The data collection, when it resides on a third party solution provider, which doesn't offer into an encryption, you cannot be sure that they'll delete all the data and creates a tech service for cyber security intrusions.
All this, we needed to respond in maybe just three days. We did so. Both the 2020's invention of the idea of a real contact instead of a real name, and the implementation of that as a centralized SMS are in direct response of the over collection of personal data in terms of human rights protection.
Also, students for a while. It was around the same time that we restricted mask export because they were considered critical resources, both the medical personnel and the masks. We didn't know how bad it would get.
...definitely. Mostly, this was erring on overly cautious. This year, we moved to coexistence. The CECC wanted all the hospitals to have dedicated beds and units in response to a surge, that we anticipate to be more than, I think, a hundred thousand a day. We never got to that number.
It's true, the CECC was erring on the side of over cautiousness, at least in the beginning. For very good reasons, I'm sure. When it became very apparent that it was not as bad as we thought, they relaxed those restrictions very quickly, too.
The CDA, the Communicable Disease Act, was very clear on that. The human right violation as found by the constitutional court, as well as legislature during the SARS times was that it was an unspecified amount of time.
There's no compensation. There's no habeas corpus. In the short quarantine, which I personally went through, it's not like that. I know from the very beginning it was just going to be seven days. I know from the very beginning that there will be full coverage of the cost involved, including the saliva based test and things like that.
For people who have to be quarantined despite they're not a returning visitor or an infected person, but just someone who is a close family member or listed as a contact, those three days quarantine you alluded to, there are NT $1,000 per day to compensate for their loss of productivity. There's still a compensation.
Finally, there's always habeas corpus if you feel that you have been misidentified. I think it's pretty proportional.
Yes, for a long time, we preferred quarantine at home, but that changed last year of the delta virus in Pingtung where we switched over to the hotels or government run quarantine centers, which, of course, is not as comfortable as the home. [laughs]
I did a home quarantine. It wasn't bad at all, but I can fully imagine that if there's a relocation to some place that you're not very familiar with, then, of course, it causes a certain distress.
People generally understood that the CECC doesn't prefer centralized quarantine. We always have preferred at home quarantine. It was just because we did not know how bad delta was or omicron is going to be.
For a while, the CECC switched to centralized quarantine, and that was, by the way, in response to a popular outcry. [laughs] It's always the citizens demanded more than the CECC imposed.
For the people who went through this, I'm sure that it's very uncomfortable. As soon as we were able to say our vaccination is high enough, we switched to co existence and back to at home quarantine. We understand this is pretty much the only way to make things work because people would find it more acceptable if you're quarantining at home.
Definitely. The CECC is special in the sense that it had its own legal group, and it's not run by the Ministry of Health and Welfare but rather by the Ministry of Justice itself. In a sense, the CECC is a prototype of cross ministerial data protection and human rights protection regime that the Taiwan administration didn't have before the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, each ministry is its own data protection authority, and they may have different interpretations on the human rights interpretations of our Data Protection Act, for example. Although the Minister of Justice and later on the National Development Council served as a harmonizer of the interpretations, there was no cabinet level joint operations when it comes to data protection, personal data protection.
Thanks to the CECC's cross ministerial assembly, for the first time, many ministers and we, the minister at large, the [Chinese], got actively involved in the personal data protection work across ministries because the CECC systems are almost all across ministries.
For the first time, we had this cabinet level conversation. One of the results was that there's now a cabinet level headed by, I think, three horizontal ministers at large, personal data protection joint meeting. Even though there's currently no independent DPA, the ministers at large are all independent of the vertical ministries.
We're between and above the vertical ministries. When they cannot, for example, harmonize their own interpretations with other ministries, the at large ministers could. That's why we set up this cabinet level personal data protection meetings for this kind of work. It's a regular meeting.
Before, we had independent DPA, GDPR style. I think the cabinet level is already stronger than before the pandemic where it's all the work of the individual vertical ministers.
This time around, if Taiwan was part of WHO in 2019, December, [laughs] then everybody else will learn about this 10 days before. [laughs] That may have prevented a lot of life loss. I think it is quite sad that Taiwan did not have full ministerial access to the WHO system because certainly, we started house inspection the first day of 2020.
We're a party of COVAX. In that sense, we are part of this international network. I understand the WHO sponsors, for example, the solidarity studies of the Taiwan homegrown Medigen in the hope that we can distribute it more widely to give out our vaccines to help the world. In that sense, we're part of this system.
