We are also working on the AV, the autonomous vehicles sandbox. We expect that to pass this session or latest next, but likely this.
The MOEA will take the application and do the evaluation. When it comes to making exceptions on existing loss, the MOTC will do the exemption. All the while, the evaluation of the safety, accountability, AI applicability will be contributed by MOST.
Verily, but the alternative is to have the MOTC make all the decisions itself...
Yeah, you go to your local MOEA office.
Yeah, the municipal MOEA office.
Well the MOEA has so-called 馬上辦 service centers. They report directly to the MOEA. It just happens that they have multiple municipal offices.
Yes.
The process, according to the draft law is all online, so I’ll just explain very briefly.
Basically, the MOEA is the driver, just like in the SME sandbox. The applicant, I think Upark folks, doesn’t even need to know that there are MOTC, MOF, NDC, RRC, whatever, involved. At the beginning, it just talks to the SME folks in MOEA.
Yes, for the AV sandbox. The AV sandbox it’s also paramount for us, for all the ministries to be in a multi-stakeholder panel because they all have some stake.
The panel need to make decisions in a way that is not detrimental to any ministries’ purposes. The MOEA is better at handling this kind of innovators proposals because it’s more flexible in understanding the language that are not overtly technically or legally correct.
The thing with FinTech Sandbox was that there’s a lot of language difference between the innovators who describe the latest immutable distributed ledgers and the existing bankers describe their compliance roles. They are literally worlds apart.
The FSC devoted a lot of time just to reconcile their languages. In the time for the AV sandbox, we think it’s maybe better to have the people who work with startups all the time, the MOEA people, to serve as their face, their proxy, and then talk to the ministries that are really needed to relax the laws or their existing laws.
Now, the municipal government is still important, not in the sense that they have a veto on the roads or whatever, but rather publishing the real, actual social needs of the city government.
For many AV experiments, it will fare much better if you know exactly what, for example...I’m just making this up, the Penghu County. They really want smart ships because for some offshore islands, the transportation situation’s very difficult. They cannot keep the sailors around all the time.
If there are some lightweight, self-driving ship that people can summon at will, it would really help them. They have all the relevant climate data, sea data, whatever data to support the parameters on which to make such experiments.
Instead of starting from zero, the innovators can just look at each county and region’s needs and not compete, but rather try to solve a little bit of it in a smaller section. The relation is not like innovators are in the dark and people just randomly veto them, but rather the different municipalities declare their needs.
We’ll publish this as a transcript.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. One of the first thing that we can do is simply to make these websites Google Translate, frankly, and even in English, where it makes sense. Our communication so far it’s maybe only...The English version of these websites is maybe only two percent of the information.
Yeah, it’s horrible.
Google Translate does a better job.
Yeah, it’s really, really bad, which is why we asked for the Taiwan.gov.tw domain name because we think for a foreign person, it’s impossible for them to know that for the SME Sandbox, you have to go to SME.gov.tw.
For the technology one, you have to go to MOST. Yeah, it’s important.
Which is why we have this new generation of website that all ends in Tawian.gov.tw and it’s just a better English face of all the nationwide activities that we’re doing, and the index of which is SmartTaiwan.gov.tw.
We’re still working hard with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who gave us this domain name, how to unify the strategy of our new generation of websites versus the existing one, which is Taiwan GOVTW, with the ultimate goal of this being redesigned or shaped into something that can tailor to the different needs.
No, we can edit out.
What do you feel about Contact Taiwan?
Contact Taiwan.
People don’t...
This is Contact Taiwan.
It is also part of it.
Like this one.
You do mean this website?
I do...
I do agree, like totally.
I do agree. I haven’t seen this website before.
I usually recommend to people Contact TAIWAN. I do see that there are sister sites somehow.
Maybe e-Taiwanese. [laughs]
There’s a gathering by Tricky Taipaei, that there’s a community of people who work in marcom and are brainstorming essentially exactly the case you were just making, like how to make the message about Taiwan consistent.
This is today’s talk.
The three panelists are Didi Bethurum, former global marketing director at Gogoro, someone from the Tourism Destination, marketing consultant, someone from Bloomberg, a travel writer/journalist, and also Kathy of Tricky Taipei.
Tricky Taipei is this website that offers some very constructive criticism of Taiwan’s message, not just about tourists, but also about the English presence of Taiwan’s websites and things like that.
There’s a community already forming about how to improve the message. My colleague in PDIS, in my office, who’s from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will attend. We’re trying to build a better relationship to not just these communities, but also maybe Forumosa and other only communities.
Or rather on the lifestyle part.
Is the investment and business part.
I’m aware of that. The problem, as I see it, is that in those two angles, the existing English websites, they often confuse the two messages. You see the Startup Taiwan or Contact Taiwan talking about the food and hospitality...
You see the communications tourism bureau talking about "five plus two" industrial innovation. It’s very confusing to both audiences, which is why I do think that delineating and making clear messages on one or the other will make it much more clear to the communication crew in our ministries how to position to different target audiences. Currently, it’s very confusing.
