VTaiwan (NYU)

vTaiwan Shu Yang Lin re:architect of PDIS
 vTaiwan contributor

What is vTaiwan?

vTaiwan is a consultation process which brings together government ministries, elected representatives, scholars, business leaders and the general public. The process helps lawmakers implement decisions with a greater degree of legitimacy. vTaiwan has various touch points such as a website, a combination of meetings and hackathons along with the consultation process. vTaiwan is also an open space, it is a combination of time and space run by participants to work on cases brought in.

How does it work?

Qualify issue

Issue

Participants ask questions

Competent agencies respond

Interpretate and explain terminologies

Produce content digestable by stakeholders

Research and Identify more stakeholders through rolling questionnaires

Reach out to populations

Identify affected and knowledgeable populations

Educate populations

Online deliberation

Comment curation

Stakeholder discovery

Face to face dialogue

Transcript

vTaiwan Process Issue

proposal stage Qualify issue

Research and Identify more stakeholders through rolling questionnaires

Produce content digestable by stakeholders

Participants ask questions

Competent agencies respond

Interpretate and explain terminologies

Stakeholder discovery

opinion stage Educate populations

Identify affected and knowledgeable populations

Reach out to populations

Online deliberation

Face to face dialogue

reflection stage Comment curation

Transcript

legislation stage

Why is it important? technology democracy

vTaiwan is an ongoing experiment for Taiwanese government to co-create meaningful policies with its citizen. But, the experiment's scope is not limited to Taiwan or any particular government. It’s also an experiment to prototype out a model for consensus generation among large groups. It’s an experiment for a new way of working together, to unconditionally trust when collaborating, to be more open and transparent, and to gain the potential to be trusted. vTaiwan's excellence is not based on how many regulations have been modified, but because of the scalable and sustainable collaboration system it prototypes.

How was it built?

Public participation in Taiwan has been developed in several formats, and its trajectory coincides with the advancement of technology we sensed. New technology arrived — democracy evolved.

In 2014, riding on the era of self-media, the Sunflower movement took place. Students in Taiwan wouldn’t bare with the MP’s unwillingness to deliberate about a service trade deal with Beijing Office so that they occupied the parliament for 22 days and conducted a real deliberation, with the entire process live-streamed. That led to the launch of vTaiwan.

Are there other similar projects?

The vTaiwan process was developed by drawing on world partners’ efforts in experimenting with new technology and the internet to facilitate public participation. One of these projects is the Regulation Room, operated by the Cornell E-Rulemaking Initiative.

Regulation Room provides an online environment to facilitate public discussion and feedback on proposed federal rules. vTaiwan drew from the Regulation Room goal to broaden participation and improve quality in rulemaking using technology. vTaiwan built on the valuable work of Regulation Room and further designed itself as a recursive public that is open to transformation and reformulation.

What does recursive public mean?

Derived from Kelty Christopher’s work, "Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics”, vTaiwan’s culture works as a recursive public that shapes an interactive environment that is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through an evolving rough consensus.

current rough consensus

opinion

participant

What is its outcome?

To date, 26 national issues have been discussed through the vTaiwan open consultation process, including closely-held company, UberX, platform economy, fin-tech sandbox, telemedicine, online education, telework, company law rewrite, autonomous vehicles, nonconsensual pornography ‌ etc. More than 80% have led to decisive government action.

What are the challenges vTaiwan have at the moment?

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quality of discussion participation rate inclusiveness institutionalization

End of the slides. Thank you.