Digital participation in Taiwan
Takeaways for Europe
By Dominik Hierlemann and Stefan Roch
This post is based on an online conversation with Audrey Tang, Digital Minister of Taiwan, hosted by Open Society Foundations, King Baudouin Foundation, European Movement International and Bertelsmann Stiftung on September 7, 2020. For more information please see the video of the event and Bertelsmann Stiftung’s full policy brief.
Taiwan: From autocracy to digital democracy
Digital tools for citizens’ participation have become a fundamental part of Taiwan’s political system, making it one of the most innovative democracies worldwide. But that had not always been the case. Only in 1987 martial law was lifted and Taiwan began its transition from authoritarianism towards democracy. The first presidential elections took place in 1996, the same time as the internet was taking off. Already back then, Taiwan’s civil society was strong, with community organisations finding new solutions through “collaborative action”.
But it was only in 2012 with a group of politically minded “civic hackers” that digital solutions became the heart and soul of Taiwan’s democratic advancement. This community created the gØv (“gov-zero”) movement and started to develop radically new approaches to civic participation, such as a citizens’ audit system on the governments’ central budget.
As a result of the growing influence and success of the civic tech community in Taiwan, the government decided to name one of its key members, Audrey Tang, their first digital minister in 2016. What was seen as a bold step at the time, turned out to become fundamental to Taiwan’s democratic advancement and a key in Taiwan’s highly successful response to the Covid-19 crisis.
Effective digital participation through vTaiwan, Join and Pol.Is
A key to Taiwan’s digital transition has been the development of digital participation platforms through which citizens can effectively engage with public officials and be included in the policy making process.
One of the earliest and most successful platforms is vTaiwan. vTaiwan was developed as a digital platform that provides people the opportunity to discuss policies and to produce consensus that the government can turn into laws and policies.
At the heart of vTaiwan is a tool called Pol.Is. Through Pol.Is anyone interested can draft statements on how a policy issue should be solved and respond to the statements of others by agreeing or disagreeing.
The advantage of such an approach, according to minister Tang, is that it avoids polarizing debates and rather forces people to reflect on their own feelings about a certain issue. This should make participating citizens feel like they are part of one community, rather than of different sides.
The result of such a process should be a “rough consensus”, an overall agreement among all involved, rather than specific recommendations. This in turn provides the ground on which politicians and experts create targeted policy solutions.
Whereas vTaiwan is a collaborative effort by the government and civil society, another key tool for citizens’ participation in Taiwan, Join, was created directly by the government’s National Development Council. Join is a comprehensive platform on which citizens can interact with various levels of government in an open way. On Join, citizens can at the same time: a) discuss existing policies, b) get information on and “supervise” government policies, c) propose new policies through petitions that have to be discussed by the government if supported by 5000 or more people d) give feedback directly to heads of government agencies.
Minister Tang calls this approach to open government “radically trusting citizens”. And trusting has paid off, with nearly half the population of Taiwan having been active and a significant amount of policy issues having already been resolved.
According to Tang, platforms as vTaiwan and Join do not make the job of bureaucrats and politicians harder, they make it easier. Through public discussions and the use of collective intelligence, these platforms help administrators and politicians to prioritise and see what the citizenry as a whole demands.
In Europe, innovative tools of citizens’ participation are often regarded as mere instruments for communication and outreach. With platforms as vTaiwan and Polis, Taiwan has shown that if done right, good and impactful participation is beneficial to citizens, administrators and politicians alike.
Participation as a means to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic
Taiwan has been a world leader in fighting the Corona crisis, despite its proximity to the People’s Republic of China. Taiwan used its openness and its digital tools effectively in combating the crisis, avoiding lockdown and pushing its cases to zero very early.
Taiwan’s open and vibrant social media called the “PTT bulletin board” was able to pick up the news and evidence of a new and dangerous virus in Wuhan as early as December 2019 and directed the information effectively to Taiwan’s Centre for Disease Control.
Based on that information, the centre started to check all incoming flights from Wuhan and created a collective information system for all citizens, as well as with the help of citizens. As Taiwan immediately started rationing masks, an interactive App was quickly developed that helps people track down pharmacies that have masks on stock, so that the entire population could be effectively supplied. To this day, the Centre of Disease Control holds daily public briefings based on information collaboratively collected by itself, experts and citizens.
Around Europe, citizens were not involved in their country’s Covid-19 response. Measures were discussed between experts and politicians, with citizens waiting to take orders.
In Taiwan, openness, citizens’ participation, and seeking solutions collectively have proven to be excellent ingredients to an effective Covid-19 response. Whereas many European countries are now experiencing the backlash of disoriented and frustrated citizens, in Taiwan citizens trust their government while following all necessary Corona measures.
Dominik Hierlemann is a Senior Expert at Bertelsmann Stiftung, heading the project „Democracy and Participation in Europe”. He has designed, organised and facilitated many citizen participation projects in Germany and on the EU level.
Stefan Roch is a Project Manager at Bertelsmann Stiftung in the project „Democracy and Participation in Europe”. He has written on issue such as Open Society, Academic Freedom and European Integration and is currently conducting research on citizens’ participation in the European Union.
This post is part of the Digital for Deliberation series. Read the other articles:
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We are opening a discussion on the use of digital tools for deliberative processes, in collaboration with our colleagues working on digital government and public sector innovation.
How can digital tools support deliberation? Join the conversation!
The series will focus on three overarching questions: (1) How can digital tools support representative deliberative processes? (2) What are the limits of using digital tools for representative deliberative processes? (3) In what other contexts could these learnings be applied?
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Reflections from government on the challenges of digital engagement by Niamh Webster.
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Pablo Hilaire writes that by promoting conscious uses of digital technologies in favour of open justice, we have learnt that to facilitate and promote deliberation and participation online, we need to put citizens at the centre, from the design to the collection of data and feedback.
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