Thank you so much for your time, Audrey. Goodbye.

They don’t even have contact tracing. They also have, just things like welfare and unemployment insurance systems have completely crashed because people can’t log on or anything. I think, in Britain, we’re somewhere in between. We have some things that have worked very well and some things that have not ...

OK because it’s an international piece about lots of countries and here is one country that has done it really well. It does seem like you guys were ahead of the curve. That’s what’s made it possible for you to react so quickly. If you look at, for example, some ...

Thank you.

The piece will be coming out in the next week or two, probably in two weeks.

…of course, I can download the transcript so I can check the quotes properly.

Brilliant. I think that covers most of my questions. If I need to check anything, I’ll follow…

…engage with it.

What I find really interesting about that convenience store thing is it doesn’t seem to bump into the problem that you have in moving into purely online digital services.

Absolutely. What about on the digital side?

Presumably, you’ll have to keep these systems up until there’s a vaccine. What do you think will last after there’s a vaccine? What have you done to respond to this that will let you do other things, I guess, when we don’t have to worry about the coronavirus?

The contact tracing avoids the superspreading, spread it type of situation. Then, everybody else maintaining basic social distancing measures stops any community transmission that does happen from spreading particularly far.

Your contact tracing system has worked pretty well so far, right? You’ve managed to crush every cluster…

Of course, because in South Korea, they had that unfortunate outbreak that followed from the gay clubs, which of course, there was some backlash and lots of concerns. You’re only publishing that information if, and it hasn’t happened, but…

Has Taiwan had privacy concerns as you’ve started putting everything transparently available? What have been the concerns?

That’s really interesting because, of course, one of the concerns with contact tracing, particularly with countries that have tried centralized apps, is that people don’t necessarily want the government to know exactly where they’ve been all of the time. You’ve gotten around that by having a decentralized system.

That’s incredible. That’s really incredible. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to find out. What about the digital engagement thing, the decision-making stuff, and the voting? How might you move toward more of that in the future?

I see. It’s through the system that you can tell what…

When you go and pay, you pay with your national health app or you pay with…

This money, that you gave a stimulus to people, they have had to spend in the businesses that have been, presumably, most affected?

Brilliant. I’ve got it. That’s amazing. How much further could that go? What are the next things that you could do with that sort of innovation, that sort of technology? What decisions, otherwise, could you do?

That’s really interesting. It is a way of allowing people to make decisions…

It seems to me, from what I can tell, the only country in the world that has online voting is Estonia. How well could you move to it in Taiwan?

That’s incredible. That’s exactly the sort of thing I was hoping you’d tell me about. That’s great. Tell me, going forward, I was watching your TED talk, and I read some other interviews with you. It sounds like you have ideas about how this could go into democratic decision-making, too, ...

Exactly.

I guess you’re not having to do to near the same extent. I’m wondering, what sort of services, in that way, can you…Are there any, things that you wouldn’t normally expect to be online, that you can, now, do in Taiwan? What might you be able to move towards as ...

That’s fascinating. Governments in lots of places are having to change quite rapidly and do things like make sure that they can get benefits assessments that were previously done in person done online. In New York City, they’ve made it possible for you to marry online, which previously wasn’t, to ...

That’s fascinating. You can verify your identity digitally when you’re going for a public service with that card?

To being able to access these services. That’s something where, in Britain, we’re really behind on because we don’t have any system. How does the Taiwan digital identity system work? Does everybody have to have one of these health insurance cards that you mentioned?

Fascinating. Actually, that’s a really interesting point because digital identity is quite an important thing, isn’t it?

Of course, one thinks, because you’ve been so effective in your track and trace system that you haven’t had some of the problems with widespread social distancing that, obviously, we’re having to have in countries like the UK. I just wondered what sort of services, as a citizen in Taiwan, ...

That’s fascinating. How ready were your systems when this hit to implement those sorts of things?

You’ve been quite radical in how you publish data and making it all available to everybody, which I don’t there are all that many countries in the world which have managed to do that anywhere near as well, even if they have the data.

Perhaps, I’ll just ask you, first, if you could talk a bit about how digital innovation did work with Taiwan’s response to this virus because you really have had one of the best responses, it seems.

I’m interested in what other non-pandemic things that you’ve been able to do that, now, because of social distancing rules and because of the need to track and trace people and everything else are, now, services that you might be able to provide online and things like that, that that’s ...

I wanted to ask you about the Taiwanese experience because you guys seem to, A, you’ve had a very effective response to this pandemic. More generally, it seems like you have a pretty innovative and thoughtful digital unit.

Second, governments that haven’t digitally innovated will have to do so now because they face a year or more, however long it takes…

The story I’m writing, it’s basically about digital government and the pandemic. The thinking is now that governments are opening up again a bit in European countries, essentially, the argument is that governments which had been more radical in their digital innovation, to begin with, have probably done a better ...

I was watching your TED talk earlier and you talk about this radical transparency. It’s great.