Welcome. I was just reviewing the annual white paper and everything that you have suggested.

Thank you.

I want to highlight especially your suggestions for the Electronic Signature Act that we received during the consultation. That was very helpful. Due to the parliamentary schedule, it is now unlikely for us to present the bill in this session, however, we will make it a priority in the next session so as to simplify documents — so people don’t have to attach physically the receipts and documents and tenders and everything in all the documents and receipts.

Okay, fantastic. Well, thank you for that.

Well, I know I met yourself in the new ministry and a few, maybe not your full team, but I wanted to introduce myself again in my new role. Of course, I think, as you may know, I’m a big fan and I want to thank you guys for all that you do for Taiwan. I feel you guys are the real heroes making changes for Taiwan. So, thank you all for your service.

So, I joined AmCham as president about five months ago. I can’t believe it’s five months, right? It feels like two years. But it’s been a really fast-moving journey. I’ve never worked for a nonprofit before. I worked for a government before, but learning a lot and really finding really empowering that I can do something for Taiwan. So, nothing compared to what you guys do, but I think we do our part in trying to help Taiwan in our own way.

So, I took this job really because I feel this is the most important time for Taiwan-US, Taiwan-world relations in the last 40-50 years. Right? We’ve never gotten this much global attention and I really think it’s our time to shine.

So, my team has heard this many times so I’ll be brief. But I think the best way as AmCham president I can help Taiwan is to attract as much foreign investment into Taiwan as possible. And I think we have a window to do that because, yes, we have the attention of the world right now, but we don’t know how long it will last, right? We’re already seeing Ukraine fatigue in places. We’re seeing a lot of shifts in attention from the Middle East. Taiwan is still top of mind for people in the world, but I think now we have to try to do as much as we can to attract people to not only say I care about Taiwan, but put their money where their mouth is and create jobs here, invest here, develop talent here, right?

And I think the more people we get to live in Taiwan, coming from around the world, the more they become our ambassadors. Very few times do I meet foreigners that come to Taiwan and say, oh I didn’t like it. They all love Taiwan, right? They just… They need to come here because a lot of times they’re like, “oh I never thought about going to Taiwan,” “Oh, I was going to go to Japan,” “I was going to Korea,” “I was going to other places,” right? And I want to attract them to come to Taiwan, stay here, bring their talents here, and develop, right?

And so, I think our job now is also to make it easy for them to come and invest into Taiwan. And so, I think you guys are doing one of the hardest jobs in government. You guys are modernizing. You guys are…

I want to first of all, congratulations on moda, on the foundation of moda. And also, that I want to thank you that you guys are fighting one of the hardest fights. And so, in some ways I’m glad you are here, because I think you guys are all very capable. But I understand that everything from like fighting for budget, fighting to change the whole way of doing things into a digital way of doing things, it’s just hard. I mean, I fight with my staff all the time about this. Just among our little organization and now you’re going for a whole country, thank you. So, that’s just my little 謝謝 to everybody here.

But yes, I think you guys saw some of the things we wanted to talk about. So, a little bit about AmCham. AmCham Taiwan is the second oldest AmCham in Asia. Formed in 1951. Only Japan is older by two years. And so, we are the largest international business organization in Taiwan. And so, our members really care about developing Taiwan in a way that meets global standards.

And in this new era… I think this is an area where your leadership can not only propel Taiwan to global standards, but lead to global standards, right? And so, I think everyone’s just very… what’s the right word… excited but anticipating what is the thinking process. And how can we help? I know you have great connections and can talk to almost anybody.

But if we can be a resource to you, if you want to talk to our member companies and say, “hey, how does XYZ operate in Japan?” “How do they operate in the US?” “Or Europe?” Our member companies operate almost everywhere and across different domains. So, a lot of our players not only operate in cybersecurity, but also healthcare and also banking in other areas. So, they are cross-cutting. So, if there’s any way that when you’re looking at harmonization of policies and we could be of service, please let us know.

But sorry, maybe I talk too much.

No, no. It was great, great remarks.

Thank you.

Yeah so, do we do a quick round of introductions?

Sure, sure. Thank you.

Starting from your side, now that you’re in this aisle here.

I think I’d introduce myself. Patrick Lin, President of AmCham.

Amy Chang, Senior Advisor on Sustainability.

I’m Joyce. I’m from the Government Affairs team. I actually coordinate for technology, digital economies and semiconductor and defense industries… some of the committees that are very involved in the digital affairs area.

