Governments should work with civil society groups to tackle the challenges facing the world using information and communications technology, Minister without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) said at a US-led democracy forum on Friday.
“Digital democracy” has proven to be the most effective solution to addressing modern challenges, Tang said in a panel discussion on “Countering Digital Authoritarianism and Affirming Democratic Values” at the Summit for Democracy.
She talked about how Taiwan implemented an SMS-based system developed by civic technologists to trace the itineraries and contacts of people diagnosed with COVID-19.
Contact tracers are required to apply for access to data related to a person with COVID-19 through the platform, which prioritizes personal data privacy, she said.
Tang said that civic technologists in 2015 created Airbox, a low-cost device that can be installed outside schools or on household balconies to monitor air quality.
The concept was adopted by the government, which initiated a program the following year to set up about 2,000 Airbox devices across Taiwan, she said, adding that the number has grown to tens of thousands.
In that case, “citizen science supplemented our government’s limited capacity,” Tang said, adding that “people-public-private partnerships” can shape a digital democracy.
Tang’s remarks were streamed on the second day of the two-day summit, which was organized by US President Joe Biden’s administration “to renew democracy at home and confront autocracies abroad.”
A total of 110 delegations participated in the summit, including one from Taiwan led by Tang.
The summit focused on three principle themes — “defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption and promoting respect for human rights,” the US Department of State said.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS