency collaboration happening we've seen that be a real challenge in a lot of countries um I think you know you know obviously you know I think it's needless to say that ensuring that these are rightly resourced uh you know both in terms of human resources but also the financial resources um you know that's something that we've often seen countries sometimes miss the mark on not taking into account what this is going to cost and how is it going to be paid for and then there's a sense of disappointment on why this hasn't happened on all sides um so if the resourcing hasn't been considered across all commitments that would be another thing to uh you know prepare for you know so that implementation does not run into problems and I think that my last and final piece is um you know ensuring that there's this collaboration which is at the the heart of OGP right this isn't just about um governments that are willing to be open running the programs as they can see them in their offices and I think that's a principle that you know as as Mr Tang mentioned is is embodied in the way in which this plan was co-created but often we see the engagement drop off during implementation um so all the momentum all the the I I can't believe if I actually heard you write when you said you would see 10 million proposals for the I don't know if I got that number wrong but that would be a record uh you know for any kind of uh OGP you know an open government process but you know if that engagement drops off I think what we end up seeing is you know four years or two years down the line when it comes to actually taking stock of what happens we realize that the beneficiaries of programs were not included and therefore implementation failed or that you know stakeholders that could have partnered with government in actually implementing a reform so the need to have regular sustained dialogue between government and civil society which is not a one-off consultation which is not just about civil society attending meetings but a genuine openness to to change course to you know try new things I think is is fundamental to implementation success um and I think last but finally um and I think picking on on what Audrey said sometimes we get lost in the rules and structures of plans and processes and forums um and we get wedded to the idea of making sure we're compliant to them whereas you know ensuring that incentives are in place for the reformers that will need to drive these reforms are also thought through in terms of implementation I think I cannot underestimate or cannot sort of overemphasize the the importance of that the incentives for the lonely reformers that need to drive this forward both within an outside government um so that you know when the going gets tough they know that there is um you know it's it's not going to be a dark dark tunnel you know ahead of them so I think the incentives for implementation would be important to think through as well. Thanks Shreya we have a question to Minister Tang from Rudu Borman and the question is this Taiwan's participatory architecture embraces digitalization very naturally also as a result of their own history and process even a revolution today many digital transformation processes are happening around the world what would be your recommendation to other digital responsables by that I understand that to be officials who are developing their strategies without that open narrative at its core Audrey. Certainly in Taiwan our digitalization plan our national plan is called DIGI for digitization innovation governance and inclusion with inclusion as the kind of final pillar and digitization is just the beginning I joke about inclusion through the awe in digitalization right it's digitization for awe and so that the point I want to make is that when we think about digitalization it's not about smart cities not about smart mayors it's about smart citizens it's not about the internet of things it's about the internet of beings it's not about machine learning but collaborative learning it's not about user experience but human experience not about virtual reality but about shared reality and in these words they are important because if we just keep saying open smart city right open internet of things open whatever then it loses meaning right this is what open washing means just prefix open on everything until it lose meaning and become a objective I think what's really important is think about the system as empowering people closest to the pain bringing technology to the people not asking people to conform to technology so start with inclusion and openness will follow but if you start by prefixing open to everything I'm not sure how inclusion could follow thanks Audrey we are now at the closing for our panel but I first want to give each panelist a chance for brief concluding remarks and let me start with Connie any closing remarks Connie sorry I learned I learned a lot about Taiwan my area so thank you very much for that nice to meet you minister tongue and I was glad to introduce there there's a lot more to the global interruption consortium maybe just to mention we also work on on the so-called legal accountability so we're also looking at stories at cases within those stories and trying to animate law enforcement and other authorities to to take up those cases and to deal with corruption but maybe there's another opportunity to talk about that one other day so yeah thank you for having us part of this thank you Connie Shreya any closing remarks yeah just to say you know wish Taiwanese civil society and government all the very best in the implementation of this plan and know that you know there's a community of reformers individuals like you said Audrey you know you tapped into for the co-creation phase I'm sure we'll only be too happy to help in the implementation and of course as always learn from Taiwan's experiences so good luck and we look forward to supporting you Audrey any final remarks yeah since this is about accountability I would like to conclude with a short anecdote I say very publicly that Taiwan have universal broadband universal healthcare universal basic education on digital competence and I qualify this by saying universal broadband means specifically anywhere in Taiwan you're guaranteed to have 10 megabits per second for unlimited data connection for 16 US dollars per month and if you don't it's my fault like personally and a couple months ago there's some guy in a quarantine place that write an email to me saying I'm here to report human right violation because I heard that you define broadband as a human right in these forms but it took me four attempts and half a day to send this email because on that yummy mountain side of the quarantine place there's no broadband connection any other telecoms and I'm like okay sorry we'll fix that and within just a couple weeks we set up a new telecom towers providing broadband of course by that time he's already out of quarantine but he made a point of actually driving back and measure with speed test and post it on social media to hold me to account so I think digital public infrastructure requires participatory accountability from the civil society and that's my concluding anecdote and I wish you live long and prosper thank you Audrey a great anecdote with which to conclude well thank you all for a very engaging conversation today and thank you to OGP for hosting today's event I hope everyone who attended will continue to promote transparency and open in government wherever and whenever they can events like open government week are a great opportunity to learn from each other and I encourage everyone to continue to attend the remaining events offered by OGP as a reminder a recording of this live stream will be provided by OGP on its YouTube channel so please share the link with those who are unable to join us today when it becomes available this concludes our panel thanks again to everyone for joining us today and have a wonderful rest of your day goodbye