Hello everyone, and welcome to LibreCon. I'm very happy to be here virtually to share with you some ideas of digital innovations in public service transformation. My name is Audrey Tang, and I'm from Taiwan, where I serve as a Digital Minister. Taiwan is about seven hours ahead of Spain. We are an island of about twenty-three million people. Six months ago, we elected our new president, Dr. Tsai Ing-wen. I was very happy because I voted for her, although I did not know that I would eventually join her cabinet. I've been in the cabinet for about six weeks now.
I voted for her because we share some very similar values such as marriage equality, aboriginal rights, and a deep respect for ecology. She's a progressive thinker and I'm very happy to have this chance to serve in the public service. By the way, we both love animals. I live with seven cats and two dogs, and she lives with two cats and three dogs.
During the transition time, I was an advisor to the previous cabinet on open data affairs. The previous cabinet was headed by the previous Premier, Dr. Simon Chang. The transition, which took four months, was completely peaceful. I think this is because Simon, a former Google engineer who belonged to no parties, mandated that all the public service systems built under 1 million euros must be made open source by default. This means that barring the exception of national security or privacy, every public service system must produce data that is under an open license and that can be read by free and open-source software. Just by this act alone, Taiwan has become the top place in the Global Open Data Knowledge Foundation index.
Our current Premier, Su Tseng-chang, is also an independent and he has formed a cabinet that has more independent members, including me, than members of any party. This is why I often say that we're now moving towards a post-party politics era. The two independent premiers did something very interesting during the transition. They agreed that all the ministries must upload all their checkpoint documents to the internet for the new cabinet to download. This means that this is not a transition between two parties but from one cabinet to the public and then to the next cabinet. This is the norm now in Taiwan. Independent politicians are considered normal. For example, our Taipei City Mayor, Dr. Ko Wen-je, who was a surgeon, is independent. Our Vice President, Dr. Chen Chien-jen, a master of epidemiology, is also independent. I think this political...
The political climate changed much like in Spain because, in 2014, we had an Occupy movement where students occupied the national parliament. This was because the legislators at the time refused to deliberate a trade service agreement. The so-called Sunflower Movement was essentially a demonstration. It wasn't just for protesting, but demonstrating that when the legislature refused to debate something, there was a way for ordinary citizens, the occupiers, to deliberate on this issue together using deliberative technology. This technology was supported by hundreds of people who donated their skills and time.
We were part of this GovZero movement, which called to "fork" the government. What does this mean? It means that whenever we see a government website not to our liking, for example, the National Environmental Agency, instead of criticizing, we would build a parallel site that invites everyone to see exactly the same data but in an open format that allows for citizen participation. We did this for the national budget, the national dictionary, and many other government websites. The best thing about it is that you don't have to remember the website address because it exists exactly the same, except that "o" is changed to a "0".
Why are there so many civic hackers in Taiwan? Why are there so many people who want to donate their time and skills for democracy? I think this is because in 1989, when the personal computer revolution was just starting, that was also the year that I learned programming. It was also the year that Taiwan moved from a dictatorship and enjoyed press freedom. So, we are a generation who learned computers and enjoyed the freedom of speech. Then again, in 1996, when we had our first presidential election, that was also the year of the web and of telecom privatization. This also guaranteed people basic access to the internet and made it much more available. So again, democracy and the internet grew together and fused into each other. I think, perhaps uniquely in the East Asian context, when we see the free software movement, and then later the open-source movement, and then the free culture movement, we see "free" as "freedom" as something that enables and works with the freedom of speech. It's just incidentally free of charge.
Because of the Occupy movement in 2014, by the end of that year, there were a lot of city-level elections, just like in Spain, where the occupiers or people who supported the occupiers became mayors, sometimes surprisingly. So now we needed to adapt the technologies that we used on the street, which listened to millions of people, and scale it further so that it could work with the public service. The Premier at the time, Simon Chang, said we now needed to work on crowdsourcing as our national agenda. What does crowdsourcing mean? It means that the private sector, the public sector, and civil society, instead of working at arm's length, it's now possible for the public sector to say, "I actually have no idea how to solve this problem" or "I have just an inkling of an idea, I don't have the details." Instead of imposing on the public, the public sector would invite all the stakeholders in the private sector and civil society to join in agenda setting.
