A democracy of feelings: revolutionising government through digital

Audrey Tang

26 Apr 2017, 10 a.m.
Main Plenary (Sala Verde)

In her inauguration speech, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen said, "Before, democracy was a clash between two opposing values, but now democracy must be a conversation, a dialogue, between many different values".

Audrey Tang is Minister for Digital in Ing-wen's cabinet. Since her appointment in August 2016, the government has undergone a colossal transformation into one of the most open and participatory administrations operating in the world today, ranking top in the Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Data Index.

Audrey presents some of those groundbreaking changes in her keynote (delivered virtually — she’s very much in demand). These include:

  • the blanket adoption of open data across all public services
  • the crowd-sourcing of consensus on key topics, open to any citizen who wishes to take part, and
  • the publication of meetings online, in both video and written transcript versions.

Video