Great, OK, lovely.
OK.
Audrey Tang, thanks for taking the time for this conversation. The main topic is corona and data. What did Taiwan do right, overall?
What did Taiwan do right in the measures to fight corona in your view?
It’s interesting. It goes back to 2004 in some way, an awareness that it is about citizen participation and better flow of information. 2004, wasn’t the peak digital time. It was, in a way, pre-digital. Can you explain that to us, how that was…
It’s interesting to understand that this crisis is more than a health crisis. It’s connected to how society works. It’s a societal issue. That’s key in what you’re saying. The way the state is conceived, the way citizens feel represented, the way that their participation works, that’s key to solving a crisis like that.
I’ve been talking about the ministry of health here, and in terms of the digital ministry has a certain relevance for this issue, because data played a big role in solving this or in preventing this crisis. Could you explain a little, the digital ministry that you lead, how it works, and how it’s related to your work in combating corona.
That’s something very important to understand and how, for example, these digital anchors work, because there’s on the part of Western countries, often the question that there’s maybe protection of privacy and some data measures. Maybe it’s important that you explain that approach which is clearly a bottom-up approach in a way.
The citizen hacker, how does that work? In Germany, you have this approach that the government set up a group which also then actually did a hackathon, so that was quite advanced for understanding of these measures. How did that happen in Taiwan?
What in your mind enabled the Taiwanese society to be that open to technology or that able to adapt quickly to new technologies?
Can you hear me now?
You record on your side, because I think the recording might not have worked as well.
No, my computer actually went down.
It literally went down.
You were in the middle of explaining the Taiwanese democracy as the key in…
That’s interesting. I never made the connection between Estonia, for example, as also being a young democracy and Taiwan as being a young democracy being key to understanding how adaptable to new technologies it is.
It is a conception of the state as something that is an experiment or that is being constantly reassessed or worked on and redesigned, in a way. Is that how you see it?
How do you view either criticism of established democracies, or more established democracies, legacy democracies themselves? We struggle very much in this situation.
Was there contact, or did Western governments approach you to learn from you, from your experiences?
Is there something that you learned from the pandemic that you didn’t know before, or how you could improve your understanding of how to use data, or how to use data in such a crisis moment?
Do you feel that there is a geopolitical divide along the lines of the digital now these days?
The divide is, on the one hand, surveillance capitalism, and then monopolies in the United States, mainly, and the other one is the surveillance capitalism, or the surveillance authoritarianism, the Chinese?
What you said is changing the notion of what the state is and changing the way the state works. I wonder how applicable it is in the U.S. That’s the other side, which is such a hard ask to get there. Do you have any suggestions how to use that moment – for example, the corona moment – in a constructive way?
Yeah, to further that change. Is there something to learn from that moment for Western societies?
How do you communicate that rational self-interest, through public messaging, or how is that communicated?
That’s a public domain that you can access, or that’s a…
That is, again, it’s more or less open source, because you can play with these images.
Can you complete this sentence for me? “For me, this is personal, because…”
The corona and…
Lovely. Thank you. Great to learn from you about your approach it’s very insightful. If you have the recording, hopefully you can send it to me. Then…
Good. Thanks for taking the time, and thanks to Julia Kloiber for connecting us.
Do you know her from working with her a bit, or…
Great. Thank you. We can talk some other time.
I will.
Thank you. Bye.
