Just 20 years ago we wouldn’t even have a decision about this, not even a constitutional interpretation. It will be a landmark event one way or another. For me, I just want the whole process to be as inclusive and as transparent as possible, so that no matter what the ...

Also, it’s very good news that the society is able to reason about this complicated issue, which is strongly reflecting the freedom of speech and equality that we’re now enjoying.

I think those people who are for marriage equality and people who are for more conservative family lives, they both want marriage to mean something. That’s their common point.

Well I’m post‑gender, meaning that I don’t care about people’s gender... Of course, a lot of people care about the seriousness of marriage. Taiwan does have one of the highest divorce rates for a while in the world. I think it’s true that people want to care about that marriage ...

They will be informed by the constitutionality provisions that the Supreme Court rules. The process of which will strongly depend on the exact wording that the Supreme Court uses. That will determine the process. It’s too early to tell.

I’m not a Supreme Court judge and I’m working in the executive branch, so it’s not my place to guess what provisions they might make. Afterwards I think parliament will then take the draft bill that was drafted in previous session and then start debating on it line by line.

If they’ve ruled that marriage equality is unconstitutional, the parliament can’t do anything constitutionally without changing the constitution. That said, we pretty much are not expecting this worst case scenario. They will probably say it’s constitutional, with some provisions maybe.

Sure. I think what will happen first is the Supreme Court will make a decision. The Supreme Court will hear this March 21st. After the Supreme Court rule about its constitutionality, this is the pre‑requisite for the parliament to even debate this.

I’m very much still in a phase of just listening, understanding and evolving this anarchist model in parallel, and also in collaboration with the world.

I’m a conservative anarchist, meaning that I just want to conserve this way of doing things, this consensus‑based way that Internet gets built, instead of trying to say the whole society should work like this. I’m not sure that society is ready to work like this, and nor is this ...

I understand this is a radical position, but I did make it very clear in writing before I joined the cabinet. The premier is OK with an anarchist minister, he’s OK with that. Note I’m not progressive — in the sense that I don’t try to inflict this idea on ...

I see myself as really an anarchist who identifies with more of the process of contribution itself and open sharing of the results of the contribution process, not around any particular nationality, statehood or whatever.

Animals and artificial intelligences, they know no countries. We can, of course, program some countries in, or have an electric fence or something around those drones, animals and so on, but what I’m saying is that they don’t share the same vocabulary, the same identity as you were asking about, ...

As a public servant, I try to extend the definition of "public" more than the usual members. I care deeply about animal welfare and animal rights, and also in the upcoming days, in the upcoming years, on ethic issues about artificial intelligences.

A lot of my work here is around ensuring that international visitors, foreign people enjoy the same healthcare, the same labor rights, the same treatment to their families and their loved ones legally. It would be wrong for me to say that I want to build something that excludes people ...

Also, as an anarchist, I look for the contributions that every individual can make to the international community. If I make a contribution saying that only people in one country get to enjoy, to me it’s kind of exclusive.

Basically, it is an answer to be commonly determined by the whole international society, whether it’s independent or dependent. It’s not something that I can say and it magically happens.

About Taiwan, I think most people in Taiwan think that, one name or another, Taiwan is already a country. Whether a country that’s independent or not, that’s a more complicated question that I’m not equipped to answer.

Many people in Taiwan do care whether Taiwan is an independent country. Not a lot care about whether China is...

Whether China is an independent country? I don’t think many people care about that.

I don’t even care.

I’m feeling OK, I guess.

No, I say that I’m from Earth. [laughs] Did I not say that?

Now that we have a way to organize as a democracy, how good and bad ideas should rate each other.

Then we work based on these shared facts and their feelings. We work on these ideas, and work out the feasible ideas, because previously the ideas are good or bad there’s no arbitrary criteria. Now because we have a process to catalog all the facts and people’s feelings, we can ...

I think that’s really good, the way that I’m showing the trust, that there’s nothing to hide for me. Based on this, we try to give more stakeholders to discover this way of working together with the government, and then input their ways and their own views.

By trusting people I mean the things like the radical transparency that I’m practicing here, every meetings that I convene, every decision that I make, are published down to transcript level. Everybody who participate in the part of the process get to tell me what they think about my daily ...