Fernando, Senior Manager of Government Affairs, previously Legislative Yuan of Jason Hsu, and now I have joined AmCham.

Awesome.

Hello, I’m Wendy. I’m currently working in the minister’s office of Ministry of Digital Affairs. Thank you.

我服務於數位策略司，負責本部施政策略規劃、政策分析、追蹤管考及提升施政績效等，性質如同各部會的綜合規劃單位，但本司是升級版，與各單位協作、溝通、彈性調整是我們工作的日常。

(I’m working in the Department of Digital Strategy, my department responsible for planning the moda’s policy strategies, analyzing policies, implementing strategies, and improving administrative performance. It is similar in nature to the overall planning unit of various ministries, but my department is an upgraded version. Collaboration, communication, and flexible adjustment with the other departments are our daily work.)

Indeed. In other ministries, the research and planning department usually works in an iteration cycle of a quarter. But for them, they work in a cycle of 24 hours, because of the difference from the strategy the research and planning.

Wow.

Hi, I’m the deputy minister, Lee Huai-jen, and I’m certainly in charge of the industry side. Our ADI is responsible for digital industries, and I always work with them.

Great. So, we’ll cover this in English, right?

If you don’t mind.

English is just fine. But feel free to speak in Mandarin. So, Deputy Minister Lee, we worked very closely together during the pandemic. Back at the time, he did the actual job of mask rationing, stimulus vouchers and all that. I was like his spokesperson. And now he is my spokesperson.

You’re the person we should thank for the 6,000 NT, right?

All the nationwide information systems. Because Deputy Minister used to work at the vice premier’s office during that time, and really pioneered a lot of work in crossing the silos in the government. And that actually was the prototype of moda. So, the teams that we worked the most closely with, including the Department of Economic Affairs that became the Administration for Digital Industries, the Department of the NDC, the Department of the NCC, and the Department of Cybersecurity. So, whoever attended those weekly meetings that went on for five hours ended up becoming moda.

Okay. You were too successful.

Great. Well, thank you. Well, I think we laid out some of our major things we wanted to talk about earlier. So, I think some of these things include the cybersecurity. I think that affects almost all industries, right? And as we’ve heard from, I think, even the president herself, is cybersecurity is national security now. And I heard some… maybe it was your speech or someone’s speech that Taiwan has the most cyber-attacks in the world every day, right? Something like 500,000 attacks a day. So, thank you for keeping us safe.

It’s now millions.

Wow.

Yeah, it’s been ramping up the past few weeks. It used to be 500,000.

Okay. Wow. My information wasn’t updated. Okay. So, I think this area, our members are very concerned about how… not only how they operate in Taiwan, but are there best practices that they can learn from Taiwan and also bring to Taiwan.

So, as well as other areas, any area that you’re thinking about in digital reform, especially harmonizing across different agencies. Because I believe right now, I’m not an expert in this, but different agencies are looking at it in different ways. And so, I know this is very hard. And so really looking forward to learning more and seeing how we can work together. And how can we really be of service to you and be a resource for you as well?

Yeah. So, Deputy Minister Lee worked with the Public Construction Commission recently. So, we now have a procurement template. So, all agencies, they can simply tick the boxes, like whether this is sensitive but not top secret, top secret or whatever. And then it automatically derives the cybersecurity requirements in government procurement. This solves a very longstanding problem where, as you mentioned, the standards are unequal and very byzantine, really, for American vendors to compete fairly in government procurement processes. Now it’s all standardized. And part of the standardization is only used at public cloud companies.

So, the infrastructure level companies… Of course, Google has been in Taiwan for a long time. Microsoft is now in Taiwan, Amazon puts some of the compute, but not all of the storage services in Taiwan. So at least for the big three, it’s now much more possible for government agencies to simply run public services on such premises as long as they are locally resilient, meaning that the routing does not go to the US and back. The routing should naturally, like when I video-conference you and we’re both in Taiwan, they should just be in Taiwan.

This is not because of data localization or anything like that, but rather it is to safeguard us against disruption to our subsea cables. So, if the subsea cables are cut and so on, we can still use those public services, even though it’s posted on the cloud, but those cloud has an edge in Taiwan. So, as long as they fit into this general shape, we can procure it very easily now in an online SaaS market for not just the governmental agencies, but for small and medium enterprises that’s called the T-cloud.

