A good way to end. Thank you, Minister.

Again, we’re doing this series of talk under the #defenddemocracy. Stay tuned on our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages for more talks coming to you. Globally, we of course need to combat the COVID-19 virus. We also need to make sure that our democracy stay healthy. With that, I would ...

I’ll give you a little clap here. In these times of social distancing, it’s still good to maintain some of our rituals of society that we used, too. Democratic Taiwan as you’ve really shown has a lot to offer the world, not just when it comes to handling COVID-19 but ...

Thank you, Minister Tang, there. I think that will more or less be our last question. I promised you a half stop here at 30. Probably, we are keeping you maybe from your dinner. I just want to say thank you for spending time with us.

For the not techies, that distributed ledger, is that the same as a blockchain?

That’s fascinating. I’m getting Minister Tang, another question in here about, I would say our session is part of that, how much you’re promoting exporting the approach you’ve taken, particularly on public health data, to other countries, and in particular Europe.

Maybe explain to people who joined us here a little bit more about your approach to making regulation that way.

Maybe not during short term but again, just longer term of how do we after…Right now it’s about curbing the pandemic. It’s also about the longer term. What is the new division between government, citizens, data, and health tracking? Whether this is an area that you’re looking at, making it ...

Thank you. I was curious about also, and I’ve talked with you about this before. I’ve seen you’re ted talk where you talk about co-regulations and new ways of making laws also through Internet conversations. I was thinking whether you’re planning to use this in Taiwan.

We have a question from Emily McElwee, “I’m curious to know if Taiwan is working on recovery data from COVID-19 patients that fully recovered, whether you’re building a database or GitHub that is part of the data that’s still missing?”

That’s important that you had it, I could see in YouTube, in all the different languages.

Something I’ve seen here in my own home country during this is that we’ve had regular press briefings by the Prime Minister. All the time we had sign language, but not subtitles for all the citizens and residents that are living here that don’t understand Danish.

Thanks, that’s great. Also, shout-out from me on the fact that you have them in different languages.

Do you have your own hand washing video?

Do you have a hand video, Audrey Tang?

I don’t know the scientific, whether masks. Would love to hear your thoughts on that question.

That makes sense. I have another WHO related question by Mousumi Mizushima. The WHO is still negative on the public use of masks and asks what about the promotion of mask use from the very beginning, and having the citizens, or even experts, ask for scientific evidence at that time.

Maybe you have some minister’s knowledge of ideas there of what would be the way to share these things. It doesn’t necessarily all have to go through the WHO.

I had personally thought, this is maybe a bit old school, the WHO could have a whistleblower function so they don’t only get information from the countries, where they can’t rely on all member states, as we’ve seen with China.

There, as digital minister, do you have some suggestions how to, I would say, almost bypass that? The links between civic society, between civic tech? That there were other ways of sharing this?

That’s a good segue to the question here about WHO, asked my Mr. Denborg.

We would, exactly, promise her not to hang up, and that any question on Taiwan would be free and would be answered.

That pretty encapsulates, some of the WHO reaction. We would love to have had Yvonne Tong, the Hong Kong journalist asking these question, also.

This, here, pretty much shows, and is of course the one that many people have been watching. Now I have to stop sharing my screen, as well.

Now I’m here.

A little bit further back.

Now I have trouble finding it. Here it is. Let me…

Before I do that, I can also do a share my screen.

That leads us to WHO, where I have a question here from Mr. Denborg. What is your reaction to WHO not acknowledging Taiwan, most clearly shown by Bruce Aylward, who talked about China instead? How will you think it will affect the fight against corona in Taiwan, as well as ...

I also think, which I read in articles, that had there been media freedom in China – and you had great doctors that were alerting already in December as well – then it would have been a different situation for all of us. In that sense, for me as well, ...

As you were saying, from the Taiwanese case you already started to take precautions, even two or three weeks before that, where a lot of the rest of the world trusted what came from the WHO based on China.

That’s a very good point. We all, including WHO, relied on Chinese data in the beginning of the outbreak, which made that 14th of January now a little bit infamous. The WHO could send out statements saying that there was, based on Chinese sources, no credible human-to-human transmission.

You of course have the contrast, over on the other side of the strait, with the Republic of China and their much more authoritarian handling of this. How…?

I had a general question for you. How much of a difference it has made that Taiwanese democracy in the way you’ve handled it?

That’s cool. I have a question in that regard from Rasmus Bertelsen, whether anyone in the Taiwanese society have opposed these ICT initiatives? That would be interesting to hear, if there is any discussion in the Taiwanese society about where is the borderline and if there are people that feel ...

That’s definitely a very good issue of how much, not just in Europe we can learn from it, but in countries that don’t necessarily have the same access to technology.

I have a good question here to you, Minister, as well, by Mohan Adhikari. What do you suggest for poor countries with poor technology, like Nepal? I imagine this is a question from Nepal.

Then he called the police. They said it was fine. I would say that at least shows the benign use of this.

No, that’s an interesting clarification. I did read an article in the “Guardian” with a Canadian who came from South Korea and had opted into that program, but then had to change Airbnb. Then it gave him messages that he was outside his zone.

There is a bit of a backlash, at least in one article I read, about that, of giving a private company that much access to people’s health data in this situation. Has there been any discussion, since you use Google Maps for this?

No, that’s very interesting. Also, has there been any thoughts, then, in Taiwan, as a follow-up question, on private company involvement, in the sense that I know in the US there was also an idea of an app. It was through a Google subsidiary company.

I have one here. Is it true there are also apps that show where COVID-19 infected people are or have been, and how does this match with the privacy issue? That’s a good one to hear Taiwan’s experiences, and as Europe is grappling with this, how you see this and ...

Let me turn to some of the questions, as I imagine from Europe, where you have a lot on privacy issues, which is something that’s very big here, on how does this potentially change the relationship with government on health data. How much are you allowed to track infected people.

That’s great. Minister Tang, remembering you have to stop screen sharing. We would love to see you, but now we have the blank…There you go. Perfect.

One more question before turning to some of the audience question is if you think about one element that’s been really for you the success story behind Taiwan’s handling of COVID-19, what would that be?

I forgot to say initially that, but I see they’re already taking in, that we take questions also from our Facebook live session. Do type in your questions if you haven’t done already. I see a lot of people are, even though I haven’t announced it already, doing that.

That’s great. Taiwan even have that many masks in store that you’re able to give masks also to Europe, for example. I would say, as a European, thank you for that. It’s good that you had a good system to take care of your stock.

It’s what you’ve been doing with e-mask. Could you, for all of us and all the listeners, explain this type of interaction between civic tech and government. I think that will be really fascinating.

Thank you. Thanks a lot, Minister Tang. There is one of the examples among the 100-plus that you mentioned that I followed a little bit and it would be great to hear here during the COVID was this whole real-time mask map that came out first of civic tech, then ...

Minister Tang, I’ll now pass the floor to you. I would love for you to explain some of the elements of the Taiwanese historic, including of course the use of technological solutions and empowered citizens so that we can all learn from it?