I would like the professional public servants to trust the people more. Usually other governments in the world, they would ask the people to trust the government more. To me, trust is mutual. If you cannot really trust people more, it’s impossible for people to trust you back.

That has changed completely. We are now regularly live streaming the multi-stakeholder meetings. We can, of course, do better in order to include more people in the participation, to raise awareness of the importance of proper process, the quality of output, how the text was written collaboratively — we’re looking ...

The result could be 100 percent workable, but it is just five people making the decision, the rest of the society doesn’t get to hold them accountable, and it doesn’t get to respond. I think they found problem not with one or two policies, but how policies are being made.

These were considered trivial matters that didn’t show up on the higher‑up agenda, but the people who occupy the parliament consider this very important. They consider that the process itself, the transparency of the procedure, even more important than the result of the procedure.

The civil society thinks that we should talk more about, perhaps, labor rights, human rights, education, LGBT rights, and that this right‑based narrative but also the traditionally more niche issues, such as freedom of Internet, then neutrality and so on.

Of course. The Sunflower Movement was a attempt of agenda setting by the civil society because they were tired that the government keeps using just the same logic of economic development, basically, to shape all the public policy agenda.

The POs, the participation officers is now around 50 people.

We’re a small office at the moment. We’re about 15 full‑time people and maybe 5 part‑time people. We’re still organizing, using a lot of online tools. We’re also trying to spread this culture to all the ministries. Every ministry has assigned one or two people to learn this kind of ...

In the government organization, that’s not usually how public servants work. Usually, they work from an agenda determined by the higher‑ups all the way to the premier and to the president. Now, after I joined the cabinet, I’ve tried to bring this kind of, "Everybody set your own objective, and ...

Then they become all participants and contributors and try to find each other, like playing music concertos and things like that, and then start to do something productive within the limit of one day or two. That’s how it all works.

In the g0v movement, we’re a loosely coupled anarchist movement, so nobody get to command anybody. Even the word "organized" itself is a little bit sloppy. We mostly just set up the dates, the places, and people show up and then determine their own agenda, whatever they want to do ...

It’s about consultations. It’s also a more accountable arbitrator for all the policy‑making that we make. We’re digitally transforming not just the private sector and civil society as previously but also the government structure itself.

By which we mean, it’s not just this government’s relationship with the people around the Internet, but also using Internet technologies to transform the government itself so that we can work in a way that uses less paper, that is more efficient, and also respond to more stakeholders at the ...

We called her the cyberspace minister, because that’s her mandate. On the other hand when I joined this cabinet, I was given a slightly wider mandate. It’s not just cyberspace and regulations and developments, it’s also an open government.

For example, the human rights on the cyberspace, working across the cyberspace, or raising funds through the cyberspace, or any other healthcare and other things. That became her mandate. It’s just like a prototype of the digital ministry division. At that time I was working in g0v movement as a ...

Yes, this position started around late 2014, the year where the Sunflower Movement happened. One of the minister without portfolio around that time, Minister Jaclyn Tsai, started getting more assignments from the deputy premier around what they called the cyberspace issues.

It’s like I’m the frontline reporter who was recording raw material. The editors and investigative journalists then make better stories based on my preliminary work. It’s like I’m interviewing the government.

Because I only see material that is freedom of information accessible, I don’t see any confidential material, I record and make a transcript of every meetings that I hold and have a discussion with people, the journalists actually have access to everything, all the meetings that I have, 10 days ...

Actually, my main function is to get what everybody in all sectors all sharing what their imagination, what physical, psychological realities arise in response to this physical development, and then make sure that everybody else understands it. I’m a little bit like an investigative journalist working in the government, [laughs] ...

One of the main reasons why the government wasn’t able to respond to the digital issues that quickly was that everybody was living a different subjective reality when it comes to this kind of issues. For words like "blockchain," everybody have different imaginations in their heads. If people do not ...

My function here, I’m the digital minister. As the digital minister, I talk to people and listen to people about everything around digital issues and instruments. It’s a channel between the private sector, the civil society, and the public sector.

Hello. I’m Audrey Tang. I’m from the planet Earth. I hope that you’re hearing this also on the same planet, but if you happen to be elsewhere, good for you. In any case, I’m testing the sound. It’s like you can say whatever. I really like this microphone.

A short presentation of myself?