Thank you for that. Okay, I guess part of… pardon my ignorance. I feel like I need to learn so much from all of you. And I think one of the things I would love to hear more insights about, you know, what are the key issues that you think our members should be aware of? Maybe things that are um… the ministry is thinking of implementing or what actions are you thinking of right now?

Yeah, so we have two Acts and we have amended both during the first year of moda. And that’s the Electronic Signature Act and the Cybersecurity Management Act. And they belong to one of our administrations each.

So, I’ll begin with the ABI. The Electronic Signature Act is 20 years old now. And it suffers from two drawbacks. One is that any agency in Taiwan can, unilaterally, just post on their website that our service doesn’t accept electronic documents, period. And the law was powerless to force them, to compel them to do anything. And many ministries, after they post such a notice 20 years ago or 10 years ago, they forgot about it. And then, that means that many of the parts of the Taiwanese bureaucracy are face-to-face only, paper only, and so on, but they forgot why, right?

So, the new E-Signature Act essentially says within three years from the passing of the law, everything you need to accept electronic documents and signatures. And if other ministries don’t like that, they have to pass a law to exclude themselves from the process. But we’ve got a lot of support across ministries on that. So, this doesn’t extend to judicial proceedings, which follow its own rules. But the other four branches of the government are all subject to our new Electronic Signature Act. And because of this, we are looking for support from the E-Signature companies, the endorsements, and so on, to do essentially a cross-certification with Taiwan.

Previously, 20 years ago, the E-Signature Act at the time requires a bilateral agreement in order to cross-recognize each other’s certificate authorities. As you know, for Taiwan to enter a bilateral trade agreement isn’t the easiest thing in the world. And so, in the new version, we simply said, OK, so there are standard organizations, like ISO, FidO, or W3C, and so on which we’re happily members of. And as long as a participating country and us are both members of that standard organization, or we both adhere to the same standards, then we can cross-recognize without a need for a bilateral agreement.

And this is how I became, for example, a Lithuanian E-resident. And actually, we signed MOU with Lithuania, cross-recognizing each other’s digital signature.

That’s fantastic.

Yeah, so I think this will massively simplify, as you mentioned, foreign trade investments. And it will also make it much easier for foreign talents that have maybe a gold card, maybe a residency card, and so on. But prior to this, they did not enjoy the full set of services that our government has to offer. Because in face-to-face settings and so on, the language was varied. And in online settings, they often just refer to it obscure, like face-to-face, or paper document which is Mandarin only.

But now, it is fully electronic. First, machine translation now works really well. And also, they now enjoy FidO-based authentication. So, they can take their residency card, or a gold card, or whatever, and get essentially an electronic version of that on their mobile app. So, they just install the same app as we use every day, the FidO, the TW FidO app.

And then, they can access all the government services, like MyData, which allows them to download their personal data stored in governmental agencies, apply for insurance, bank accounts, whatever, and authenticate exactly the same way as citizens do. So there’s no discrimination, discrepancies between the citizens and residents in most online services.

This is really interesting, because this touches upon another issue that we’ve been addressing with not this ministry, but other ministries, about the bilingual issue for Taiwan. So, actually, you found a solution that could scale across all the governments.

Okay. That’s fantastic. How do we make sure others know what you’re doing?

Yeah, it really is a challenge. So, for example, in our website, the press releases in the English version, they have a very small disclaimer in italics that says, this is like machine translated. A human will review it later. But we ensure timely delivery for our bilingual services on press release.

And I think this is very important, because otherwise, it’s even worse than not having an English website. If you have an English website that’s always half a year out of date, then our friends around the world would think that we’re half a year out of date, but we’re not. So, it’s either to just offer machine translation throughout, or to keep those articles updated, of course, after careful, humanely review, but machine translation is really good nowadays.

Would you mind if we advertise this to other agencies we talk to?

Not at all. We also have free website consultation service.

Okay, good to know. I don’t want to mention any other agencies here, but there are other agencies that struggle with this and they’re looking for solutions. And I’ll kindly mention that you guys are doing a fantastic job. And you guys have a consultation service.

And it’s free.

You said free. I didn’t say free.

It’s free as in freedom.

Yeah, we publish this code as public code, so other agencies can just use our translation pipeline or that without paying us license fees or anything like that.

