Real-World Examples
Highlighting Case Studies and Real World On-The-Ground Examples of Co-Intelligence
Wise Democracy Emerging
A deeper exploration of vTaiwan (article 2)
By Andy Paice
This article follows on from the previous vTaiwan article which includes a guide to Taiwan’s democratic innovation in digital affairs which may help readers with some of the events and institutions mentioned here.
The democracy innovations taking place in Taiwan have received much attention from people around the world looking at ways to upgrade democratic institutions to be fit for purpose in the 21st century.
Part of my motivation to interview Shu and Fang of vTaiwan was to expand an understanding of the context and the gifts and challenges of what has been happening there and bring that knowledge up to date.
Clarifying the Uber Case
Resolving the question of how to regulate the Uber ridesharing platform has to date been the most celebrated case that has arisen from vTaiwan (the government sanctioned participatory platform for the reform of digital regulations.) In our interview Shu mentions this success of how 200,000 people engaged in the open policy making process.
One aspect of this famous case that I’d often heard mentioned in articles is how consensus was reached through ‘gamifying’ engagement on the Pol.is platform so that ever more inclusive statements would be written that garnered support across opinion divides. Shu clarified that there was no official policy to gamify Polis but when the survey was distributed they encouraged participants to rewrite the statements - “why not come up with an idea that is better than the ones you’re reading.”
This invitation gave rise to creativity, for example a reframing of the problem to “Why don’t we use this as an opportunity to rewrite the taxi laws.” Such statements were picked up by the multi stakeholder conversations and this is what transpired at the end of the process: legislation was passed that ended up creating more freedom and benign competition in Taiwan’s taxi industry.
vTaiwan’s standing at home and abroad
Another question I’ve been intrigued by is the status vTaiwan has in its native country: Is it common knowledge amongst Taiwanese citizens that this opportunity exists to shape laws around digital regulation?
Shu’s response is that it could be promoted better within Taiwan. Interestingly, the International community of democracy innovators are more aware of vTaiwan than Taiwan’s average citizen. Shu mentions that her friends were concerned that they hadn’t heard about it before she told them about it.
Fang sheds light on this fact by saying that the major impact of vTaiwan is explicitly to have an effect on democracies around the world and demonstrating how agenda setting can be flipped from being a top-down affair to coming from a more holistic societal perspective whereby the whole society has a stake. It represents a shift from implementing power to sharing power.
Indeed Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s digital minister has stated “vTaiwan’s scope is not limited to Taiwan or any particular government; it’s an experiment to prototype a model for consensus generation among large groups in general.”
This internationally oriented approach has been successful at the very least in encouraging governments and civil servants around the world to experiment. In 2018 vTaiwan participants gave training sessions to government officers in New York. The use of Pol.is as part of the vTaiwan process has encouraged its adoption in participatory initiatives around the world.
In terms of the G0v hacktivist network that spawned vTaiwan (see previous article) there is now a G0v London running regular civic hacknights for everyone.
What is vTaiwan doing now?
I had heard in an interview that vTaiwan had ceased to exist therefore I wanted to check with Shu what its current status was. This felt important for if the platform were such a success, acclaimed all over the world, what would be the factors that would have contributed to its decline?
Shu's response was that vTaiwan was dormant rather than ended and people do continue to meet however currently that’s not as regular as previously. One of its last major projects, an open multistakeholder forum was initiated 2 years ago.
Since vTaiwan is a platform to initiate or make changes to legislation on digital affairs it requires people to catalyse a process with proposals. It’s also completely decentralized so no one is responsible for the community and it works when there is energy and impetus to go through its stages (proposal stage, opinion stage, reflection stage, and legislation stage).
This decentralized nature is a fundamental aspect of both the hacktivist community g0v and vTaiwan which means they can both fall dormant and be picked up at any time.
Third and final article in the series: Spotlight on Real World Co-Intelligence Innovators - Shu Yang Lin and Fang Jui Chang (link coming soon)
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