Yeah. There was some confusion during the election, during the campaign, but soon as we actually enacted the ASVDA, we’re very clear on this point. In fact, if you go to the NDC website, it says very clearly it’s linking with Silicon Valley. It’s connecting Asia.

It’s unique. I don’t think anyone who spent an extended time in Silicon Valley would agree of the moniker of Silicon Valley to be used as easily as if any place can replicate the relationship between the universities and ecosystem and so on, so no. We’re linking with, we’re connecting ...

Before joining the cabinet, I worked with Apple for six years, and I worked with quite a few Silicon Valley companies. I was in the Silicon Valley when I was 19 to start a startup, and I’m still talking to accelerators and so on.

There really is nothing in the world that is quite like the Silicon Valley. It’s a multi-decade history with a lot of local angel ecosystems. How the ecosystem view itself — it can’t be replicated.

[laughs] Because there is only one Silicon Valley, and it’s in the Bay Area. The culture is very different, the relative position on the global value chain is very different.

Which is why I pronounce the dot as "connecting."

There’s no N after the Asia part. It’s just "Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency", and we make sure that everyone pronounce the dot in 「亞洲・矽谷」. Somehow, it’s probably not universal yet, but it’s not Asian Silicon Valley. Nobody ever said that.

Yeah, and the URL in the ASVDA, which is the development agency in charge of doing this, is also called Asia Silicon Valley Development Agency. If you would like, here is their English home page.

The whole plan is pronounced 亞洲連結矽谷, or Asia Connecting to Silicon Valley. We’re not trying to turn Taiwan into a Silicon Valley.

The second thing is the more software innovation entrepreneurial part. For that, we link with Silicon Valley’s accelerators, the VC ecosystem and things like that.

The plan is about two things. One is the Internet of Everything, including, of course, AIs, driverless cars, e-payments, and whatever. This Internet of Everything we need to link with our Asian counterparts and build Taiwan’s place on the local regional value chain. That’s the first thing.

Actually, we haven’t been doing that at all. It’s an unfortunate thing that in Mandarin Chinese, when you said 「亞洲」「矽谷」, that’s two nouns together, Asia and Silicon Valley. People naturally turn the first noun into an adjective, "Asian", and then people started having the wrong impression, saying that we’re having ...

It’s "Asia · Silicon Valley", and in Mandarin, it’s 「亞洲・矽谷」, meaning that we’re connecting with Asia. We’re linking with Silicon Valley, but we’re not trying to turn Taiwan to Silicon Valley. We’re not doing that.

No. [laughs] You’ve got the wrong idea in the beginning, because you said Asian Silicon Valley. The reason the very first thing I did, even before joining the cabinet, is to rename the plan, so it’s no longer Asian Silicon Valley.

I did.

Yes, everything’s fine.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Great conversation.

So we’re good? All right. Thank you so much.

I find this work interesting, which is why I keep doing it. I don’t think I need to fun time or relax time, because I’m finding just this conversation very enjoyable in itself.

When the previous prime minister asked my motivation of joining the cabinet, whether it’s social duty, a citizen’s obligation, a furthering of some vision, or whatever, I was like, "No, I joined for fun."

I’m kind of a perma-work person. [laughs]

If there is a five-year plan, I think the plan is just to get the infrastructure and inclusion right. Whatever else happens, we need to process it on a day-by-day basis.

It’s far off my horizon. But I think that is required during the digital transformation because there really is no roadmap for a digital transformation. Every day new technology comes, new societal needs come, the participation officers, the youth counselors, everybody serve this new social dynamics.

My inbox is always zero by midnight. My only focus is getting things from inbox always zero by midnight. The idea is that I can just wake up and try something new, because there’s no baggage from yesterday to work with. I don’t even know what I will be like ...

I work to be radically honest. I work on a daily routine. I work on a daily schedule. I’m a creature of the day in the sense that I wake up and I see a plan what to do and just allocate maybe four or five hours of actual work, ...