I'll take a very concrete example. I call this a "flu of the mind." It's a virus of the mind called a meme, called the sharing economy. Just like a real biological virus, it has many different strains. Every practitioner of the so-called sharing economy gives it a very different definition and operation. One particular instance is called Uber. The Uber strain of the sharing economy says basically that the public transport system is too old, it is too inefficient, and they think that by introducing an algorithm that dispatches cars, they can work much more efficiently. That was the meme. Just like a meme, if a driver believes this and drives for Uber, regardless of whether it's legal or not, it spreads. It spreads to other drivers and even if the driver, after driving for a while, found out maybe it's not the best deal after all, still, the message has already spread. So when we talk about an Uber issue, we found out there's very little a national state can do about Uber because, well, it's an app and it operates not in a physical office in Taiwan, so any legal action that we can do is found to be somewhat limited.
So we thought maybe the best idea is not to declare it as one way or the other. Maybe the best way is for people to deliberate, to think together, instead of arguing very loudly through media. What we thought is the way that links all the stakeholders together and listen to what each other has to say and hopefully come to a consensus. This is because deliberation, thinking deeply about something, is an inoculation against ideology. It's an inoculation against this kind of memes that just blind people to each other's feelings and new facts. A proper deliberation, as we established during the Sunflower Movement, has four different steps. The technologies that we need to employ differ from stage to stage. The first stage is what we call the objective stage or facts. In this stage, people are welcome to propose anything. We don't do a bad thing, we don't do any kind of polling, we just collect observable facts for all the stakeholders involved. Then we ask about people's feelings. The same facts might elicit different feelings. I can feel happy, you can feel sad or angry. There's really no right and wrong, but it is very important because on the subsequent stage, which is ideas, the best ideas are judged by whether they can take care of the most people's feelings. Finally, after facts, feelings, and ideas, we move to decisions. Of course, the public sector, the minister, still has to bear the responsibility of decisions, but
We need a scalable tool to collect people's feelings either synchronously or asynchronously. In the case of Uber, over about three weeks of time, we used this open source free tool called Polis. In Polis, we basically share one sentiment that is shared by your fellow citizen. As you click yes or no, your avatar would move in this two-dimensional map that automatically clusters people who share different feelings, who share the same feelings. At the beginning, people were very polarized, they were in the corners. But because we say we only take as agenda anything that can convince a super majority of people, meaning all of the majority group plus half of the minority group, people compete to get more nuanced, much better ideas that would take care of the maximal people's feelings. So on the feeling stage, basically what we're saying is that we welcome people's feelings that are also common feelings among other people. So we identify consensus among divisions.
By the end, we did get a bunch of consensus items that everybody, including Uber drivers and taxi drivers, can agree to. Then we would ratify it. But before ratification, we meet with all stakeholders at a time on a face-to-face live consultation. Because the facts and feeling stage are already collected, for this we deploy another set of technologies using live streaming, using chat room, using stenographer responses that basically collapse everybody's responses to the common feelings. All the stakeholders, once they promise something or they clarify something, it's then kept not only through live stream but through a transcript for the entire country and for the world to see. So in this case, people speak with a lot of stability because they know thousands of people are watching. By the end of this consultation period, the Ministry of Transport takes the consensus items and ratifies it into our new taxi regulation.
In the regulation, basically, we take the best parts that Uber has to offer, for example, the five-star rating system, the ability for people to ride share, a way for people to keep track of their past travels, and a way for the car not necessarily to be painted yellow. But then we put it into a way that we understand that will not negatively impact any other stakeholders groups. Because of this, other legitimate companies or coops, even locally, that want to operate as something like the taxi fleet can now compete on a fair basis, knowing that the popular will is behind it.
Of course, all these consultations are very hot topics for the media because there were a lot of projects, there were a lot of conflict. But there are many other important issues that need public consultation that may or may not get the same coverage in the media. That's why, as soon as I became the Digital Minister, I started running my own media studio. For example, I have this "Why Slack" page at whyslack.com/AudreyTang that basically is an "Ask Me Anything" platform. People from the press, individuals, stakeholders, foreign journalists, anyone can ask any question here and I strive to answer within 24 hours. Every answer of mine is sent to thousands of subscribers' email boxes. Through this kind of direct communication method, I'm able to make transparent everything that I have participated in. For example...
