Taiwan shows the world “this is what wise democracy looks like!” (article 1)

For readers who are not familiar with the groundbreaking developments that have been taking place in Taiwanese governance, specifically in the realm of digital affairs, this first article will guide you through some of its history and key aspects. 

We at the Co-Intelligence Institute are impressed with what has been achieved in Taiwan in terms of implementing and exemplifying many of the principles we have codified, of Co-Intelligence and Wise Democracy.  As a starting point, in the video below, hear what Shu Yang has to say about vTaiwan through the lens of the Wise Democracy Pattern Language (WDPL). I asked Shu to choose any of the WDPL cards she felt exemplified the essence of vTaiwan and she picked two: Self Organization and Iteration. 

Some of the institutions and concepts she mentions are explained in the second part of this article which lays the foundations for our next 2 articles.

A Guide to Taiwan’s democratic innovation in digital affairs

Based on Shu Yang Lin’s description of vTaiwan, and including further examples of patterns from the Wise Democracy Pattern Language, in many of the various links.

The Sunflower movement (2014) was a protest movement of students and civic groups in Taiwan who were angry about the lack of willingness to review a trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China (from which Taiwan’s independence is constantly threatened). As a result they entered and occupied the parliament for 22 days and conducted their own Deliberation on the issue from inside. This process was live-streamed to Taiwanese citizens with the help of the g0v community to demonstrate what constructive, peaceful participatory discussions on the issue might look like. In WDPL terms this episode created a Visionary Attractor of what governance and citizen participation could look like.

g0v (pronounced gov zero)
When people complain that some kind of action should be taken by authorities, agencies or other citizens the question “Why is nobody doing ‘x’ action?” often comes up. G0v’s motto is precisely to take up that unoccupied place of participation and “be nobody.” 

G0v is the largest civic tech community in Taiwan, it holds hackathons every other month, hives of Creative Experimentation attracting hundreds of participants to work on civic ideas. It brings together developers, designers, activists, journalists, and civil servants. One of g0v calls to action was to “fork the government”, an open source tech term which means to improve government service by improving systems, platforms and processes, so that service providers can use them and reintegrate them back into government institutions.

vTaiwan
After the Sunflower movement at a g0v Hackathon in December 2014, the Minister without Portfolio Jaclyn Tsai, impressed with the way the activists had demonstrated new possibilities, asked for volunteers to “create a platform for rational discussion and deliberation of policy issues that the entire nation could participate in.” As a result g0v members built vTaiwan as a Self Organizing, decentralized, participatory platform for the reform of digital regulations.

vTaiwan’s processes contain four clear stages: proposal stage, opinion stage, reflection stage, and legislation stage.

1. Proposal stage: any digital related social issue that earns commitment from both vTaiwan volunteers and public sector can enter the process.

2. Opinion stage: vTaiwan volunteers facilitate and collect online and offline opinions from stakeholders and the society.

3. Reflection stage: key stakeholders are invited to face-to-face live-streamed deliberations to draw up specific recommendations.

Legislation stage: draft bills are sent to parliament for adoption or rejection.

The most famous vTaiwan case so far has been how it evoked a collectively wise response to create new regulations for licensing Uber drivers disrupting Taiwan’s taxi industry in 2015. vTaiwan used the digital platform Pol.is to engage all parties concerned followed by a reflection stage with a Multi Stakeholder Conversation including taxi companies, passengers, the government and Uber. The result was new legislation that all sides could consent to. Tom Atlee writes about the Uber vTaiwan process here and has a 3 part in-depth article on vTaiwan in general based on interviews with Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang starting here.

Audrey Tang
Audrey Tang is a free software programmer and a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur. She was one of the instigators of g0v and got involved in Taiwanese politics during the Sunflower Movement, helping the protesters livestream their deliberations from the occupied parliament building.
In 2016 her efforts were recognised by the government and she was appointed minister without portfolio for digital affairs. In August 2022 she became the inaugural Minister for the new Ministry of Digital Affairs

Audrey is a wonderful example of a facilitative leader, a visionary, and a powerful network weaver who applies the strategy of Connecting Nodes of LIfe Energy.  She works tirelessly to share Taiwan’s innovative models and processes with the rest of the world and has been quoted as saying "My existence is not to become a minister for a certain group, nor to broadcast government propaganda. Instead, it is to become a 'channel' to allow greater combinations of intelligence and strength to come together."

PDIS 
The Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS) founded by Audrey Tang in 2016 was an innovation lab and network of public servants devoted to cross-departmental collaboration with an aim to break down silos and drive culture change across the whole of government.

It created a network of Participation Officers (POs), meeting monthly to work on service design improvements and hold workshops with citizens to co-design public services. All 32 of Taiwan’s government ministries were represented. Fang Jui Chang (who we interviewed) helped to run this network. She described her work there as “less about changing legislation than about generating a group dynamic that allows civil servants to work creatively and openly.”

The Ministry of Digital Affairs
Since August 2022 PDIS has evolved into the Ministry of Digital Affairs which builds on the ethics of citizen participation to make Taiwan digitally resilient in the face of cyber attacks.

Article 2: A deeper exploration of vTaiwan


Acknowledgements & References

Fang Jui Chang - http://www.fangjuichang.com/about
Shu Yang Lin - www.shuyanglin.com
Apolitical - Meet the network tearing down walls between departments in Taiwan
Tom Atlee’s articles on vTaiwan
Liz Barry - vTaiwan: Public Participation Methods on the Cyberpunk Frontier of Democracy
Claudina Sarahe and Darshana Narayanan - In Search of 21st Century Democracy: Two Weeks in Taipei
Rosa Zubizarreta - vTaiwan: activism, deliberative democracy, & social change
Wikipedia on Audrey Tang
Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs website