Future Voice
Interaction Awards 2018
vTaiwan gathers diverging views on various internet-related regulations, then bridges the gap between online and offline opinions by consolidating a rough consensus on new law amendments.
vTaiwan is a collaborative project run by g0v (gov-zero) volunteers and the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s administrative branch. Shortly after Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement, former minister-without-portfolio Jaclyn Tsai pitched the idea of a new public participation platform at a g0v hackathon. Since vTaiwan’s launch in early 2015, the platform has attracted dozens of contributors.
The vTaiwan platform has been used for a number of digital economy-related issues. It helped facilitate dialogue during a dispute between Uber drivers and taxi drivers, as well as consolidated opinions on regulatory sandboxes, the sharing economy, crowdfunding, and closely-held corporations.
Jury Chair Christina Xu applauded vTaiwan as a “groundbreaking experiment in participatory democracy,” and commended the platform for its interactive design, and its ability to bring diverging views together. Xu also praised the current DPP-led government for appointing Audrey Tang to be a minister-without-portfolio at the Executive Yuan. “That was really ambitious, and I think it’s really been paying off,” said Xu.
Western audiences first learned of the vTaiwan platform through a popular long-form piece written by Liz Barry for the Civicist. The vTaiwan process soon attracted admirers in civic tech communities in North America, resulting in local work groups forming to try their own versions of the “vTaiwan” facilitation process.
The award was accepted by Shu-Yang Lin at the 2018 Interaction Awards ceremony in Lyon, France. Lin worked with Tang to co-create PDIS, a public interaction and accountability forum.
