Bye. Good night.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you for all of the work that you’re doing. Again, thank you for sharing you’re expertise with us.

Minister, you’ve been incredibly gracious with your time. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. Wow, Taiwan is very fortunate to have you, very fortunate.

Minister, you’ve been really gracious with your time. I know that we need to come to an end here but if I may, I would pose one final question and that is, what is the biggest challenge that you see when you look to the future and that you’re working ...

Bob, do you have other questions?

Interesting. You’re certainly getting the youth involved to a greater extent, you’re certainly drawing people out into participation in a participatory role to a greater extent, both in voting, but also in engaging with the issues of the day it’s been formed.

What are some of the benefits or positive measurable outcomes that you have seen within the citizens of Taiwan and the way that your country is functioning? What are some of those payoffs in terms of how you’ve structured digital government, and been incredibly open, transparency and granted, freedom to ...

I’m wondering, though, if I understood you correctly or if I heard you correctly earlier, you said you take down the information or you censor information only if you admit that you’ve failed. Is that what you said? What does that mean?

You leave it up no matter how offensive it is, no matter how damaging it might be.

That’s true across the board?

More openness, more transparency, greater freedom, which you’re demonstrating a high level of trust towards the Chinese people. I’m just wondering, though and you did make mention of the fact that it’s under limited circumstances that you would take down information that’s your last resort is my understanding.

Thank you for bringing that up. I want to come back to this concept of misinformation, censorship and freedom. I’m curious, coming back to that topic. You talked about conquering misinformation or tackling misinformation through humor. You talked about the election and inviting you to…

Bob, I want to switch back to a former topic that we were talking about. I just have one last question to touch back on but I don’t want to change from this topic if you have any questions.

One of the phrases that you used in the session that I was a part of then, you said the government exists to serve the people, the people don’t exist to serve the government. We use digital platforms then to facilitate their use of being and their participation democracy rather ...

I’m wondering, do you have a set of guiding principles or values that help you make the decisions that you make as a minister? How do you communicate those to the individuals who are working within your department to implement?

I guess it was just also wondering, you’re talking a lot about open government, the way that you make decisions, an invitation to the public to engage. It sounds you’re very much wanting to protect people’s freedom and limit it only when absolutely, necessary.

One of the things is that they’re in charge of the algorithms that are being used. Do you ever worry that there could be a bad actor within those individuals that are working behind the scenes?

I’m just on that note, my last question with regards to algorithms. You’re talking about using individuals with expertise, they’re working behind the scenes to help do this. There’s that behind the scenes operational side, I would imagine then, as the minister, you have to have a high level of ...

When you use algorithms then to promote these sites and draw people in, are there specific individuals or target groups? Whether that’s age, gender or career, whatever that is, are there different groups of people that you’re wanting to target or is it equally made available to everyone?

Could your platforms ever be misused by a bad actor?

Will people see these forums advertised within their social media feeds or when they’re searching online?

Because we’re on this topic right now, I just wanted to jump in, like when you’re talking about Pol.is or Joint, are there algorithms that are used in order to draw people into those forums or towards specific questions?

Is it OK if I jump in and ask a question Bob?

I’m wondering, if you were to venture a guess or an observation, to what extent does the social fabric or the cultural norms of Taiwan, to what extent does that have an impact on your success in implementing the types of practices that you’re talking about? Could Canada do something ...

One of the things that I’m wondering, and I hope my question comes across well. That is, Taiwan and Canada are very different countries in terms of our make up.

Minister, I’m so intrigued by this. It’s fascinating how you’re tackling misinformation. When I was a part of the session, the Virtual Business Mission to Taiwan, you talked about using humor in order to come against some of the disinformation that was being spread. You shared a number of memes ...

We’re aware of the fact that throughout COVID, there’s been tons of information that’s been taken down from YouTube or Facebook. You look at Twitter censors, what’s been said. They kicked off the United States of America President. I’m wondering, in your view, what is the role of censoring information? ...

It brings another question for me, though, just bouncing off of what Bob is saying. I would be interested in your view as minister, is there a place for information censorship? Again, in Canada, there’s a lot of conversation around misinformation and wanting to prevent its spread. There’s been various ...

Is that a platform that you’ve created to help replace something like Facebook?

I’m sorry, just to make sure I understand correctly. You were able to generate that data based on what platform? Where are people accessing that?

No, please.

OK.

Are you saying then anyone can go on and submit an idea or question, anything? Then they’re going to get a response from the minister’s office within 60 days.

I’m wondering, if you were to give an example, and you’ve already given some, but if you were to give some further examples in terms of what does it looks like in Taiwan to be open by default? What would you point to to show this as a capstone, I ...

Now in Canada open by default, under this current government, I would say doesn’t look anything close to what you’re talking about in terms of inviting citizen engagement and communicating with them the conversations that you’re having as a minister, the decisions that are being made at the higher levels.

Minister, when you’re talking about consulting with the general public, inviting citizens to have input on these things, one of the things that is an objective of the government that’s currently in place in Canada, again, I’m not in the government, I’m on the side of opposition, but one of ...

OK.

It’s very interesting. I should just pause and say, Bob, at any point, if you have a follow up question, please type it and definitely I’ll certainly turn it over to you as well, for some time to ask any questions that you’re…

Interesting. Can you give me an example of what’s the most recent topic that you set out as a question to public?

One is, what are the challenges of implementing a system like that? Two, could this potentially, actually exclude some members of society from being able to fully participate? For example, the elderly who may be technologically challenged, or even those who do not have access to broadband. Or maybe that’s ...

One of the things that I was interested in during your presentation was you described consensus driven decision making involving the public, for example, Uber coming to Taiwan. I can see this as being a really interesting mechanism to use in order to get the opinion of constituents or citizens ...

Perfect. I’ll tell you what, I had the opportunity, the privilege, I would say, to listen to your talk on digital government at the Canada’s First Women Only Virtual Business Mission to Taiwan that took place a week and a half ago. I absolutely loved your presentation. I was so ...

Thank you. [laughs] If I refer you as Minister Tang, that’s fine?

OK.

Sure. Minister, I’ve refined my questions a little bit. [laughs] They’re along the lines of the topics that you’ve been given. Would you mind if I went from the questions that are in front of me or would you prefer to stick to the topics that…?

Thank you so much. That’s very interesting to me. Very interesting. Minister, I’m not sure if you want me to make some introductions, or if there’s a different way that we would like to start this meeting.

You’re communicating the spirit of the conversation or the basics of the conversation, but you give yourself permission, and other ministers would have permission to retract things that perhaps might be incriminating or unhelpful?

I love that. What about the immediate pushback or disgruntlement or frustration that what you say could cause this for you today? Do you ever worry about that?

That’s fascinating to me. When you have conversations, you’re consistently thinking in the back of your mind not only how will this impact the person I’m talking to today, but how will this transcript impact future generations. That’s always in the back of your mind.