Hi. Welcome.
Thank you.
As I understand, you are here till mid-October?
After which you’ll be back and finishing your thesis. Is that right?
That’s not sure, yet.
That’s not sure yet?
I could stay longer in Taiwan if I apply to another fellowship for next year... but I’m not sure if I will apply yet or not, because I will probably have to teach a class next year.
You have to teach a class back home?
Yes, in France.
Not through Skype?
No, I don’t think the university will allow it.
(laughter)
We’ll see. You’re here with a student visa?
A Working holiday visa.
Working holiday visa, that’s right. How many hours, or days, or weeks do you plan to be around here?
Do I have to...?
(laughter)
What’s your ideal situation?
One or two days a week would be great. The purpose is to meet as many people as I can, to talk and understand the actors, what they are doing.
I’m here to observe and to learn as much as possible.
Shuyang mentioned that you’ve already been a lot of help in putting slides together, figuring out thoughts and concepts, and so on. Do you plan work closely with Shuyang, or are there other plans?
Yes. Everything I can do.
Everything you can do?
If I have the skills, so I’m willing to help.
I guess you’ll just be shadowing Shuyang till somebody else claims your time.
(laughter)
That’s how it goes here, because as you understand, everybody just figures out their own projects. As long as there is at least one person willing to endorse you into the project, then you are part of that team.
Do you have a certain time structure? Can you be present every Monday, or every Wednesday, or you prefer to not having any fixed time structure?
I would prefer no fixed schedule, but it also depends on how you work. If you want me to be here every Monday, I can do it, too. Not on Wednesdays, because there’s vTaiwan mini hackathon and I want to keep studying the vTaiwan process.
Actually every Wednesday, I’m in SIL, the Social Innovation Lab. When I say every Wednesday, it means in the SIL, so same place as vTaiwan.
It would be over there.
The Social Innovation Lab, actually, I plan to be there 10:00am to 10:00pm, every Wednesday. That’s my workday. If you have anything you would like to work with me, or talk with me, that would be the ideal day, the Wednesday setting.
If you are mostly shadowing Shuyang at the beginning, and she doesn’t really have a very fixed time structure either, that’s really for the best.
I’m hard to be shadowed.
(laughter)
You probably have to prepare a helmet, you know? On the back of my motorbike.
I can do it.
If she goes to the Jade Mountain, it will take a while to get there.
(laughter)
Also, I’m between places in this office and another office. Whenever there’s a meeting or any appointment with another PO, for example, I will just go there with my motorbike. Shadowing me would be one solution.
Another way is probably, I can give you some appointments I have, then we can meet out there while I’m having a meeting. We can also have a rough arrangement. By default, I will be in SIL every Wednesday, so we’ll just meet later.
Maybe just fix on Wednesday, then. Every Wednesday, I’ll be at SIL, 10:00 to 10:00 if possible, at least around th evening. If you have any requirements to meet certain people or to join certain meetings that’s beyond Shuyang’s purview, then you would talk about it like Wednesday evening, if that’s OK with you.
Yes, it’s OK.
That’s our rendezvous point.
Rendez-vous. [laughs]
Yeah. What are your research interests and your personal interests, and how do they interact? Because you mentioned it’s for both, but how exactly?
Do mean to which extent what I’m doing is both for personal interest and research?
I have chosen research because, among other things, I can organize my own time. There is no fixed schedule, and I can work from anywhere.
I’m studying the institutionalization of open government movements in Taiwan. It’s a bit complex.
It’s OK, take your time.
I discovered Taiwan through China, while doing my master’s degree thesis. I was focusing mainly on China, but I still made a comparison between Taiwan and China, and to a lesser extent, with Singapore. The part of my thesis concerning Taiwan was the most interesting one according to my opinion.
At the same time, I discovered a French researcher called Pierre Rosanvallon. I don’t know if you know him. He studies France democracy history. During the past few years, he focused on the crisis of the democratic representative institutions. I became increasingly aware of the French political context: the famous crisis of democracy, of the representative institutions, and the growing citizens’ mistrust -- all that kind of broad topics that cross the so-called democratic countries today.
So when I figured out what was the Sunflower movement, that kind of revival democratic spirit in Taiwan, I wanted to learn more about what’s happening here, to bring back that learning to France to share it.
It’s a way to understand Taiwan, but also what’s happening in France and in other democratic countries. That’s how I’ve come into focus on what I’m doing now.
Are you planning to go back to China or Singapore for a comparison study, or you are just focused on Taiwan?
No. For my PhD, I will only focus on Taiwan, because, as far as I know, there’s no Taiwanese, French, English books or researchers that exclusively focus on Taiwan open government movements. I’m trying now to elaborate a history of open government movements in Taiwan.
To do so,I have to focus on the institutional level (policies, laws, and so on), but also on the civil society movements. It’s really a lot of work. If I want to complete my PhD, I have no time for a comparison with other countries, but I would like, later, for a postdoc and in my future career.
Why national level instead of, say, Taipei city or Tainan city, which are, frankly speaking, much earlier -- like two or three years earlier -- in development?
Good question. Why not city level....