That’s great. One of the issues our members face so, we have 26 committees covering different things, from like health care to defense to other areas, right? So, 26 industries. And when they interact with their government agencies, they’re the ones that are most concerned with. A lot of times, we provide our recommendations, always bilingually, in English and Mandarin. But a lot of times, we only get responses in Mandarin. And when each member company translates it on their own, they can have different interpretations. And we would like a, what is, you know… I’m learning this the hard way.

Economical translation. Yeah. We… because moda was four different departments. Even the same English word mean different thing to those four departments. So, we spent a lot of time to make our bilingual glossary, which is in continuous updating. And we want to make sure first that within moda, we mean the same thing when we say the same words. But then we are also working on machine translation that takes into account this glossary, so the translation can come in on the cloud.

Fantastic. Thank you for that. One of the things, well, I think, Minister Tang, you have so much connections everywhere. But one of the things I wanted to offer is us as a bridge, if… how do I say this? If it’s useful to have AmCham mention things to, for example, other parts of the government, US government, my member companies, or certain industries, we would love to be that conduit.

Furthermore, I think it would be great if we could invite yourself or any members of your team to have regular touchpoints with our members. We would be glad to host closed-door sessions or more public transparent events as well, whatever is best for you. But also, I think that constant information sharing, so there’s a clear understanding of where is moda thinking, where we’re headed. I think that will be very helpful. Especially when my member companies are looking at, OK, how do I think about perhaps a new product or service I want to bring to Taiwan, and if we understand how you are thinking about certain things, or they can ask questions. I’m sure they come to talk to you directly, but sometimes it’s easier if the industry comes along to you at once.

Yeah. Usually, the cadence of such conversations is very regular, like even mostly conversations with the administration for digital industries, quarterly-ish conversations with deputy ministers, and maybe have a year or a year with me for things that will require post-ministerial coordination. So, we have such cadences with the industries that are under our purview, and we’re happy to offer this.

Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you. And one of the areas that I think our members are always very concerned about is creating even playground for foreign companies when they come to operate in Taiwan. But I also believe that it’s important that Taiwan create a fair playground for our own homegrown companies as well.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about what are the certain challenges, if any, that you face in creating this equal playground right now.

Yeah. As I mentioned, I think one of the key things is to let the talent circulation flow very smoothly. For example, I worked on the Gold Card policy when I first became the… the administrator at large with a portfolio in charge of social innovation. And during the pandemic, we saw that program blossom.

A lot of my Silicon Valley friends are in Taiwan due to the pandemic, granted. But most of them stayed, actually. At least they renewed their Gold Card. Whereas now they’re maybe physically in other places of the world. Each one can then introduce more Gold Card holders into Taiwan.

And I think even in the playing ground starts with the realization that one does not need to be physically in Taiwan in order to care about Taiwan, to play by Taiwanese rules, to work with the Taiwanese rules to make it better, and so on. And so, one of our flagship projects is the digital Gold Card, which does not need you to be physical in Taiwan.

You can apply for the digital field of Gold Card without a proof of diploma, a proof of employment or salary or anything. Just proving that eight years ago you were contributing to the digital world. That’s it. So, it could be source code contributions. We’ve handed to science communicators, AsapSCIENCE. We’ve handed to bloggers, Noah Smith, and so on. So, not just scientists and engineers, but communicators as well. They get Taiwanese residency, health care, and dentistry for their family.

Income tax. That’s the price.

Right. And because we offer tax exemptions, if they don’t spend more than half a year physically in Taiwan. Actually, many take advantage of that. So, they’re just visiting Taiwan now and then. And bringing their family.

They don’t need a visa… and it also covers health insurance.

Because they’re residents. And after they renew their gold card we hope, in the fifth year, even though they are not physically in Taiwan all the time, there is a law amendment in the works that will make it possible for them to get a Taiwanese passport without abandoning their original one. And so, they become also Taiwanese in the fifth year. And that evens the playing field because they can go there, right? They’re by definition Taiwanese. This is what we need to advertise.

Is it like the Estonia model?

It is better than the Estonia model. And Estonia doesn’t offer health care. So, the Estonian or Lithuanian EU residence simply means you can open a company, a bank account, and so on. But it does not guarantee residency rights. It is separate from a residency. But for us, it is both an e-resident and a physical residency, so that you enjoy all the, you know, ARC holders’ rights. And also, Taiwanese passport is also quite popular now. So, I’ve been writing recommendation letters a lot.

