Yes. Basically, by the end we have thousands of people participating with hundreds of ideas, so nobody could really read them all, right? So we ranked them by consensus, like if you manage to convince people who are similar to you, then the highest-ranked group opinion gets visibility, and then ...

We use a combination of strategies. One is that we used this tool called Polis (pol.is), which is a two-dimensional representation of everybody’s feelings on a particular topic. And the idea is that you go to this website, and it shows you one sentiment of the public policy where you ...

So what I’ve been doing concretely is to make sure that, for example, all the regulations before this cabinet were announced maybe 7 to 14 days before its passing. 7 to 14 days is very difficult for people to have a good understanding and dialogue with policy makers. So most ...

My new role has open government as my main duty. And open government, in my view, includes three parts. One is transparency, making what everything that the government is doing as transparent as possible and make it so that everybody can view it as early as possible. And the other ...

Well, I think the Sunflower Movement showed that it’s possible, right? But then the end of year election showed that it’s desirable. It’s like people have a will to elect the people who respect this kind of bottom-up agenda setting. So of course the prime example is Mayor Dr. 柯文哲 ...

Well, I think working as a kind of understudy minister, as a intern minister, for the previous minister Jaclyn Tsai (蔡玉玲) for almost two years now, was basically a collaborative method following the end of 2014. There is a new nation agenda about the cabinet at the time. The new ...

Exactly. I mean traditional values in the sense of traditional values of the internet, because when the internet was invented, it was also a very top-down organization with DARPA of the U.S. Department of Defense. But they quickly saw that its actual value lies in the cross interaction between academia, ...

Certainly! An anarchist is basically someone who believes that people work better if nobody forces anyone to do anything; if people work upon their own volition. I think the long years between 1989 and 1996 basically means that instead of jumping to a direct presidential election and jumping to a ...

Sure! so between 1989 which is freedom of the press, and 1996 which is the first presidential election, Taiwan’s democratization worked slowly but surely. The idea is that instead of a sudden revolution, instead of a sudden change like in many other countries in the Third Wave of democratization, the ...

Sure. I started computer programming when I was 8, because I was born with a heart defect (that was fixed when I was 12) but I couldn’t really do sports. So most of my interests are indoor interests. So when I was 8 I encountered this "programming" thing. I found ...

Thank you, very happy to be here.

Take care.

Thank you, and it’s great. Thank you too.

[Laughter] Exactly!

And network. So as soon as I entered the Cabinet, I got this internet forum link from the World Economic Forum, which is the private sector part. And it’s very interesting between Dubai-Davos-Dubai-Davos, they have this what they call “TopLink,” an internet platform that links all the agendas together so ...

And New Zealand has a very good civic-tech scene around Wellington and Auckland to actually support ICT infrastructures to make that happen. And I know a lot of people there who would be very willing to join such a cause. So I think I’ll just do this today and keep ...

Yes, that would be great.

So make it like the process that’s in common that we can all add in.

So that’s before and after.

One concrete action I can do is write the Ākina Foundation and find out what kind of after-event, post-event, like online forums or other kind of continuation of next year’s SEWF they have in mind, and what kind of ICT technology or what kind of process innovations that I can ...

Right, exactly.

So for all the cases like the Company Act rewrite, of closely-held corporation that I mentioned, I told all the professors working on that to basically keep a recording, taping every single public meeting that they have, and then we work with, there’s a lot of machine speech recognition technology ...

Right, the internet of course has its good and bad, but for consultation I think you dramatically lower costs so people can look at all the information in the same place, and then go to face-to-face meetings, but with the face-to-face meetings recorded and then becoming the material of next ...

Right, I expect the first wave of comments may not actually be random internet users but ministries, like other ministries and even local and regional governments who will know that they now have a chance to realign their plans.

So at least for the social enterprise part, I think this is working really well. Like in the first meeting we actually found out both ministries independently declared November as Social Enterprise and Small and Middle Enterprise Month, but they never really coordinated. And it’s kind of fortunate that we ...

We start with actually just sharing all our meetings. We had two meetings already after I entered the Cabinet with the ministries of economic affairs and with labor, and the idea is that for people who are presenting the meeting, we have a stenographer who types out everything everybody says ...

Exactly, right, how they’re aligned.

LaPage: But even for the public service to know what the other ministries are doing, it is important.

Exactly, that’s what I’m doing, is mostly adding a new dimension to two-dimensional thinking where they may never overlap, but have a cloud in which that they may actually share all their information. And therefore the interested people, there’s a lot of communities like g0v, like Data for Social Good... ...

LaPage: So will that help? Because one of the issues we have is the silos of all the ministries, and the need to create intersecting lines out of parallel lines.

Right, we’re working on some infrastructures that makes this possible, I wouldn’t say overnight. The first is the transparency part because I’m also the Digital Minister in charge of open government. I’ve worked with the PCC, the procurement committee here, 工程會, that publishes, transparently, both the procurement that’s about to ...

Well, that’s great.

Definitely. Here in Taiwan, I think, the previous multi-year plan that was led by the minister before me that was really successful, and I’m really feeling blessed that all the important aspects has been covered really from scratch, because at the beginning of that plan there’s no such a recognition ...

It’s such a great model. Right, so, anything I can help you?

Actually I know of that BIM contracting house before, and I never really learned that it’s a disabilities social enterprise until I read on the online press about this. So I’m like, oh, this BIM company is like that.

I’m more familiar with social enterprise work a lot because I travel to Paris all the time—five months out of the 12 this year. So I’m actually more versed in the social enterprise theme in Paris or in maybe Madrid or in Portugal than in Taiwan. So it’s after I ...

Yes, I have very close connection with the Loomio team which is working in a similar space. I’m very interested in technologies that facilitate scalable listening.

Awesome, it’s called Othello?

What I meant is that, before I knew that I would become a Cabinet minister, I’m already very interested in participating in such kind of activities and I’ve already actually registered for Christchurch myself so that Taiwan doesn’t have to pay for my ticket. [Laughter]

Christchurch.

Exactly. At the time, I’m here in the office only for six weeks, so I’m a new minister here. I’m still getting used to this whole setting. At the time of the announcement of my entering the Cabinet, I was actually in New Zealand and participating with some, it’s called ...

Yes, so you sleep well on the plane? Any jetlag?

Hi! When did you arrive to Taiwan?

Cheers.

Thank you. It’s fun, so we’ll keep it up.

Have a good localtime. Thank you. Bye.

The zero option is not an option at that stage, not a real option, so people of course wouldn’t contribute their time, because they don’t get symmetric attention for their time.

Yes. In open multi-stakeholderism, it never works if the agenda-setting is just late-stage, or is fake, or something like that.

Mm-hmm.

In two words: Engage early.

If you engage early enough, you can’t go wrong. If you engage when you have no idea how to solve the issue, then you can’t go wrong.

If you engage with already a draft, it would take very, very high-skilled rhetoric to make this work. ...

When you say a city that wants to work, do you mean the mayor, the public servants, or the council?