Questions from Momoko Kidera

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#1

Hi. I’m Momoko Kidera, one of the international journalists who met you on June 27. It was a very exciting meeting and I want to write an article about your projects. And I have some questions as follows:

(I’m afraid my questions are rather basic. I’d be glad if you could show me someone or some documents to refer for the answers.)

In the interview you mentioned the following:

But to get 5,000 people to come here and sign something, that’s something they can do. They can set up a Facebook page, a Twitter campaign, and then to get 5,000 people into the e‑petition system, and get us listening to them. For them, this is a very concrete power where they set this agenda. We do discuss it every Friday, and then by the end of Friday we publish all the transcripts, often also live‑streamed, and then into the public for the public to see. Then, the next Monday, I bring it to the Premier, so the Premier can also set his idea on it. This is a continuous, everyday practice, where we let the young people see that their petitions are being heard and being processed by the administration.

  1. What is it that you discuss on Fridays? Agendas raised by Join users? E-petitions with more than 5000 people?
  2. Do participants of the discussions come together in the government building? How do remote participants join the discussion using live-stream?
  3. Who can participate in the discussion? Everybody? How many of them do you usually have?
  4. About how many agendas do you discuss every Friday and take it to the Premier?
  5. What is the relation between such projects: Join, PDIS, Talk to Taiwan and the government? Are they both organized by the government now? Are they all supported by government or independent, in cooperation with government?
  6. What is the difference between PDIS and Join? Can I understand PDIS is a forum designed for digital innovation and its stakeholders, and Join a forum for wider topics and wider participants?
  7. How do you make sure identity of online participants of Join and exclude intervention from others including Mainlanders?
  8. You mentioned K-12 education starting next year. Is it planned by the Ministry of Education?
  9. Is there any internet media literacy class in Taiwan already?
  10. Do you plan to start K-12 education at all public schools? For kids from 1st grade to 12th grade?
  11. You said you were studying VR. Is that a part of your projects as Minister or are you practicing it personally?
#2
  1. As shown in the introductory clip, we discuss agenda raised and voted by POs. Most of them so far are e-petition cases with more than 5000 people, but there are also cases where a PO feels as important even if it has not reached the 5000 threshold.
  2. Yes. Remote people can join if any of the participants requested live-streaming and agreed by all participants.
  3. The petitioner, stakeholders invited by POs, and up to five countersignatories. Usually around 20 people.
  4. As many as outlined by the original petitioner and agreed with POs.
  5. Join.gov.tw is a government-built website maintained by the NDC. PDIS is an offline-and-online space in the administration where people work on incubating and facilitating public digital innovation and service. Talk to Taiwan is an independent show, unrelated to the administration, though they did invite public servants to talk about policy issues.
  6. That sounds about right.
  7. For petitioning, the Join platform asks people to tick a box that says they are citizens, and verify their identity using cell phone number and email.
  8. Yes.
  9. Yes, there are some online resources too.
  10. Correct.
  11. Both — See my medium blog post for details.