So, anyone who deeply cares about Taiwan can look forward in their fifth year to get their ID card. And I think like if we have tens of thousands of people doing that, that fundamentally levels the playing field.

Okay. How can we help publicize this? Can we interview you? Can we meet other people?

Yeah.

We’ll reach out to our publications team.

We’re advised by Tom Fifield, a naturalized dual citizen of Australia and Taiwan. And he used to find the gold card process not as smooth as it can be. So, he worked with many open-source civic technologists to write an unofficial version of the gold card website. And then the NDC just hired him. And then, now, it’s the official website. So, if you type Taiwan gold card, you can see a revamped website, and Tom has been advising us.

Oh, that’s great. I met him at the NDC meeting, right? He was the gentleman with the beard.

Yeah.

He’s great. I’m glad he’s, well, I’m glad there’s so many people so passionate about Taiwan.

And he spoke on behalf of Taiwan in the government’s breakdown session in the UN IGF Kyoto meeting. Because he enters with his Australian passport. And then he, you know, brings out his Taiwanese passport and starts speaking for Taiwan. So that’s also, that’s basically very…

He’s one of our unofficial ambassadors. I love it. Before I, I have lots of things I want to talk about. I want to let Amy talk for a little bit. She’s doing a very important initiative that we’re promoting around DEIA.

Please.

Thank you. Now, Minister, I can’t help reminiscing your yellow stickers. Because the first time we met, that was many years ago, with our insurance co-chairs talking about electronic signatures. And I’m really thankful. for the fact that you are a man of the arts and definitely commit to what you try to do and you do it. We just have to make sure that as many people know about it as possible. So, I’m really touched to come by the fact that you have done so many things, so innovative, and so easy for others to understand what Taiwan is about. Our DEIA program really is the foundation based on that. It’s to let Taiwan shine like we’re talking about. And it’s natural… It should be. That’s the basic reason why we want to do DEIA.

From a technical standpoint, we listen to our members from our business climate survey this early release early this year. Our members told us that they really want to have a lot more social responsibilities, enhanced and promoted from a chamber viewpoint. Because each individual company has done quite a lot in ESG, but collectively, we haven’t. As a result of that, that’s the reason why we want to emphasize how chamber-wide.

DEIA – diversity, inclusion, equity and accessibility. This theme is under the S part and also in certain aspects it’s under the G part. It is a collective hope that from AmCham and from AIT, more precisely Director Oudkirk, that we want to use this mechanism, DEIA, as a way to let the world know how beautiful Taiwan is. And that’s the reason why we’re having this forum that will take place. We have already selected the date. Depending on the President Tsai’s schedule, It’s either the 18th of April or the 19th, depending on whether the President is available.

18th is my birthday.

Oh!

We’ve got to make it on the 18th then.

And I wanted to share that with you. The program is a day-long program. In the morning we will, based on our members’ needs, we chose five topics. The woman in tech, bridging the age gap at work, conscious bias and also diversity, and accessibility.

So, as a result of that, each company has their topics selected and it would produce speakers from the region. So, we want to make sure this is the first year and we want to make sure that we involve business efforts from the region.

So, we want to make sure this is the first year and we want to make sure that we involve business efforts from the region. And we put into the pledging part. And I will have..,. Are you working with Turing Certs?

Yes.

They are the one that help us with the instant pledges.

Awesome.

And that will include the morning session. There is one variable right now because we would like to have the regional ranking officer or getting a regional from the headquarters from the city to come and talk about accessibility. Because I think federal government, even though Patrick and I, we both kind of in federal government at one time, there are, there are, do have some good merits of how they remove the barriers for DEIA, for all kinds of talents to come into work within government.

So, that’s the morning session and thank you, Minister. for accepting my invitation to be the luncheon speaker. I take the liberty of assigning you the most difficult topic, the unconscious bias, but I don’t think that that would be too difficult for you. Because I think what you are doing right now, you are breaking all sorts of barriers.

I know. I am consciously unbiased.

Yes. So, I think you can weave in whatever fabricating, whatever you want to talk about. I think unconscious bias… because I think unconscious bias is something that everybody faces. Within ourselves, you know, how I was brought up, how I was educated, on the, you know, there are biases that are within, in the soul of you. And some, that’s something that we have to break.

And I’m really, truly very happy to hear about how flexible you are with the gold card and the passports. And that’s really what we need to showcase - To let the world know how free, how innovative, how brilliant Taiwan is. And this is the first program this year. So, hopefully that I can persuade the federal government to provide the next year through, the Global Cooperation Platform, so that Taiwan can be an example in the region. That’s my hope.