It’s certainly much easier to finish your PhD at the city level.
Yes, I understand. Well, I first began my fieldwork on g0v. g0v have so many projects; I lost myself in all that projects. However, a lot of g0v projects address national issues held by national institutions such as the Legislatif Yuan. I became interested in, how g0v actors try to deal with that kind of national issues; how they challenge, critic or collaborate with central government institutions. That’s what vTaiwan do too, no?
PDIS works with local government, but also on national level with central government institutions. That’s why I’m interested in. I want to make a comparison between these communities, understand how the actors cross all these communities.
There’s plenty of g0v members working with cities, and they also share this open government ethos. Perhaps you’re right, as the idea is that you make comparison between the communities’ ambitions and their different realizations, so you’re not so fixed on one particular realization, right?
I’m interested in vTaiwan.
You’re focused on...
Yes, vTaiwan would be one of the main case studies for my PhD.
The reason?
Because a lot of vTaiwan actors are either part of government institutions (ministries, think tanks), either part of civil society organizations, most vTaiwan actors are g0v participants. I’m interested in the institutionalization of the open government movement, in that sense vTaiwan is a hybrid community.
It’s a good case study. I think vTaiwan is in an institutionalization process; maybe it will never be institutionalized but will remain...
Maybe it’s the other way around, too. [laughs]
Right. Maybe or maybe it will always stay in that undetermined state. It’s interesting, the challenges, how vTaiwan actors deal with government authorities.... the dialogue among all stakeholders -- public and private sectors, and citizens.
In vTaiwan, I can find all the categories of actors I need to study.
It’s a microcosm.
Yes, that’s the word.
vTaiwan is a g0v project. It is defined by participants. Is there anything you would like to see vTaiwan change, as your contribution in the project?
It’s a weird question. I don’t know if I can say what I want for vTaiwan. vTaiwan is for Taiwan.
But the idea is that for every meetup, everybody proactively shapes its direction. What do your value...?
What I think... it would be great for the vTaiwan process to be more open, to deal not only with technology-orientated issues, but also with all kind of national issues, and to include more stakeholders. Right now, I saw that it’s a networking process.
Moreover, there’s not enough advertising. People don’t know vTaiwan. I think it would be great if each citizen just came and participate, not only people who are very into the subjects handled by vTaiwan, but people who don’t know anything about these topics, but would say, "Oh, yes. It’s interesting."
Just show up for the dinner...
Right. [laughs]
That’s something you can contribute. Just advertise, and find out how to reach more people. That would be great.
Are there anything else than vTaiwan that you’re interested in the PDIS work, or you’re just mainly focusing on the vTaiwan?
I don’t know what the PDIS exactly does. I’m reading a lot of online interviews that you have published on SayIt to learn more about the PDIS. I still haven’t read them all. There are so many.
That’s why I want to do what we call participative observation to learn what’s happening here. Then I will decide what is the most interesting for my research.
Have you seen this picture before? ( https://goo.gl/sbZ8z6 )
The green part is pretty much what we’re doing. It’s a lot. It’s literally all over the place. There are certain parts of it, such as vTaiwan, as you can see, is just this one small part.
We do it because PDIS want to collaborate with civil society. We collaborate because we want to foster a culture of social innovation. We do that because we care about civil society empowerment. It all makes sense. [laughs]
We do a lot of other things as well. If you are interested in any other part, Shuyang has in her mind this entire map. You’ll gradually find out the other parts, and if you are interested, just let me know some Wednesday, and we’ll figure out other projects that you can participate, instead of just observing.
You’ll start here, which is great.
I know you can speak in Mandarin, also listen to Mandarin well. I’m not worried about having you in other projects as well. Also, I know you especially show interest in PO network once?
Yes, I’m interested in the PO network and the Join platform.
The PO network, as you can see, is special, because this part actually has two contexts. This is both in "empowering the civil society," and "increasing trust between the government and the civil society."
The PO network here comes from our wish to build a collaborative culture, which comes from the civil society part. It is also coming from this internal innovation ethos, which is to make sure that the civil servants can try something new without worrying about the risk of failure, because a certain Digital Minister will absorb all the risk.
This part is unrelated to the civil society part. The PO network has two sides to it. Every PO has to have a side that is talking with stakeholders and civil society, but another key part of a PO’s work is to talk internally with their risk-averse counterparts inside their ministry, and trying to convince them to innovate somehow.
I don’t know whether you’re interested in the later part as well, which is really the institutional part of open government and everything else, because it’s observable by the society. There’s been actually quite some discourse, but the internal ones are pretty internal.
In our workshop, we had some slides. Peggy gave a really good talk about how it looks like from the internal part of PO, and she has a cleaned-up version now that we can share. I would highly encourage you to read that and see if you’re interested. ( https://goo.gl/di8chi )
If you are, they have a separate project called PO shadowing, in which Fang-Jui or Shuyang randomly follows a PO for a day or two, and bring them to lunch, things like that.
It’s mainly about lunch and having coffee with them.
(laughter)
Right, that’s what they do. If you’re interested in that part, I’m sure that it will reveal much more than any transcripts or meeting records. So that’s the PO network.