As I mentioned, this working level access is not the same as ministerial access so we was not part of the, for example, conversation about the fair distribution of vaccines before the COVAX was set up and Taiwan joined the COVAX. Including Taiwan more on the agenda setting stage is very important too, not just the working level.
No, we didn't do lockdowns.
It's very different way to get to zero covid.
We really cannot do those top down lockdowns mostly because people find that very traumatic during the SARS days. Also, because we really trusted the citizens that they will make the NPIs work the mask wearing, and so on.
The PRC regime took the Wuhan response and made it replicable way. Whenever any place happened...There's a community outbreak, they immediately think of Wuhan, like motto, because there's something they're familiar with.
In Taiwan, we never familiarize ourselves [laughs] with this response. We had to be very active in contact tracing and in other non lockdown approaches. I believe South Korea made a very early decision very similar to us.
Early on, there are people who argued that the president should declare a state of emergency because in our democratic constitutional system is the only way to obtain the same authoritarian control that Beijing has over its population.
I don't think President Tsai Ing wen was ever in favor of a state of emergency. The reason is that we've never had a situation where people felt that it's beyond the civic capacity and the state capacity to counter the virus.
That is to say, the signs, the R value, the epidemiology is very well understood by any person on the street to the degree such that they voluntarily participate.
It was never felt that the people are just running without their mask and spreading the virus in the parties and we have to put them into curfew. [laughs] That there was never a divide between the civic and the state capacities, which is why we never entertain the idea of a state of emergency.
Excellent.
The national infectious disease response system, the system that enabled the contact tracing and the national healthcare integration later this year will designate it out into a critical information infrastructure.
Just like our critical infrastructure covers the physical, the power grid, and so on, we believe that the information system that enables our entire model is pretty much as critical [laughs] as the electric grid. Basically, giving it a designation of critical infrastructure.
This is not just prudent, but it is probably necessary. The next Greek letter, you never know [laughs] when it comes. That's just the coronavirus. Who know what other kinds of virus?
As compared to many jurisdictions, Taiwan enjoys the advantage of the SARS experience. We established critical legal and technical infrastructures after SARS, which is why we respond to COVID so well.
The COVID also prompted us to think about new infrastructures that we did not have back in 2003. We're now looking at those infrastructures and designating it, so that we don't disband them after the COVID is over.
Rather, to make sure that they function well, that we can bootstrap it much more quickly the next time something worse than COVID happens to us. Almost by definition, the next quick character will leave us with a shorter time to respond. It will be more viral.
Basically, if it's less viral, then of course it doesn't go viral. There's already omicron around. When — I don't know — Pi or some other Greek letter comes, we will be left with even fewer days to respond.
Which is why having the critical infrastructure in an operating position is so important. That's the message we always wanted to share. Certainly not in the WHA meeting, but in the many lateral and bilaterals. That this is not the last pandemic.
The postponed pandemic times, you need to invest in building such public digital infrastructures while the memories is still fresh. After a couple of years of no pandemic, there's no political will anymore to invest in such infrastructures, so do so while the memory's still fresh.
Usually, the antibodies start to really build on the second shot.
Cheers. Thank you.
The parliament is doing very well in this regard. More than 40 percent members of parliament are women. President, 100 percent women. That's pretty good.
The gender mainstreaming work for the past 14 years and counting really helped to ingrain this gender mainstreaming inclusiveness into each and every ministry's long-term budgets, proposals, and so on with gender impact assessments done.
As for rooms for improvement, I'm sure that you're aware that in the cabinet, [laughs] it's not that diverse. Which is why the Gender Equality Committee is set up in such a way so that the more imbalanced to any political agenda our cabinet is, then there's correspondingly, the same amount of the bias happening on the civil society organization representative of our gender equality committee.
The GEC stays balanced. [laughs] That's because there's civil society organizations. Not because of our current ratio of women and LGBTIQ ministers.
Sure. The good thing about Taiwan is that we're long past the time where there's a glass ceiling and stereotypes of "people wearing skirts should not lead the army and navy." [laughs] That was long past. [laughs]
Nowadays, I would say that, especially in my line of work, in science, technology, digital, especially cybersecurity, it is heavily imbalanced, especially in cybersecurity.