And then the next step, I hope that we can bring this to APAC. So I think, Minister, your role in this will be critically important to us. And I really thank you for giving us the opportunity to have you talk to our members. It will be open to our members. And it will be also providing the opportunities for others if we can think of any ways online, you know, where the Minister… We have to do something that is fun. Digital. Digital and that is innovative. We have to do something fun.

So, please tell us what would you like to see happen. The forum is really yours. The only variables that we have right now are the fact that our members were thinking that if the minister, you’re thinking from your very industry, very focused standpoint, not the free-flowing side of you. They were thinking that if the minister, if Minister Tang is talking about unconscious bias, about breaking all the barriers, about they were thinking more immediately how would labor department implement that. We want to put them together in a way we want to force the coming of whatever innovations that the labor department can creatively create for the labor force, for instance.

Another variable that perhaps for consideration is because of that ranking officer that is coming from, either from the region, the US government, or from the headquarters, where we will provide them with a role that will share the stage with you. So, time-wise, we’re looking at between 18 to 25 minutes, depending on how many speakers. But clearly, I know, minister, you will make this system very fun and very interactive and a very creative way, and then, the ultimate goal is you will help us succeed which is make retirement shy.

Thank you. And so, the minister of labor, of course, deals with…

No, not the Minister of Labor. We don’t have to have the minister of labor. We already have a minister here; We can have a supporting staff or from a labor department.

I think the point is so that labor department can really think about how to implement. I think this is also a chance to come to it, that process, if we need that depending on how you see it. Because now, Because, right now, you are the one. You are the one that…

That is confirmed, yes.

So, that’s on the focus. Labor department, of course, is the competent authority for most of the D and E, diversity and equity in the workplace in Taiwan. I’m not exactly sure about inclusion and accessibility.

Specifically, accessibility is by law the Ministry of Health and Welfare. And we are a supporting ministry to the MOHW accessibility initiatives. We just joined the cabinet level accessibility commission this year. And so, I think in inclusion, if we take a gender lens, there’s a dedicated gender equality commission within the cabinet. So, DEINA, I think it is more like a spectrum of things which all may, of course, benefit from conscious unbiasing. But I’m not sure if but I’m not exactly sure that we have the time, with an hour or so, to go through all four of them.

So, a clarifying question I want to ask is that are specific points within DEIA that you would like to elicit from the ministries?

Whatever you like. The reason why we have such a short program is because we are considering how people’s attention is spent but this is just a planning part. So, you know, we’re at your service. Whatever you think that will sell and will be successful, we will happily promote and we’ll make bigger but your input is very important.

So, if you want afternoon, actually, AIT has indicated to us since they are a co-sponsor of the event, that they would like to see more events in the afternoon. But because of our strength of our very small staff, that we were… This is the part that we think that we can do very comfortable with. But if you want more, add more, I think that there definitely will be appetite. It just matters how we go to the event.

So, forget about how to enforce, tell me what you’d like to see happen in the luncheon part. And go in the afternoon discussion.

It will also affect who you actually invite for the USG, right?

Right. That’s something that we cannot control. That’s something that we cannot control. It will be finalized, perhaps, because it’s still a little early. They may have some budget process to go through.

Ah, yes! You can say that again.

But if I may, I think, Mr. Tang, your story is so compelling. And I think it’s up to you what you, as you mentioned, what you want to talk about. The journeys that the unconscious bias maybe you face, the challenges you face, how did you navigate, what things that you saw that most people don’t see, that is very clear to you.

I think those stories would be very compelling to all of us because your journey is so special.

You are the statement and that’s why it is up to you. This is a chance to do best practice sharing with the timeframe that we have., But I really want to see some innovation of how to you deliver the messages. What are the, if I can call it, gadgets? What are gadgets that you can use? So that everybody, the many people that can see that, we can put it online, I don’t know how, what’s your proactive on that. But your story, your journey is the same as itself. It’s those that are in Taiwan recognize who you are and admire who you are, and respect who you are.

Not only Taiwan.

Yes, but we want to get it out as much, as far as we can. And please help us with that.

Sure, yeah. What do you think? What if we make gold card the main thing?

I think the gold card is maybe the main issue. And the second part maybe Minister can talk about the AI and the influence on job opportunities.

AI bias, you mean?

