How to Save Democracy Taiwan’s Transformation
Nov 14, 2025
Audrey Tang, Taiwan's former Digital Minister and a pioneer in digital democracy, shares insights on how trust in government soared from 10% to over 70% between 2014 and 2024. She discusses the GovZero movement, which transformed protests into effective policy through civic engagement. Audrey highlights Taiwan's innovative COVID response, emphasizing the importance of open APIs and participatory tech. She also introduces her Plurality philosophy, advocating for technology that fosters diversity and collaboration, ultimately bridging the gap between citizens and governance.
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GovZero's Shadow Websites Changed Government
- GovZero built shadow government websites that improved official services and shamed the government into merging them back.
- The movement used hackathons and open-source civic tech to co-create public tools with career public servants.
Occupy Parliament Became A Policy Shop
- The Sunflower Occupy movement occupied parliament for three weeks while crowdsourcing coherent policy demands each day.
- That live deliberation converged people online and offline into a unified agenda that political leadership accepted.
Run Neutral Civic Hackathons Regularly
- Hold regular, neutral hackathons in credible public spaces to build civic tech and trust across sectors.
- Use open-source, no-copyright tools so government can legitimately adopt community-built infrastructure.
