Public dialogue and collaboration are vital, says Audrey Tang, the Digital Minister of Taiwan
IN 2012 A CONTROVERSIAL government advertisement in Taiwan proposed a peculiar idea: “Instead of wasting time deliberating policies, let’s focus on doing the groundwork and get things done!” In response, four programmers with a civic-minded ethos did something else entirely.These “civic hackers”—that is, politically minded computer programmers with an activist ethos—built a citizen auditing system for Taiwan’s central government budget.
The island of Taiwan is about 400km long, a journey of less than two hours by high-speed rail. This has proved a major advantage in deploying internet connectivity. The idea of broadband as a human right is at the core of the government’s policy. Some 87% of people over the age of 12 are connected. For a population of 23m, the internet is even more natural as a public space for discussion than the practice of voting.
As Digital Minister, I have established a network of Participation Officers in each ministry. They serve as the links between the general public and the public sectors, and as channels for inter-agency collaboration. Whenever a proposal is raised, a collaborative meeting can be held, with participants from government departments and the public invited to join the discussion and to jointly create new policies.
It is only through integrating with the existing legal system, with the backing of laws and regulations, that social innovation can drive regulatory innovation. For example, we launched a Regulatory Sandbox platform in 2017, allowing entrepreneurs to experiment freely without legal constraints for a certain period of time. It is meant to spur fintech experiments and autonomous vehicles, among other innovations.
Our goals for PDIS, the policy lab in Taiwan’s cabinet, is to bring these experimental results to people all over the world. We have visited New York, Toronto, Madrid, Tokyo and Hong Kong to co-organise workshops with civic tech communities for sharing democratic innovations, such as our Participation Officers network and collaborative meetings. The g0v programme has been transplanted internationally, with “g0v Italy” set up in 2018.
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