メディアスタジオ
もちろん、これらの協議はメディアにとって非常にホットな話題で、多くのプロジェクト、多くの対立がありました。しかし、公衆の協議が必要な他の重要な問題があり、それらはメディアで同じカバレッジを得るかどうかは不確定です。だから、私がデジタル大臣になったとき、私は自分のメディアスタジオを運営し始めました。例えば、私はこの"Why Slack"ページをwhyslack.com/AudreyTangで持っています。これは基本的には"Ask Me Anything"プラットフォームです。プレスの人々、個々の人々、ステークホルダー、外国のジャーナリスト、誰でもここで質問をすることができ、私は24時間以内に答えることを努めます。私のすべての回答は、何千人もの購読者のメールボックスに送られます。このような直接的なコミュニケーション方法を通じて、私は私が参加したすべてのことを透明にすることができます。例えば...
Transparency
When the then Senior VP of Uber Strategy, David Plouffe, visited Taiwan, I did meet him, but under a 360 camera that records the entire conversation from the time he enters my door to the time he leaves my door. The entire video is published not only on the usual social media but also transcribed using the same transcription technology, which is called "Say It", developed in my society in the UK. Every word that I say, every word that he says is covered and recorded, so there is minimal worry about a single stakeholder setting the agenda. Rather, I invited him to share his side of the story and facilitate communication with other stakeholders.
In addition to the data portals that we already have, in addition to the portals that allow everyone to share their raw material, what we need to work on next is integration. There are very few people with the ability to engage all the different sources that come from the private, public, and civil society. If all our data systems can publish using a well-known compatible API format, particularly the Open API specification, it becomes much easier to integrate it into investigative journalism, chatbots, virtual reality, or any devices that we make.
As the Digital Minister, I also proposed a change to our procurement laws so that all the public systems paid by taxpayer money are constructed with a machine-readable version of itself. The human-readable version may be just a shell, a front end to the backend API. Once the API is made open, independent ministries and units can connect their services together. A connection does not need to be made as one, but rather, others can do this kind of integration.
To determine the roadmap, we use a lot of offline tools such as business origami. Our team meets every week to decide on the roadmap. We run our daily Kanban board using post-it notes. But because our team is now about 15 people, we have two locations and it's no longer practical to use the same physical board every day. That's why we also use the Wekan system, which is an open-source system that enables this kind of Kanban integration to drag every card from waiting to doing to finished. Wekan is just one of the many tools that we offer.
We're still working with the Sandstorm team. Sandstorm is a collection of independent, open-source API, open-source application, open-source web-based projects. This includes file-sharing Davros, EtherCalc, EtherPad, a collaborative note-taking documentation, and Wekan Kanban board. All this is built on inside the government in the government cloud. This means that all the ministries and even people in the regional government can share each other's collaborative documents very easily and deploy new applications as easily as installing an app on your phone. This kind of space is...
What we call the public digital innovation space is an internal startup inside the national government. Our work is based on this very simple idea: maybe voting is just the beginning of democracy. Everybody can vote. On the other hand, in Occupy, a few people can dedicate a lot of time to do agenda setting by occupying the Parliament. But we cannot just have democracy with these two methods. It is too fluctuating, too unpredictable. The way we work is by having an open data, open API platform so that everybody can share freely and do analysis using the data that's produced by public systems. Every time people have a petition or a question, the public servants have a way to systematically answer it within a given time frame.
This is the beginning. Then, these people need to learn to discuss with each other. This takes trust and trust takes time. Eventually, people will learn to listen. Once people can learn to listen to each other, then we can make new cases, more nuanced regulations that take care of every stakeholder's interests. This is how we crowdsource agenda-setting eventually. We understand that at each time, the people with the ability to participate get gradually fewer and fewer, but it is okay. As long as people form a ladder of learning and share the technology, share the process in the Commons, anyone who wants to learn more can connect with people higher up in the ladder.
