But paper is very good at what it does. Currently, our display technology is not as good as paper. This piece of glass is actually bulky. Only this year do we have things like this stylus, where you can write as easy as pen and pencil.

Of course, because the reference, the comparison with the previous generation is paper, it’s words typed on paper, filed in a cabinet. That’s the thing that most of the civic tech around scanning, around data mining, around proper audit trail, or whatever, they’re basically just saying, "OK, let’s do something ...

Yeah.

Maybe we’ll reserve an analog minister or something for the analog population, but most of the ministries will already be digital and presided over by people who are digital natives. I really think it’s just a matter of time.

Axelle Lemaire, the French counterpart of me, said that maybe in 10 years there won’t be this digital minister title, because all the ministries will be digitally transformed.

The civic tech and the Gov tech worked well. They merge, I think, when the civic tech becomes easy, trustworthy, robust enough so that it makes no sense not to adopt civic tech. The same with ministerial positions.

With machine learning and then with the commoditization of these process tools, there will be a point where, just based on the argument of cost-saving alone. This was the old Free Software & Open Source debate, where ESR made a similar economic argument.

I really do think it’s just like with personal computers. When it’s cheap enough, everybody adopts it, and there has to be such a threshold. Taiwan leads by a couple years, because there’s tremendous social pressure. We adopted it even when it’s expensive, process-wise.

That’s a sure thing, it is.

Yeah, sure.

It’s happening in Madrid and Iceland...

And now it’s just...

VR is only expensive if you want to be a VR producer. It is true that it’s currently very expensive to produce, but it’s the same for 4K TV or for UHD. The production tools are always expensive. Fortunately, we only need to have one set in each space, so ...

No, it’s not the same, but if you just want to look at one of those exhibition parts, then it’s a very cheap way to look at this virtual Buddha statue or whatever.

Yeah, I can move my phone around, and then it would just rotate and zoom into whatever view modes that we have. Then if I zoom out... That’s how it should look like. See that? Now you can look around.

Theoretically, the idea is that I can swipe my...

Open YouTube, connected to YouTube, to AirPlay. No, it doesn’t work. Too bad.

Hopefully, this will work. If it doesn’t, that’s technology for you.

Not swipe around, just look around.

Just a second. Let me open it in the native YouTube app.

I wasn’t there. The robot was there.

My robot was there.

Oh, really? I went to the south one...

Not even Google Cardboard. If you go to our PDIS website, there is a "How we work," and then there is a "Robotic visit." This is a 360 recording of my recent visit to the National Palace Museum.

Anyone who has a phone can do VR.

Why’s that?

Everybody is there, and I’m certain, [laughs] during a VR conference call. If I’m just looking at my phone during a conference call, even if I’m wearing headphones, people feel entitled to interrupt me. Also, psychologically, because I’m not in my office anymore when I’m in the VR room, psychologically, ...

Right, exactly!

Then, in addition to sharing this screen, they can also seeing our screen here. This is really just a way to save traveling. This is very practical. We know VR is preferable in this way, because if we just use Skype or whatever, people get distracted. They swipe their phones. ...

Mostly it’s just a time-saver. I have my headset here. It’s for everyday use. The idea of VR, very simply put, is that it’s a high-bandwidth way for people who are not physically in the same space to feel like they’re in the same space. It’s just you and me ...

Yeah.

Yeah, the upper part, which is direct.

People were saying "MPs must go" because they think the second boundary here is entirely opaque. As of this cabinet, the MPs also opened this for live streaming, and so that’s no longer a problem. It was like we have a more open process here, a less transparent process there. ...

It turns out not many people are into full-time lawmaking. So we still need professionals to do a lot of the work. It’s just that a lot of the MPs during Sunflower was challenged for their attitudes, because the process, especially the cross-party negotiation phase, was not live-streamed. It was ...

Finally, at the ratification stage, this is part of our work, which includes MP and other stakeholders again. Then finally we make the law. Whereas before, MPs were worried that they get left out this stage, we now explicitly introduce them here. We’re also saying that they still drive the ...

MPs enter already at this stage. They’re also in part of the fact-gathering stage, like in public hearings. At this point, where we have the contentious issues that we need to resolve, this is traditionally just for experts only. At the expert-only stage, MP is also considered expert.

We also work their teams in this ratification part of the work. They’re part of this, if we talk about this diamond-shaped process, a double diamond, perhaps. First we have something to talk about. This, we get people’s feelings by sharing the facts at this stage, and then we try ...

Basically, the idea is that we have this new form of participation, and we consider MPs professional participants, in the sense that they’re full-time participants. This, of course, still have to result in something that they consider into law. They are also legal experts, or at least their teams are.

For example the upcoming vTaiwan multi-stakeholder consultation conference, we have MP Karen Yu as part of the stakeholder. She doesn’t really have more minutes to speak compared to other stakeholders, but she’s there and she cares about this a lot.

Basically, when making a petition, you can petition to a ministry, but if it requires a law change, you can also propose directly to the MPs. Even if it’s ministry-initiated, in the multi-stakeholder discussions, we always invite the particular committee in the legislative to join.

Starting this cabinet, we’re shuffling it a little bit. For example, if you go to the Join.gov.tw platform, you actually see all sorts of different entry points -- the administration, the cities -- and the legislation is joining next month.

It is worrying, and we also had backlash from MPs in 2015, because they feel that they were being left out of the decision-making process and, in this new form, being reduced as the bureau of legislation of the cabinet, which is kind of worrisome.

Here is the people. We’re supposed to be four steps away from the people. We’re supposed to hear people’s voice from the local reps, from the mayors, from the village elders, from the MPs, from the heads of associations. But because of the Internet and the cabinet’s embrace of Internet ...

In traditional public administration theory, we have the local representative, local reps, then mayors, and then we have MPs. The local reps, the MPs, and the mayors, they’re the representative of the people. On the national scale, we have the cabinet.

It is. It is very worrying.

There’s a very peaceful transition, in the cabinet at least, to accepting the Internet as one of the valid forms of expressing their ideas. Although by doing so, the cabinet somehow shortcuts the legislative.

I think Taiwan took a fortunate turn, in that the cabinet, starting late 2014, are led by technologically informed people, or technocrats. [laughs] Even though they’re not exactly young -- they’re in their 50s and 60s -- they are from IBM, from Google, from companies who actually specialize in this ...

Yeah, of course. Back in 2014, there’s this idea of a generational shift, which is really more about generation and less about direct democracy. The young generation of people want to have politicians who speak their language, who understand their ways of expression, and for them to participate in the ...

That’s right.

Exactly, but we’re now doing it with Social Enterprise laws, with everything basically.