Hi Audrey, my name is Barbara Celis, I am a Spanish reporter based in Taiwan. I have a few questions regarding your new job and your ideas about our digital society for an article. Would you mind to a...

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#1

Hi Audrey, my name is Barbara Celis, I am a Spanish reporter based in Taiwan. I have a few questions regarding your new job and your ideas about our digital society for an article. Would you mind to answer? Thank you in advance!

-The virus of ideology that you mentioned in your talk in Madrid last May it seems very difficult to change in regards of the idea that hackers are bad (I am thinking at cases such as Snowden’s, in which government sends a message and activists the opposite). Yet, all the western media is referring to you as a hacker (a good one) and you define yourself as a ‘civic hacker’. Could you explain the meaning of that definition and to which degree do you think hackers have contributed to spreading democracy in the past 20 years?

  • Why has a self-defined ‘conservative anarchist’ like yourself entered an elected government?
    -Your experience working with vTaiwan and g0v community has taken you around the world to talk about it. As a minister, how are you going to implement what you learnt to improve its possibilities?
  • Do you consider digital participation is the answer to democratize democracies around the world that have reduced their public political involvement to vote?
    -You took part in the Sunflower movement, in Spain we had 15M Indignados. At least in my country many people who participated in public debates on streets slowly quit and went back to their regular ‘ i vote, i sign petitions online and that’s it’, no more real participation. In Taiwan it might have happened the same. Do you have a plan to bring people on board, to get them excited about discussion and participation process such as the one you organized on Uber?
    -How digital illiterate people can take advantage of the internet and digital tools?
    -I read you want a Taiwan Silicon Valley. How could it be achieved?
    -Will open source tools substitute Apple or/and Windows in the future?
    -Are we at risk that digital entertainment such as the Pokemon Go phenomena could be used to manipulate people and keep them ‘dormant’ as in a dystopian science fiction society?
    -You have been a consultant for the education department too. How could we avoid to make our children ‘digital junkies’ like those that many recent studies alert about?
    -Why is coding so important in education? (in Spain isn’t popular yet)
    -Which are our next digital challenges and threats as citizens?
    -What will shape more our future, robots or virtual reality? Thank you so much for answering!
#2
  1. Please refer to https://opengovdata.io/2014/civic-hacking/ for detailed explanation.
  2. Because I would like to conserve — as much as possible — the interconnected autonomous values from the internet culture, and the open government movement aligns with that mission.
  3. By building & improving reflective spaces around concrete policy issues where we can learn from each other.
  4. It is one necessary — but far from sufficient — part of answers. Inclusion, diversity, and scalable listening in general are also necessary.
  5. Like Pokémon Go, Uber’s forte is in its sleek experience design that mobilizes people’s willingness to use. Participation processes need to tap into similar “gaming” mechanisms and repurpose them for the public good.
  6. By designing cyber-physical systems with the principles of assistive civic technologies.
  7. My original words are: “Linking with Asia” and “Connecting to SV”.( source: http://wslk.io/tLjao )
  8. Apple & Windows are built around open source technologies, and both companies have worked with open-source communities on the fundamental parts of their software stack.
  9. I think civilization has adapted through far larger disruptions than Pokémon Go. It remains an interesting case study from which architects of democracy can learn from.
  10. Each person need to define their own relationship with digital tools. Personally I practice mindfulness, but there are many other paths.
  11. Programming is a synthesis of mathematics and linguistics. More importantly though, it opens up the opportunity to immerse in open culture communities, which encourages spontaneity, interpersonal interaction and the pursuit of common good.
  12. It would vary individual-by-individual and city-by-city and so cannot be answered with broad brushes.
  13. Instead of predicting the future, I’d like to participate in the development of both fields — we’ll invent the future together.
#3

Thanks a lot Audrey! Sorry, I 'll rephrase the question about Windows and Apple. I meant if you think that it will be possible at some point that governments around the world as well as individuals work with free software instead of depending on windows and ios operative systems and their expensive and therefore excluding programs. I believe Taiwan already does it in its government (correct me if I am wrong) but I wonder if it will be something achievable for countries such as the USA or European countries. We just saw Apple being fined for not paying its taxes and yet, people spends enormous amounts of money to buy their gadgets…

#4

OK. It is correct that our administration promotes OpenDocument and vendor-neutral Open Data formats.
On the topic of international adoption on free software in the public sector, please refer to https://www.fsf.org/search?SearchableText=government for related news.