Conflicts can often be resolved by introducing a time dimension. This is mathematically called resolving singularity. We listen to one side's ideas, document them fully, and make the interim consensus publicly available. Then we ask for more feelings and ideas from the other stakeholders, and so on. Like a spiral, this will eventually converge into something that has much more consensus from society.
To conclude my talk, I would like to quote from Dr. Tsai Ing-wen's inauguration speech. She said, "Before, democracy was a clash between two opposing values, but now democracy must be a conversation, a dialogue between many different values. We need to build a unified democracy that is not hijacked by ideologies. We need to build a pragmatic democracy that can respond timely to the needs of the private sector and the civil society. Finally, we need to build a democracy that lets people take care of each other and each other's feelings. We do this just by listening, and all the technologies, all the open technologies, are there to help us to listen to each other at scale. So just keep listening to each other. Thank you for listening."
→connections_between_indivisuals×first-class_objects×個人間の接続を第一級の対象として扱う×Boston Global Forum 2024×Audrey Tang×connection_as_first-class_objects×接続を第一級の対象として扱う×第一級の対象×第一級のオブジェクト×relation_as_first-class_objects→
→サイボウズラボ勉強会×funding_the_commons_tokyo_2024×Designing for Plurality×plurality_in_japan×Plurality in Japan(日本語)×andrew_trask×ブロードリスニングの命名דringi_system”_the_decision_making_process_in_japanese_management_systems:_an_overview×空気が支配する日本ではブロードリスニングが重要×心理的安全性×なめらかな社会とその敵×Audrey Tang×glen_weyl×plurality:_technology_for_collaborative_diversity_and_democracy×pluralityは新語×チームワークあふれる社会を創る×理想への共感×100人100通りの働き方×100人100通りの人事制度×デジタルツール×多様性×サイロ化×funding_the_commons×柄谷行人×交換様式論×デジタル民主主義×アダム・スミス×colors.js事件×beyond_public_and_private×安宅_和人×intersecting_group×21世紀のイデオロギー×統合テクノクラシー×企業リバタリアニズム→
→plurality_tokyo_namerakaigi×サイボウズラボ勉強会×pol.is×community_notes×メカニズムデザイン勉強会×majority_judgement勉強会×PluralityとPolis勉強会×polis勉強会×quadratic_votingとplural_management勉強会×Talk to the City勉強会×世論地図勉強会×高次元データ分析勉強会×デジタル民主主義研究ユニット×ピボット×古典期アテネの民主主義のスケール×国民こそが唯一の正統な権威である×フランス革命×フランスでの女性参政権×一人一票×未成年者には投票権がない×成年被後見人の選挙権×ドメイン投票方式×デメニー投票×デーメニ投票×quadratic_voting×glen_weyl×qv×radical_markets×Audrey Tang×vitalik_buterin×quadratic_funding×audrey_tangのqv×glen_weylのqv×quadratic_votingがシナジーの発見に有用×台湾総統杯ハッカソン×qvは投票しないことに意味のあるメカニズム×「投票しないことは良くないことだ」は根拠のない思い込み×vitalik_buterinらのquadratic_funding×a_flexible_design_for_funding_public_goods×akb48総選挙×gitcoin×gitcoin_grants×公共財×リソースの再分配×社会的意思決定×メカニズムデザイン×多数決×くじ引き×抽選制×抽籤制×プラトン×アリストテレス×ジェームズ・マディソン×ジョン・スチュアート・ミル×アレクシ・ド・トクヴィル×選挙は4年に一度5bit送信する遅い通信だ×ブロードリスニング×polis×Pol.isでのUberの議論×metaがファクトチェックを廃止×community_notesにおける行列分解を用いた信頼度スコアリング×多様