Oh, that’s one of them.

Yeah. how we overcame the bias inherent in the training of the largest AI models. Because we just launched the AI evaluation center and we’re working to align AI, so that it understands the local cultural preferences.

Yeah, and this is another thing. Although that…

It’s like I can hear the ceiling cracking from here to the stage.

Although it’s not human bias, right? Yeah. the bias was in the training data. And how do we correct for this?

So, you walk in with a precise title. I’m too touched to write precisely. Please. I think that’s so wonderful because that shows the height and the depth of unconscious bias. Because you’re already going into the AI part of unconscious bias. Not to talk about AI.

But the other way is, for this main topic, maybe you can ask the Ministry of Labor first?

Really?

Because this topic is going to the papers…

If we mention AI, and then you invite the labor ministry, the conversation becomes “does AI replace all our jobs? How does reskilling work?” — like universal basic income.

It’s just our members thinking from their very industry view point, so I haven’t done anything. So, I think that with the title we were talking about, I think the Ministry of Labor should not be seen… Maybe they can listen online. I think we should put it in a different context. And I’ll take out the labor…

Maybe a different panel…

On a different panel, yeah.

Or a different session. Maybe in the afternoon, we can learn something.

Right.

Otherwise, we’ll have two different standpoints, from two authorities…

Right. I don’t want to be stabbed by Patrick.

Okay, I think I will explain to our members. With these dynamic topics, I think that later we’ll address that in a different setting.

OK, so how about a vague but inspirational topic? Something like collaborative diversity in the age of AI, so that we maximize our flexibility depending on what happens in March?

I think that will sell so well. Collaborative diversity in the age of AI.

Collaborative Diversity in the Age of AI.

Perfect. It’s such a wonderful topic. Good! Excellent!

I wonder the state department person… If he comes, or she comes, how would that complement your topics? Because if he or she flies all the way from Washington, you have to give them a go.

We’ve got many good friends in the US government now that work on this movement toward collaborative diversity together. We’re starting a movement around that. It’s at plurality.net. It’s a website.

I was going to say if you know someone who we should be inviting, then let us know as well.

That will complement you.

That you want to share the stage with or have complementing view…

Yes, that would be good.

If you have a name in mind, we can try to push that for you as well.

Okay yeah.

Actually, so not only this, but if there are interesting speakers from the US or other places that you think we should try to bring to Taiwan overall, not for this event, for anything, please think of us as a platform to try to invite that person to Taiwan.

Yeah, so one of the peoples that I work with is the Collective Intelligence Project. And one of the affiliates of the CIP, CIP.org, is now director of AI and national security at the National Security Council.

Wow.

Right. I don’t know whether NSC will let him represent the National Security Council, but he used to work in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, so he can talk on a OSTP viewpoint. His name’s Tantum Collins, or Teddy Collins. And he runs a blog Substack.com, about democracy on Mars, and he is now working on designing the governance systems in the first Mars colony, which breaks some more, you know, barriers and kind of conscious biases.

And so, yeah, we don’t have to talk about Mars colony…

But someone in that region of floor base.

I think that’s very important. Bringing that collaborative element will definitely enhance the luncheon, and the possibility of the fact that we will do… If my boss is here, will give us the manpower to do the PM/afternoon programs.

We are very supportive of DIA, let’s make it work. But, okay, well, in the last few minutes, I wanted to see if, you know, see if there’s anything you want to talk about for us, and any advice you have for me.

So, any topics that you would like to raise?

Okay. I think this is the beginning of a very, very fruitful conversation. And I think most of the, like, how do I say that? The main currents that I see from the white paper conversations, I think it is about a shared ambition, as you mentioned, to not just make Taiwan shine, or let Taiwan shine, but also to shape the bilateral conversation, so that it is truly worldwide, truly global. We made sure that is not just about Taiwan and the U.S., but Taiwan and U.S. working together to pave the way to a culture that is shaped not just by the DIA principles, which are very important, but also by innovation over, you know, zero-sum fighting and things like that.

So, I think many of those very ambitious suggestions, recommendations, and so on, we’re taking them, and we’re extrapolating them. So, my main suggestion is that whereas with other competent authorities, other ministries, maybe you had topics that has been, you know, a little bit celebrated, of course, smaller wins every year, every year, over a many decade span.

