God help us.

This is a great area in which crowdsourcing can contribute. How might we build a platform so that the info posted can easily be organized and used?

When the government initiates a policy discussion to shape a policy, it inevitably has to face the representation issue - are any segments of the population disadvantaged because of access, technological savviness, habits, bias against this particular medium, or other issues? (When g0v does it, this issue is much less astute because its members are not elected officials who are subject to accountabilty scrutiny.) This doesn't mean the government should forget about using open government or technology to help gather citizen input for shaping public policy. Instead, it means people pushing it has to be aware of the representation issue, potential biases and their consequences of excerbating existing disadvantages of a certain segment of the population. Soliciting public opinion online is a means to some ends. Just be clear what the end is and the means-end connection.

The government has failed so miserably in the so-called technology policy over the past two decades (at least) I simply don't understand why it's still doing the same thing. Therefore, the (only?) hope may lie in using open government to facilate accountability.

Having said that, I think "digital government" has a bigger role to play. It's more than "open government," and it has potentially transformative power. Look at the UK. If we fully tap into expertise from the human-centered design & service design communities and Taiwan's existing tech industries, I believe Taiwan can do even better. Consequently, the government will lead the private sector in innovation. As of now, it's more of an impediment.

Having a vision doesn't necessarily mean restricting future development. Visions are subject to change. Until a vision is changed, it serves as a guidling post to help ensure coherence across varous things different government agencies do. It also helps determine scope and priorities. I think having a conversation across all involved agencies in the process of facilitating a shared vision is very important.

I can't agree more on this point.

Audrey, I'm not sure I see the conection between your answer and this quesiton. Whether by design or as a unintended consequence, if the whole system turns out to be an ERP system, it would have its implications and ramifications, which I hope you'll address.

How about soliciting directly constituents/voters/citizen feedback and inviting involved civil servants to observe the (usability test) process?

Audrey, you're right in attributing the concern to historical and psychological reasons, but I don't think your response addressed this concern sufficiently. It's a cultural issue. Someone needs to evagelize the benefits of digital government, the costs of not doing it, and how to do it well. It needs to be part of entry-level civil servants' training. It needs to be part of mid- and higher-level government officials' promotion training program. Senior officials need to be educated on this, too. Just look at websites of any level or branch of government. The great majority of them still look pretty government-centered.

1. Open government can be complementary to representative democracy. It's not meant to be a substitute. This I agree. This part of open government involes law/policy making and to some degree monitoring government wrongdoings. I believe your office's approach can be more systematic and organized than the anecdotal way of understanding consituents' preferences typically seen among legislators. Your office should have the expertise to at least aggregate preferences.
2. More broadly speaking, there is the concept of "digital government," which involve streamling government functions, making government serve people's needs better, etc. Are these part of your job description? My understanding is there may be other agencies/ministries with overlapping or related authorities in some of the taskes under the big umbrella of "digital government." If so, are you responsible for coordinating them and coming up with a vision or strategy?

This is another kind of things for which user research could provide you with the justification you need.

If you think legislators know better in this case, why not working with them?

What's the rationale of using English as the main language on PDIS? Who is the main audience? Sorry I had to use English here because 1) I assume my main intended audience (Audrey & Mr. Kao) read English, and 2) it's faster for me to type and I have too many things to say : - )

It has been amended several times since 1928. The most recent amendment took place in 2007. Tracing which ministry (or ministries) has proposed the amendments might give you some clue.

Government agencies can provide resources to help seniors learn to use technology, but assuming seniors can all learn to use technolgoy without difficulty would be wrong, unfair, or immoral, especially if technology is used to shape policies, decide resource allocation, or otherwise impact people's rights.

Just out of curiosity: what's your assessment about proactive government actions in seriously evaluating data security threats and taking measures to safeguard sensitive data, such as household registration, healthcare, personnel, military deployment & personnel, critical infrastructure, etc.?

1. Service designers can shed light here.
2. Experience from pioneers such as the UK Government Digital Service can potentially save lots of trials & errors.
3. Continues user research is essential.

Is there such a position in the central government? Or is this part of Audrey's job description?

Such as?

Really? Not a single one? How do they know? Who gets to make the judgment that nobody uses the information?

Can you explain what this means?

Can you elaborate this?

This is something user research can uncover. Armed with such information, one can argue for more and better open data. (User research is distinct from academic research in terms of cost, procedure, purpose, etc., BTW.)

Government agencies more often than not are in their own silos. A service designer would take the user journey perspective to find the gaps or barriers in users' end-to-end experience, thereby give meaning to seemingly disconnected data and find ways to serve peope better. Take foreing direct investment for example. Taiwan's FDI ranks only higher than North Korea. There is huge room for improvement. It' doable, and the benefit would outweigh the cost for sure. But, it does take work, and more importantly, recognition from the political leadership that this is something that needs to be done.