な主体から支持されることを評価する仕組み×talk_to_the_city×日テレnews×2024衆院選×ブロードリスニング×シン東京2050ブロードリスニング×umap×世論地図×mielka×2024衆院選×japan_choice×meta-polisの構想×mashbean×協力の深さと広さのトレードオフ×plurality本×aiあんの×タウンミーティング×非同期化×空間と時間の制限から解き放つ×chatgptとaiあんののコミュニケーションの形の違い×ai政治家の3つのレベル×aiが間に入って非同期化×open_space_technology×アジェンダ設定の権限を人々に開放する×vitalik×主観主義×3つのイデオロギーの間に2つの対立軸がある×aiが仲介するコミュニケーション×bluemo×intersubjective_model_of_ai-mediated_communication:_augmenting_human-human_text_chat_through_llm-based_adaptive_agent_pair×時間の制約×心理的安全性×緩やかに繋ぐ×デジタル民主主義2030×同じ時間と場所を共有できない人に機会を用意×metapolis×スケーラビリティ×デジタル民主主義×コミュニティ×大規模コラボレーション×xy問題×熟議のための4つのステップ×リプライはスケールしない×リプライさせない×your_priorities×コトノハ→
→Talk to the City勉強会×ブロードリスニング×talk_to_the_city×tttc:_aiと著作権に関するパブリックコメント×talk_to_the_cityでplurality本の内容を可視化×デジタル民主主義×デジタル投票×民主主義×投票×政治家×公職選挙法×参加型予算編成×参加型予算編成:東京の事例×plurality×Audrey Tang×funding_the_commons_tokyo_2024×good_enough_ancestor→
→funding_the_commons_tokyo_2024×Audrey Tang×glen_weyl×サイボウズと語ろうplurality_多元性の実践と期待×meetup_with_audrey_&_glen×ftctokyo_day1×ftctokyo_day2×audrey+glen+halsk@cybozu×wired_university_×_miraikan×glen+japanchoice×世論地図×tackling_east_asia’s_population_decline_issues_with_local_coop’s_subsystem_for_local_governance×open_problems_toward_realization_of_nameraka_(smooth)_society×funding_the_commons_西尾のスケジュール×小池百合子@ftctokyo×funding_deeptech_and_decentralized_science_(panel)@ftctokyo×democratization_of_ai_and_social_implementation_using_web3@ftctokyo×Plurality in Japan(日本語)×Designing for Plurality×plurality_in_japan×関_治之×サイボウズ式→
→plurality_tokyo×pluralitytokyo×think_together,_create_together.×code_for_japan×proof_of_participation_nft×参加証明nft×Audrey Tang×Plurality Tokyo Keynote from Audrey Tang×plurality_poem×collective_diversity×kevin_owocki×gitcoin×quadratic_lands×joi_ito×変化したものは同じものか×金で買えないトークン×現金は弱い資本×ph.d._is_verified_credential×nft×digital_identifier×soulbound_token×leverage_points:_places_to_intervene_in_a_system×簿記と会計の再発明_(確実性を求めて)×callback.is×joi_pom×梅棹_忠夫×文明の生態史観序説×衆知を集める×small_closed_communities×小さな閉じたコミュニティ×小さなコミュニティ×ゲートは隠すべき×freedom_of_curiosity×好奇心追求の自由×フワフワ×plurality×vectorthinking×なめ敵会のきっかけ×多元主義→
→Audrey Tang×halsk×真鶴×アレグザンダー×パターンランゲージ×美の条例×建築基準法×観光地化×公共財×共有地の悲劇×手を加えることに対する気後れ×どのようにアップデートしていくか×高齢化×高齢化率×要介護率×和光モデル×贈与経済×望春風×social inovation legitimates governance×nishikigoi_nft×ブロードリスニング×人間増強×コンセンサス×空気が支配する日本ではブロードリスニングが重要×ソーシャルイノベーションが統治を正統化する×ethereum×スイッチングコスト×ウクライナ×シビックテック×Taiwan ready to assist Ukraine with digital reconstruction×politicsとtechの連携×ゼロサムゲーム×anthropic×コンテキスト長×言語マイノリティ×物ができてから評価する方が楽×移動式投票×事後的に統治方法が正統化される×遅いシステムの移行先としてのdapps×ロックイン×portable×interoperable×ai学習パートナー×decidim×polis×市民参加プラットフォーム×個人認証×中銀カプセルタワービル×式年遷宮×国際社会はアナーキー×デジタル公共財×collective_action×インセンティブ設計×ナッシュ均衡×人気のものに課税し公共財に投資する×patagonia×ソーラーシェアリング×「課題感」と「解ける課題」は別物×live_long_and_prosper🖖×真鶴出版×オードリー・タン→