There’s a thing I think would probably be in your interest, because you mentioned if institutionalizing vTaiwan would be a good idea or not. Currently, you are also putting us a question still. There’s no result yet. We are still on our way to probably institutionalizing, or it’s just never going to happen, and keep vTaiwan as an experiment itself.
For me, seeing PO network and its function, it could be an interesting comparison between how we institutionalized the PO network within the government, and also how we are thinking to probably institutionalize vTaiwan in the end.
The comparison between these two projects could be treated separately, or could be treated on the same path, because it’s all about collaboration. Whether it’s collaboration among private and public sector, or within the public sector, among all ministries in the government.
To me, it looks like a very interesting project just to look at the word around collaboration and the actors around it. I’m not sure how many projects over here will be within your interest, or will in the end be the case study in your PhD thesis.
I think it will be a nice start if you can just go shuttle around and see how these projects work.
Is your thesis going to be in French or English?
I don’t know yet. I think I can do it in English if I want. My university...
...allows it?
Yes, but I have to discuss about it with my supervisors.
I ask because...
I want to do it in English. Everybody can...
Everybody here can collaborate on it.
We actually develop a lot of discourse, and paper writing, and narratives ourselves, and we do find that if we do it in Chinese, then the international collaboration is quite limited. People will have rely on Google Translate, and whatever. I imagine it’s the same in French.
Yes, exactly.
Shuyang is our international liaison, and she has this huge network of paper co-writers and reviewers.
...and Fiorella is part of it.
Right. If you do your preliminary thoughts, and recollections, and studies, and whatever, in a form that is collaboratively editable, or at least comment-able, and it’s in English, I imagine that it will be a lot of value to the extended network.
I can’t write my PhD with collaborative authors, you know. [laughs]
You can’t?
No, it’s not possible. Sorry.
Well the thesis is your own work, but what I’m saying is that, there is a lot of materials...
That everyone writes a lot of English articles.
Yeah. If it’s vTaiwan related, a lot of it is in English anyway.
I want to write an article. The one I spoke to you [Shuyang Lin] about, the comparison between Join and vTaiwan processes.
Yeah, you mentioned. You can tell it again, about your idea.
So you’re going to write...
I’m thinking on writing a collaborative article about vTaiwan and the PO network, with some of vTaiwan participants.
Sure. It will be a great way to introduce this to communities together, actually. If it’s in English, then everybody gets to contribute. I think that’s great.
There is a PO actually writing her own thesis about this as well. I’ll highly encourage you to avoid duplication. [laughs]
Yes, of course.
One of our colleagues, Yi-Chun, actually wrote her thesis on this very topic as well, comparison between the two platforms. That’s in Chinese, but I’m sure that you can still comprehend it just fine.
Paper writing and collaborative article writing, that seems to be a theme. Anything else that you would like to know, or you’ll just start on this and go?
I want to start on this first.
OK. Let’s see. Anything else I can do for you, other than just be there as far as I can measure, every Wednesday evening?
Wednesday evening, can we discuss about, for example...Can I ask you some questions?
For example, is there really a difference between the open-source movement and the free software movement?
Yeah, there is.
What kind of difference is there?
Open-source is an economic movement, and free software is an ethical movement. Their licenses are almost exactly the same, but they are motivated by different normative ethics.
Would you say that g0v draws its inspiration or principles more from the open-source movement, or more from the free software movement?
Both. We draw from the free software movement on the freedom of expression, the right to assemble, to organize and collaborate. These normative rights that came from the free software movement.
But we also say that, by working in the open, it saves each other’s time. It saves us from doing redundant work. To collaborate is to avoid waste. That’s a more economic concern. Those lines of argument came from the open source movement.
If you hear "you ought to do something," that’s free software, and if you say "it’s more practical if you do something," that’s open source.
Also, the open source movement has already won. [laughs] Like Microsoft and Apple, everybody agrees that it’s more efficient to collaborate.
(laughter)
It’s mainstream now. It’s no longer fringe. A lot of people who original forked the free software movement into open source, now seeing their narrative mainstreamed, are now going back and now regarding software freedom as important as well. ( https://allisonrandal.com/2015/07/22/the-future-of-open-source/ )
Open source is an important idea when they were convincing Netscape, IBM, those large companies to adopt open source. Today tHey no longer needs convincing, they can convince themselves. So a lot of us are going back to the software freedom part. That’s the short answer.
Anyway, feel free to throw me any questions. Yu-Shan is going to do interviews as well. I’ll just put everything on the transcript website so that I can refer my question to her to you, because it’s time-saving.
Everything will be published on SayIt?
Yeah. Anything else I can do for you?
It’s OK.
So the time structure will simply be Wednesday. I’ll be there evening, and we can allocate an hour or so every Wednesday, if you want, for interviews, and progress updates, and such.
Otherwise, Shuyang will be your shadowee. [laughs]
That’s my honor.
So funny.
If she is in any meeting or in any event, and want to bring you along, she’ll just notice you and you don’t have to check with me anymore. That’s it?
OK, welcome aboard.
Welcome aboard.