Also the green screen, also very important.
For telecommunication, because like in the main lab, the large lab, there’s a very popular program of indigenous language, because all around Taiwan, people want to learn about the indigenous natures, but they don’t have teachers in every precinct.
They just use a virtual learning tool. The green screen is so you can have the Jade Mountain, or have any river, or have something that’s immersed with the teacher, and the teacher can then teach about the indigenous culture.
Yes, yes. Almost, I think, a hundred or so schools connect to the social innovation lab to learn about a language circle.
Yes, and culture. That’s how it currently functions. Also, kitchen, very important. We always have good food.
Yeah, because if the 12 ministries hear about a new idea, they will resist, but if you give them really good food…
You become more open.
We have a really top chef in the social innovation lab.
So that’s what we have.
Yeah, and you have a law already, the social enterprise law. It makes for very easy bridging.
After our election I will go to Seoul, I think, to South Korea, and they already have a MOU of their social innovation lab, and our one. The Taichung one I think. I will go there to be a faculty.
The program says that we share our mentors. We can go there and try to help them incubating.
Maybe you can set something up like that?
That’s great.
It’s about 15 minutes from here, but it’s literally in the middle of Taipei. It’s the most central part of Taipei, near the central park, the Daan Park.
I go there every Wednesday, and also virtually every other Tuesday or so, and also sometime during Friday for the collaboration meeting, so almost one-third of my workdays.
From 10:00 AM to around 7:00 PM.
No, no, no, it’s the national. It’s by the cabinet directly.
It’s walking distance, like 10 minutes’ walk, from where all the ministers live. It’s very easy for us just to go there and have a chat.
Yeah, the larger area is also the Minister of Culture, it is also putting a lot of effort on what they call the culture lab. It’s not just social innovation lab, it’s part of the larger culture lab, contemporary culture lab.
The Minister of Science and Technology, the Minister of Economy, have also visited the space. When they visited they didn’t just take a tour, the sit down and have a conversation like this one.
I join them, I join them.
We used to ask them to come to the cabinet offices set-up in the various areas, but that makes people uncomfortable. We found they are much more comfortable if they just go to where they normally have town halls, and we join them with the live streaming equipment.
The planning starts well before-hand. We make sure that first it’s radically transparent. Everybody in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, and so on, are also participants. It’s very difficult to take over all the six different places. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is that we made sure that anything they propose, they have to correspond to one of the sustainable goals, so they must be talking about public benefit, not just private benefit.
In this kind of setting, because people generally understand no matter which faction they are on, they’re in a minority. This is a real collaborative setting. They will not be very loud, because first of all, it doesn’t matter, Taipei can just dial the volume down.
That’s right. Most of the ministries are in Taipei anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
Right. You cannot punch people over the projector. It’s also much safer for the public service, because they feel if they innovate, they get a credit. People can immediately see who proposed the solution. If they upset the local people, or local people become upset, only I am at risk, nobody else is there. [laughs]
Yes.
Very much so, very much so.
You cannot just comment online, you have to go to one of our six meeting places to join.
Yes, we have a very detailed rundown and so on. If your team want to learn about it, we’re ready to publish and share with you.
Maybe let’s just go there.
Like now.
Let’s go.
Yes, of course. Does he understand we will make a transcript and publish after doing this?
OK, so please go ahead.
Hello, Professor.
Hello. Good localtime.
No problem. I think it’s very interesting that you’re looking into the e-government innovations, what we call public entrepreneurship – I think that’s a well-established word now – that we’re doing in Taiwan. Feel free to ask anything.
Sure.
Ooh.
Of course, yeah.
As a public entrepreneur, I think entrepreneurship is about experimenting and pivoting, and experimenting and pivoting.
Of course. I will also say that it’s interesting that you’re discussing this from a European continental context, because Taiwan has our legal system a European continental one, largely based in Germany, which is not very known for sandbox approaches.
When people hear about sandbox, they think common law systems, because they can use the easier precedent and case, supportive structures to establish new norms, and have the norm lead the legal normativity. In a European continental law system, the normativity of the text is superior.
We’re a very interesting example of being the first continental law system that not only made fintech a self-driving sandbox act, but rather have a generative system, vTaiwan, and joined that makes new sandbox acts as their output. A way of negotiation as you put it, or orchestration between the sectors. That is one of the main things that I would also love to share.
We just opened a new sandbox. That’s the 5G trial application, 5G testing in the spectrum of 4.8 to 4.9 GHz. That is important because it’s not part of the commercial bands. It’s specifically designed to make possible social applications of 5G that are currently not imagined or indeed supported by the mainstream cases.
I’ll just paste you a link to the news, but if you’re interested in how we negotiated with the stakeholders, including the telecom companies, how they would also see this as something that’s of future potential benefit to them, which is actually very difficult to negotiate in many jurisdictions. I can introduce you to the right people who worked on this new sandbox.
The old ones, like the fintech self-driving, and so platform economy, you probably have already studied, and so I would not mention it here, more, yeah?