Is there any Taiwanese government agency similar to the UK Government Digital Service in charge of user research or user-centered design?

This was another thing I learned when I was working in government - there are various laws, regulations, and interpretations of them in any given situation. The point is: When there is a will (from the top leadership), there is a way. In this case, the "will" came from the civil society. Great job!

This mentality was prevalent in government when I was a civil servant years ago. One of the most helpful things Audrey can do is going to all possible venues (e.g., training classes for public officials' promotion or entry into government) and educate them that 1) they work in government to serve the people, not (as knee-jerk reaction) to supply the people with legal or regulatory barriers preventing them from doing what people want public officials to do; and 2) there are ways to use their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit to find new ways to make their agency/department serve people better.

If a researcher has to seek permission from every single individual to get his/her data, it would run into the so-called "self selection" issue, which involves sample representativeness and in turn may affect the internal validity or external validity of the research. There are too many jargons in the last sentence, I know. The point is: the practice of requiring researchers to persuade people to provide their data would not take advantage of Taiwan's mandated healthcare system. There are hurdles to overcome, but I believe we can do better.

What if we anonymize health information for academic research use? Like you said, Taiwan's healthcare database is a gold mine for research.

Linking research by government agencies and academic institutions with other data (e.g., promotion data of academic institutions) is one of the next steps that can be taken. The recent NTU fraud case in which its president (principal ?) was involved is case in point.

Good user research can help clarify in this area. User-centered design principles are quite well developed, and the UK government digital service (https://gds.blog.gov.uk/) provides plenty of good practices, some of which may be applicable to the Taiwanese context.

Exactly - Making government information understandable, accessible, and user friendly is not a legal requirement issue. It's a mindset issue. Public officials should ask: Is it in the public interest to do? If so, and there is no legal hurdle, do it. If ther is, propose amendments to fix it.

is it legal?

Sounds like some public law experts are needed to overcome this obstacle.

It's important how the government shapes its own narrative on why an iterative process is critical for a more human-centered and transparent government as well as a more just and innovative society.

Is there any government agency tracking such processes, evaluating them, and making recomendations for future legal or regulatory amendments?

Soliciting public input for policy making needs not to result in inefficiency or taking more time. The process needs to be designed or faciliated. There are varous examples from other countries.

Is this regulated in extant laws or regulations? If not, when the Legislative Yuan amends the law or the govenment amends the bylaws this issue needs to be part of the discussion/conversation.

Can you be more specific here?

There may be room for this, but some data (e.g., taxation, property transactions, healthcare record, government personnel, business registration, etc.) inherently has to be tied to personal information.

The DPP now controls parliamentary majority and the executive branch. There is no excuse not to amend the law to make freedom of information a legal requirment except for classified information.

Who is pushing what?

This is a great example. Has this practice be replicated elsewhere or in other policy areas? How about firms that violate environmental or other regulatoins?

This is another thing that needs all involved to have a conversation. How might the public-private partnership look like? What is the common vision, if any? g0v has accomplished a lot. What are the things that could potentially be handled by government agencies? What are the obstacles g0v has faced that government agencies might be in the position to help?

Other than transparency, another important cosideration is national security. With the relentless threats from China, we need to imagine scenarios where the Chinese triangulate & exploit our data and do real damange to individuals, government agencies, or our country as a whole. How might we do to prevent such things from happening while being as transparent as possible? How might we balance these considerations?

Even what should be legitimately considered "classified information" and when classified information should be declassified should have room for debate. The aforementioned 228 and White Terror considerations are prime examples.

This needs to be fixed. There is no justification for such disparity. Is there? Who is in charge of this?

From the government's perspective, there are some legal or regulatory requirments for the ransparency of policy-making processes or government actions. This may or may not be consistent with the priorities of the citizenry. For example, there may be areas (e.g., accountability of the 228 massacre, White Terror era policymaking and actions by intelligence agencies & judicial authorities, etc.) that many people are eager to know but have yet to disclose because of a lack of legal authorization.

Audrey's office needs to propose ideas about what the platform might look like.

Again, what's the rationale of using English as the main language on PDIS? Who is the main audience?

Isn't this one of the things in Audrey's job description? (convincing/educating public officials about better ways of doing things?)

Absolutely!

Why not?

This is a great example. Of all the things the government could have chosen to do to facilitate innovation, is this the best use of public resources? Even if so, why 80 milliion as opposed to 30 million? The government ought to be able to answer these questions.

This is where transparency can potentially be helpful. Perhaps there are some technical difficulties, which perhaps could be overcome by g0v. Perhaps the difficulties are about legal issues or budgtary priorities. Either way, some pressure from the civil society might help. The point is: Knowing what the real difficulties are is the first step for finding the solution.

Link?

I thought this would have been one of the first things Audrey Tang presented to the public as a proposal for feedback before actual implementation of anything started. Without a consensus around it, how does Audrey Tang's office prioritize things and justify such priorities?