For us, it’s different, because we’re the kind of internal champion within the central governments for innovation, for participation, for inclusion. And so, feel free to extrapolate, like, what would be the ideal case instead of the feasible case, right? So, Gold Card started with the community around, you know, the Red Room and so on, right? That had a very ambitious endpoint, which is people becoming also Taiwanese, right? People who support Taiwan, they don’t have to descend from a certain national ethnic origin, right? The love boat concept could be available for everyone. So, we heard those ideas, you know, back in 2015-ish.

And I think now that it’s almost 10 years later, we can think of, like, in 2030, in 2040, even more imaginative futures. And then we can work backwards to make those into policy. Because incremental policy improvement only works in cases where the stakeholders are very well-met, very well-known. But I think part of the great thing about innovation is that the future generations, they can use those innovations on things that we don’t know about, and frankly cannot predict.

And so, our slogan here in moda is hashtag Free the Future. So, we took the MOFA hashtag – Taiwan Can Help. And then added another hashtag of our own, Free the Future And so, I think it’s much better if we can think in 2030, 2040, very ambitious proposals, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a white paper. It can be a vision paper. And just invite your members to think this way. And then, we can work backwards and find out policy strategies to make it work.

That makes me want to… I’m thinking very ambitious now. Would it be something, maybe we can work with NDC on this, like host a 2040 Taiwan Vision event?

Yeah, definitely.

And bring in all different industry leaders from around the world to come share with Taiwan leaders as well. That would be interesting. I love what you’re doing. I mean, this is so different from all the other agencies we talked to. I mean, I think you’re very successful. But they have very clear KPIs. How do you measure, how do you determine your own success? How do you know that you’re doing a good job?

Yeah. Maybe this is for the strategy department to answer…

So, I’ll answer very broadly.

Because we came from three different cultures, right? The NCC and NDC was more about universal access, democratic participation, benefiting everyone. A very strong background on DIA. Both NCC and NDC was the competent authority for accessibility online. And now, they merged into the administrative program.

But the administration of digital industries was part of administrative economic affairs. So, they prioritize progress and innovation. And the administration for cybersecurity used to be the department of cybersecurity, of course, cares about safety. And the safety is not just about the safety of cyber systems, but also peace of mind, information integrity, and so on, that make the democracies to work to avoid polarization which is a very important part of psychological safety as well.

So, participation, progress, and safety. In other governments, these will be three different ministries. In some of the more advanced forms of governments, there will be two different ministries. Either participation and innovation on one side. And then, the safety on the other. Or these two aligned together and innovation on the other. So, sometimes we hear ministry of future, which is innovation and progress, but not safety. And in some more the front-line states, we have participation and safety for collaborative defense, societal resilience, and so on. But their ministry of economy will be another ministry.

In Taiwan and only in Taiwan, do those three values belong to the same ministry. This is very unique. And so, our success criteria is how can we avoid making trade-offs. So, in other arrangements, people will think of trade-offs, like for progress and innovation, you have to sacrifice some safety, move fast, break things, and so on, take risks. In order to ensure safety, you have to concentrate power, which robs diversity and participation. To do universal participation, passing EU API Act or whatever, then it has costs on innovation, right?

So, along this triangle, there’s many trade-offs that is being made by traditional bureaucracies. And we pride ourselves in thinking of ways, especially during the pandemic… For example, when we invented collectively with the civil society, the zero-knowledge contact tracing, the SMS QR codes, we broke a longstanding trade-off between privacy on the one side and public health on the other. Now, you have privacy and public health right?

So, I think our main KPI, if you call it that, is how quickly can we come up with policies and strategies that overcome those trade-offs and to break the unconscious bias that you can have only one of each or two or three and have all three of them. And we are quite happy that our policies, including the law, the law amendments, the digital bill card and so on, they face, I would say, strong approval in all three stakeholder groups. So, the human rights and civic participation groups, the industry, and also the cyber security, and, frankly speaking, national security people.

So, the more that our policies can make these three bunch of people inch closer to each other, the more we succeed. The more we say that there doesn’t have to be a tradeoff, the more do we have things to share with other democratic policies who are also facing democratic during the pandemic, during the infodemic, during the cyber cognitive warfare, and so on, because of their bureaucratic thinking that there has to be some tradeoffs. But the more innovations we do across those three values, the more we can say you don’t have to make the tradeoff.

Oh, I love this. I think I might… not steal this word, I might learn from this and apply this to our own organization. Thank you, thank you for sharing. I really enjoyed that.

Thank you.