Taiwan, the island, is raising 5 centimeters every year, so time it will be 25 centimeters higher five years down the line. It’s been around for a million years, so it will keep raising itself up.

People ask me that all the time. There’s a companion question: "Where do you see Taiwan going in five year’s time?"

Any other questions? There’s some seven minutes. You’re all good?

People mostly tell me that they want me to continue to do whatever I was doing before being a digital minister, but working on it full-time and supported by taxpayers. I think there’s no substantial difference and I still enjoy my work.

Actually, that was the deal. When I was recruited into this position, there was one month of public Q&A with the public where journalists can ask me question, but only publicly, and for me to answer, and then only publicly. It’s a one month negotiation of what does society ask ...

I did what my fellow hackers did. I visit mostly through tele-presence now, through tele-robotics with an iPad that has my face and a 360 camera so that I can feel the atmosphere. I did that in Madrid, Boston, Sydney, Moscow, and many other places. Other than the restriction of ...

Travel is limited. I can’t really jump on a plane anymore. I have to get a couple weeks or actually a couple months advance notice to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs folks, but I think that’s being worked around.

I’m hacking the society in this kind of way, by contributing whatever interaction design that my team and the external team has to offer to get civil society to care more about public good. If they can work with the public servants, that’s great. If they can’t, now with radical ...

I would say I’m still hacking the system, but not in the sense that I’m destroying or discrediting the existing, working very well conservative system. I’m conserving the best part -- the social mission, the public good part of governance -- but just working on new ways to lower the ...

I’m a hacker without hats, in its original sense, in the sense that someone who immerse themselves into a system of course finding out its flaws, but instead of exploiting them, built new systems that doesn’t suffer from the same flaws. As you can see, I’m now doing the same ...

To be more serious, I was not a cybersecurity expert. I know cybersecurity but not on a master level. I was not either a white-hat hacker who exploits system weakness but reports them or a black-hat hacker who does the same but for their own benefit. I’m not a secretive ...

A hacker is something that people call you. It’s not a self-defining title. In the hacker community, people become a hacker if other hackers call you a hacker. It’s recursive, so you can’t really shake that label now.

Well, I’m still a hacker.

No, that’s fine.

There’s a lot of room to improvement, but all of them now chant the open government ideals, which I think is great. As long as the general direction is right, we’ll eventually get there.

So it does create a pressure to the cities. But I think the mayors have risen up to the challenge, either through deliberation workshops, participation budgets, or whatever.

The challenges still remain, of course. As you mentioned, many other ministers or ministries, like if we do one case every week, there’s thousands of cases every week that isn’t done this way. It also creates a expectations, especially on the local level — "The national government can do it, ...

They see that, first, it’s politically advantageous for them to engage with the public, because they deliver highlights. The second, it also lowers their communication cost. I think, at this particular regard, it was pretty successful. I wouldn’t say it’s my success. It’s just this natural way of working in ...

Now with this very regular weekly meeting, they see that people who sign the petitions, they’re not protesters. They’re not mobs. They’re actually professional user experience designers who want to contribute to the tax filing experience. So we do co-creation workshop with them and actually improve our tax filing system.

Now, my core mission, which is to lower the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of career public servants, I think that part has gone particularly well. As before, when it was 2014 or 2013, most great public servants hear the words civic tech, civic participation, radical transparency, they associate it with ...

You can always make something that’s collective, that may be not working as perfect but is a prototype for the government to see and then eventually adopt. So it is a mascot of increased cross-sectoral support.

Of course there is a mascot-like effect, but I don’t think it’s bad... Because this mascot is really strange. It stands for anarchy, and anarchy means self-governance. So it is a constant reminder that don’t wait for the government to do something.

That’s pretty much it. Every Thursday, I work with the DIGI+ folks. Every Tuesday is mostly for media and for visiting, touring around Taiwan to meet social innovators, regionally. Every day is quite open.

Every Wednesday, I start my office hour at TAF with social innovators, and afternoon is a weekly hackathon with the civic tech community. With this, I try to bring the social innovation community and the civic tech community together, just by working in the same place, sharing food, and things ...