Yasuno Team Taiwan Debriefing

https://www.youtube.com/live/PF04307eoxo?si=_oV12CUWQEtxV-3w

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As a result of our visit to Taiwan's digital democracy, while on the surface vTaiwan, JOIN, and others tend to be talked about as "advanced cases," in reality the following gap between ideals and reality was clearly visible. In addition, some hints for promoting digital democracy in Japan also emerged.

While in the past, the group has put together major debates and produced results, such as same-sex marriage and ride-sharing regulations, recently the focus has been on limited topics, such as AI-related policies.

The labor and facilitation burden of managing online deliberations makes it difficult to continue.

In the past, this has produced some results, but in recent years, the mechanism for collecting proposals has tended to become a "place of attack and defense".

The burden will also increase on the public officials by requiring them to answer the questions.

Changes in the interpretation of the law have made it harder for public officials to speak out.

Overall, energy is down.

Although there was enthusiasm when it was first established, it stalled due to the passage of time and changes in the political situation (e.g., changes in the organizational design of the department in charge of digital, personnel changes, etc.).

Although the number of registered users is apparently high, at about 7% of the population, the actual active rate is quite low, as many people say they have never heard of it when asked on the street.

It was highly dependent on charismatic figures like Audrey Tang, but when they were removed from their organizational lateral roles or moved to different ministries, they lost their backing in one fell swoop.

Furthermore, as a result of extracting digital human resources from each ministry and gathering them in the Ministry of Digital, a structure was created in which the know-how remained in the original ministry, making it difficult for cooperation to progress.

If it is just easier for citizens to speak up, the administration tends to view it as just an added burden.

It is also necessary to clarify the advantages for the administration and legislators of absorbing opinions to prepare them for discussion and to provide them with persuasive material.

(2) Design for Initial Success Experience (Quick Win)

Even in Taiwan, topics that were sympathetic and concrete, such as animal protection and issues around daily life, led to smooth results.

On the other hand, unreasonable themes such as "let's align the time difference with that of Japan" motivated the administration.

First of all, it is important to create "best practices" on themes that are easy for the government to move on and for citizens to feel the effects of, and to foster a relationship of trust.

Even though the parties discussed online on a large scale in vTaiwan, the actual decision-making phase involved offline meetings of dozens of people, where the parties met face-to-face and reconciled their opinions.

In Japan, "organizing issues online → reaching a final consensus in small face-to-face meetings" could be a realistic model.

(4) AI for streamlining argumentation and multi-party communication

In the past, there have been cases where facilitators of deliberative discussions have become exhausted and collapsed.

Today, technology that uses AI to summarize and aggregate vast amounts of comments and visualize issues is a reality.

This could make it easier to gather diverse opinions while reducing the operational burden.

If only one centralized platform is created, it is susceptible to changes in administration and budget cuts.

Since Japan is prone to the juxtaposition of diverse entities such as political parties, local governments, and private organizations, there is room to experiment with a system that unites issues through AI and other means while linking multiple forums.

Rather than a large-scale national government-led effort all at once, if local governments, NPOs, media, political parties, and other diverse entities start with themes that are easy to introduce and link the results, the risk of disconnection due to a change of government or organizational changes will be lowered.

It is essential to create a system where "anyone can become a facilitator" and "logs and know-how are shared openly" to reduce the burden on the gentry later, even if they are charismatic and enlivened at first.

With the rise of AI, the cost of organizing large numbers of discussions is also beginning to drop.

The two-step method, in which ideas and opinions are gathered online, but finally agreed upon in small face-to-face forums or offline coordination, has been proven in Taiwan.

It is important to have a "loose entrance" where everyone can participate without having to be immersed in political discussions at all hours of the day.

Although Taiwan's digital democracy faces a huge gap between ideals and reality, there is much that can be learned from its failures.

In order to avoid a similar stall, Japan must first create a "successful experience" of collaboration with the government on a small topic, and then design a system that allows diverse entities to work together in a relaxed manner while combining AI and offline facilitation.

The key to a sustainable digital democracy is likely to be to lower the cost of opinion aggregation, while breaking away from dependence on specific stars, and taking advantage of new technologies as well.

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