Q: James Crabtree

Taiwan has had a highly functional reaction to the pandemic, arguably the most effective response of any country in the world. Could you give a pen portrait of what it was that Taiwan did right? What role did technology and digital government play in the way that Taiwan has handled COVID-19?

A: Audrey Tang

Digital is purely an assistive role. The most important technology to counter the pandemic is definitely chemical, namely soap and alcohol hand sanitisers. And next to it, the physical vaccine, masks. But digital does help in a way to spread the message about the correct use of masks and hand sanitation. Our official spokesdog for our Central Epidemic Command Centre is Zongchai, a Shiba Inu. And this dog tells you, wear a mask, protect your own face against your own unwashed hands. It’s an extremely effective idea that’s worth spreading, because it appeals to a rational self-interest. It doesn’t say anything about protecting your elders. It doesn’t say anything about respecting your community. It says, you don’t wash your hands with soap, well, wear a mask to prevent yourself from touching your own face. And this idea really went viral on the social media. And also when we introduced physical distancing, when you’re outdoors keep two Shiba Inu’s away. And if you’re indoors keep three, Shiba Inu’s away. Again, very easy to remember.

We have a word for it actually, it’s called humour over rumour. In the very beginning of the pandemic, what was really difficult was the twin of the pandemic, the infodemic. Because when people buy into conspiracy theories and buy into the fear, uncertainty and doubt as amplified by anti-social media platforms, then it becomes almost impossible for science to thrive. So from the very beginning, we adopted a communication strategy based on daily live press conferences of the medical offices, based on the 1922 hotline where anyone can call and get their scientific questions answered. But even more crucially, if they have something that our scientists have no answers to, if they report a genuinely new situation on the ground to 1922, then we’ll also escalate it within minutes to the Central Epidemic Command Centre.

Q: James Crabtree

You’re an enthusiast for open data, and the role that government can play in that respect. And I know that that making public information available on mask locations and things like that was a part of what people saw as Taiwan’s success. Can you say a little bit about that side of things as well?

A: Audrey Tang

Yes, so the Head of the Google Developer Group from Tainan City devised this way to crowdsource a map where his friends and families can pin particular places on the map, whether there is still masks in stock or not because there’s a rumour that says, people are stockpiling masks and so on and he wants to put an end to it at least for his vicinity and friends and families. He appears on national news and everybody’s using his app. And the next thing he knows after returning from lunch, he owes Google 20,000 US dollars in API usage fees. So, he has to take the web service down and ask the G0v community, Taiwan’s leading civic technology movement, what to do. And of course when people in OpenStreetMap and other communities started to help him, I’m also on that chat stream.

I showed his work to the Head of the Cabinet to our Premier and said, we need to do a reverse procurement, meaning that they already have his back. They already wrote the app and we need to keep the resource running, namely publishing the real time availability of all the medical shops, all the pharmacies and so on, every 30 seconds on an open ABI. And that really enabled people who queue in the lines to participate in the accountability audit.

Q: James Crabtree

Taiwan in general has a reputation, and you in particular, for promoting a quite radical vision of participatory democracy, some of which is online and some of which is not online. What can be learned from Taiwan’s experiment from the 2014 Sunflower Revolution through until today?

A: Audrey Tang

The three pillars: fast, fair and fun. They can be learned quite independently of each other. A fast iteration, where in Taiwan, when our top epidemiologist wants to talk to the Vice President, he just had to look into the mirror, it’s the same person. Our scientific authority and the political authority is the same one. The daily responses, the fast responses, the collective intelligence could be adapted quite easily, actually just by arranging daily press conferences and the hotline and a call centre, right? The fair part again, open API, it’s not hard to copy. A few young people… The youngest, I think just 14 years old from South Korea convinced their government to adopt mask rationing using the API, designed by people in Tainan city in Taiwan. So that’s the fair distribution. And finally the fun part, humour over rumour. That’s a playbook that many different jurisdictions can take a page of. That idea is just make fun of ourselves. It’s not about making fun of other people. It’s inclusive humour, and that always travels faster than the disinformation that travels on outrage.

Q: James Crabtree

What lessons are there for a country like the United Kingdom or a city like London, as it tries to find a way back to rebuilding trust with citizens. What techniques has Taiwan used the others can learn from?

A: Audrey Tang

Definitely trust the social sector. Place the data stewardship and a joint data controllership with the social sector. And when the social sector owns the data, produces the data, curates the data, that’s when the social sector can feel empowered enough to negotiate its own terms. The idea is that, instead of surveillance capitalism or authoritarian intelligence, we make sure that our AI is a assistive intelligence and people can understand that they are crowdsourcing that data.

Now this is of course all very theoretical. So maybe I would just use one very short anecdote to illustrate a point. In early April, there was a case when a person was diagnosed with COVID and the first day she told contact tracers she stayed at home, meets nobody. She doesn’t know how she contracted the disease.

The next day she finally admitted that she works as a waitress. There was a lot of in clamouring on the anti-social media for the essential everyday Command Centre to invoke sanctions, to put them in jail, to fine a large amount of fine and close them down and things like that. But all it would do, had we gone that way is to force them to go underground as in a prohibition area and make the pandemic even more unpredictable. Quite fortunately we understood the idea of federated data controllership. And so we devised a real contact system. As long as people could be contacted in the case of transmission, they don’t need to collect their real names and none of the data need to be submitted to the state. And so we just explained the physical distance and resistance.

Q: James Crabtree

Let’s broaden things out away from the pandemic to a few other questions that I think might interest our audience, one of which is about the future of cities. Taipei is one of Asia’s most vibrant cities. There’s been a lot of talk about the decline of cities in the aftermath of COVID-19. I wonder how does that look from a country like Taiwan. How do you see the future of urbanisation as viewed from East Asia?

A: Audrey Tang

Once the high-speed rails in Taiwan became functioning, the entirety of Taiwan or at least the West side of it functions like a larger municipality from the North city of Taipei to South most metropolitan of Guanshan, it’s just one hour and a half of high-speed rails. And so it’s all very much connected together. When people in Tainan made those medical masks available and so on, they never need to travel to Taipei because we always know that they were just one hour away in high speed rails. In Taiwan, unlike other places, broadband is a human right too. So anyone in Taiwan, if you don’t have 10 megabits per second for just 16 euros per month for unlimited data connection it’s my fault personally. And so, because of this the urban landscape feels very diverse. There’s not much urban rural distinction when it comes to the Western side of Taiwan. Of course, the mountain is part, the indigenous nations, the more remote islands and so on, of course offers the cultural diversity. And in fact is where the first nations of indigenous people rely on. But in the Western side it’s merging into a larger super metropolis.

Q: James Crabtree

That vision of East Asian urbanisation is not being questioned because of the pandemic? The future will continue to be urban as it was before?

A: Audrey Tang

Well, I think in Taiwan, we never had a lockdown. So even if we delayed the opening of schools for a couple of weeks to secure the masks and hand sanitizer, we never really stopped the schools either. So I guess Taiwan is in a somewhat different pause and we’re looking at people, not a new normal, but rather the old normal augmented on digital and this offers more or less the same urban movements trend, as you were saying, but without the showing off, without the consumerism, without the excesses. All these have disappeared because it’s just considered bad taste, when people are still suffering. So more sustainability, more circular economy…

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