We did make two contributions on top of the Policy Lab methodology, one is that we position it as a general device to lower fear, doubt, and uncertainty. This is for the public sector not to reflect what the appointed minister want to talk about, but what the people want ...

It actually began with the Policy Lab methodology, straight from The Cabinet office. The facilitator who introduced this to us actually served in the Policy Lab in the UK. She’s from Taiwan, she just studied service design there in the RCA.

To be perfectly honest, the methodology, including the RealtimeBoard, the Idea Development, the toolkitall came from the UK.

Right, exactly. That’s the diversity part.

Because this is not about voting, this is about a diversity of opinions. By the time we do this multi-stakeholder meeting, we have a pretty good idea of what the stakeholders are like.

This is what we call dissent as data, because we actually get pretty good arguments on both sides. Also, because they cannot reply to each other, the only way to put a better counterargument is actually by putting out a better argument on the other side, and then vote it ...

The other point is that, although it’s 5,000 people, they don’t necessarily all mean the same thing. For example, when there’s really controversial issues, like this one, which is about putting into the...this is the gay marriage and in the education stuff.

This is like an internal consultancy [laughs] for the stakeholders involved.

Without the facts and common feelings, of course there’s a lot of controversies when there’s one half-baked solution against another. People spend years basically talking past each other. By going back to the fact-finding and the feeling-finding stage...

These people, I would say, already have pretty good lobbying skills. The problem is that because they jump straight, usually when lobbying, to the solution stage, and skipping the fact-finding and feeling-finding stages...

Sure, that’s fine.

Yes.

Yeah, sixty days and it’s done.

Exactly.

A few weeks after that, the prime minister visited Hengchun to actually take a look at the hospital and allocated around 5 million GBP, which is quite a few resources, into improving the local medical resource, knowing that it is actually a feasible solution that’s going to be accepted by ...

Every Friday, we make this kind of mind map and ideas on solutions. The coming Monday, I present this case to the prime minister and the other ministers with a portfolio. In this case, they agree it’s a good idea.

There were like 40 people in one room deliberating. I was in the other room of about 200 people’s room, a large hall, just translating, like an ESPN anchor, to the local media of what this move means. Everybody was on the same page, until we arrived to an insight ...

We basically understood that there’s multiple possible solutions. Of course, helicopter is one, a faster road is one, building a large hospital there is one, and, of course, we can also make the airport much more functional. Then we explore on these ideas until all the stakeholders...

We also gathered the local stakeholders, and then we all go to Hengchun and have those five-hour meetings, where we hand everybody these Post-It notes, and then collaborate on the blue ones, the facts, the problem statements, and so on.

What we did is we got pretty much everybody involved. This was on the local government level and national government level. Whereas before, they would have to explain, individually, to the MPs, to the press, and none of them satisfactorily, because it’s only partially their business.

Case in point, for example, there’s a petition about 8,000 people from Hengchun, the south-most part of Taiwan, who petitioned for a station of the Minister of Interior’s helicopters there to serve as ambulance. The distance from that point at the popular tourist destination, enclosed this large hospital, it’s like ...

For example, there’s also the different petitions. Once we have a petition case, every month the participation offices votes on the cases that they want to collaborate on. For each of those collaboration cases, we make a policy map that maps all the stakeholders and use that as a basis ...

Yes. [laughs]

I don’t think engagement ratio is the issue. We do want to deepen the engagement though. To sign a petition or subscribe to a newsletter is like three minutes, but once we have their three minute’s time, I think we can also make much better use of their time if ...

Whenever the policy they care about changes, and so on, there’s a reach directly to their email address. They don’t have to go through the intermediaries, and so on.

That’s not an issue. Of the 23 million people, at least four million, I think, individuals are on our online platform for e-engagement, so it’s a huge ratio. They essentially subscribe to the newsletters.

The demand in the civil society, ever since the Occupy, far exceeds [laughs] whatever we can...

Right. It doesn’t actually take a political will. It’s now seen as a fabric in the public servant’s way of doing things. We use a lot of, of course, civic technology, social innovation, and things like that. Especially the people who would do petitions and collaboration meetings, they’re pretty young ...

A way we do this is by having a dedicated participation office, a team in each and every ministry, so like 32 ministries. They basically serve as this extended network, and we’re online collaborating the whole time ourselves. The idea is that when people do e-petitions, or any other ways ...

Once they know that, first, it reduces the risk and there’s very little risk in involving our collaboration meetings, they’re very willingly collaborate and basically convince people both up and down their ranks.

But if things go right, people go and check the accountability trail and find out, "Oh, it’s the Director General. Oh, this is the entry-level officer who proposed this idea in the same place."

If things go wrong, it’s all this anarchist minister’s fault.

The point here is that I’m a blame-seeking, credit-avoiding minister.

I’m adopting a radically transparent way of doing policy-making, publishing all the transcripts and stuff like that. We do that for internal meetings, too.

It used to be that these are very trendy ideas for elected officials, appointed politicians, but it actually means a lot more work for the career public servants. I’m kind of flipping this around.

It’s the same objective. It’s basically reducing the fear, uncertainty, and doubt, inside the public administration, of the career public servants when they hear the words "civic participation," "social innovation," "youth engagement."

...and now, Youth Affairs.

But some part of it, like the use of Sli.do and so on, I shared some of our experiences during the session I facilitated.

Well no, I don’t think it’s all Taiwan’s idea...

Yeah, very much so, very much so. I loved how they used Sli.do and Apps. A year ago, David LePage came visiting here, and we talked a lot about how to use electronic apps to improve the experience. I’m very happy that the Ākina Foundation actually implemented those ideas.

I did facilitate one of the participation sessions though.

...and so I had to miss those sessions.

That’s a Minister-level meeting. I was told that they would give me visa, but my participation is essentially as a NGO...

There was this UN event...

We were at Christchurch at the same time... Yeah, we missed each other.

Yes.

Cheers, James. Bye.

OK, so just send the video to me, and it will be on YouTube soon.

No, that’s pretty much it. Again, we can either publish this whole video recording, if you’re OK with it, or we can make a transcript, if you want to edit it for 10 days.

This is very surprising, and it’s not in any of the public administration textbooks I’ve read. That’s what I’m also learning.