Digital Public Goods QF Experiments in the Government

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgQ3JNiFCDo&list=PL3C6eF-zu5AYohNL1ZgOBqlwwJ29x-lTO&index=25

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政府におけるクアドラティックファンディング(二次資金調達)の実験に関するパネルディスカッションの内容です。

主な話の流れは以下の通りです:

パネリストの紹介

台湾のデジタル大臣を8年間務めたAudrey Tang氏

Plurality Tokyoと日本政府のデジタル庁からスピンアウトしたコミュニティであるDig DAOからのTaka(tkgshn, Shunsuke Takagi)氏

渋谷区のスタートアップ部門代表であるYoshiro Tasaka氏

政府の予算配分と支出の説明

Audrey Tang氏が台湾の例を詳細に説明

インフラ予算：長期的、明確な社会的投資収益率(SROI)が必要

科学技術研究予算：より動的で、毎年変更可能だが保証はない

日本の地方政府の状況（Tasaka氏による説明）

体系的な予算がない

過去50-60年と同じことを繰り返す傾向

クアドラティックファンディングの実験

台湾での実験（Audrey Tang氏による説明）

2022年9月に10,000ドルの小規模実験から開始

2023年には200万ドル規模に拡大

持続可能な開発目標（SDGs）に関連するプロジェクトに焦点

日本のDig DAOによる実験（Taka氏による説明）

台湾の実験をモデルにした取り組み

800ユーザーのマッチングプールを設定

現在進行中の実験

クアドラティックファンディングの仕組みと利点

寄付額の平方根を使用することで、多くの小口寄付者を集める仕組み

社会的投資収益率(SROI)の概念を導入し、プロジェクトの社会的価値を評価

既存のクラウドファンディングプラットフォームとの連携（台湾の例）

従来の公共調達との違い

より多くのプロジェクトに資金を分配可能（ロングテール分布）

市民の意見をより反映しやすい仕組み

プロジェクト間のシナジーを分析可能

今後の展望と課題

政府と市民社会のより良いインターフェースの構築

小規模な実験から始めることの重要性（Audrey Tang氏のアドバイス）

モデルの改善と反復の必要性

賞金としての構造化による柔軟性の確保

質疑応答

政府との協働方法について（Kot Japanからの質問）

質問者は、単に技術的なソリューションを説明するだけでなく、政府の優先事項に合わせて協働する良い分野を見つける方法について尋ねました。

Audrey Tang氏の回答：

小規模な実験から始めることの重要性を強調

政府にとってリスクが小さい小規模実験は受け入れられやすい

実験を通じて政府機関の相対的な優先順位を上げられる可能性

クアドラティックファンディングを意思決定メカニズムだけでなく、人気や正当性を得るメカニズムとしてフレーム化することの重要性

多くの人々に優先事項やデジタル公共インフラの重要性を知ってもらえる機会

広告代理店に支払う費用と比較すると、小規模実験のコストは些細なものであることを強調

クアドラティックファンディングモデルの改善について（ニューヨークからの質問）

質問者は、Audrey Tang氏を称賛し、ニューヨークでも同様の取り組みを行おうとしていることを述べました。その上で、クアドラティックファンディングモデルの上限や下限の設定について、今後どのように改善していく予定かを尋ねました。

Audrey Tang氏の回答：

上限と段階的構造の必要性を説明

賞金として構造化しているため、価値が変動する賞金は望ましくない

期待値の設定に役立つ

完全なクアドラティックファンディング計算よりも、段階的構造の方が公平性を感じさせる

非常に成功したプロジェクトが資金を独占することを防ぐ効果

retrospectiveに（後知恵的に）、段階的構造が公平な競争の場を提供するという機能を果たしていたと評価

このディスカッションは、クアドラティックファンディングを政府の資金配分に導入することの可能性、利点、課題について、台湾と日本の実際の経験に基づいて深く議論しています。参加者たちは、この新しい方法が政府と市民社会のより良い関係構築につながる可能性を示唆しています。

okay so we are going to go into another panel uh next we'll be talking about quadratic funding experiments in

government um and this panel will be led by Audrey Tang of plurality Donnet

yoshiro tasaka of shabuya startup and shinuki tagi of plurality Tokyo and dig

Dow all right all right um I'm very grad to have great CH this um actually we

have a five page of Str like this is so simple Taiwan should dig up like this so

um quick introduction myself I'm from the digal which is kind of the um Civic

Tech Community uh fored by digal agency government of Japan uh we are trying to

figure out how uh crypto mechanism could be uh used in the local government or

public sector in the real world so uh that's the I'm doing uh recent

digal had started actually now are opening right now uh started a quadratic

funding experiment which is uh could be donate by the fat currency it's mean

like you're credit card you're Japan Yen like there so we are hosting like that

uh should be go to the Audrey yeah I'm Audrey Tong uh I served for eight years

as taiwan's digital Minister uh and part of my work uh starting 2019 uh is to

introduce the ideas uh that started from this space uh to uh the real world uh to

the government uh we started introducing quadratic voting uh for presidential heathan in Taiwan uh since 2019 uh it's

been doing every year since to elevate the local experiments into national

public infrastructures uh and we work with the Ean uh Foundation uh to try out

with presidential hackathon uh in 2022 uh September uh to distribute some funds

I think 10K USD uh and today I will share a little bit about how we scaled that experiment from 10K USD uh to2

million US dollars or more uh and hopefully making it an annual

thing uh hi everyone my name is yoshiro tasaka I work for the Sha City uh I

doing uh uh startup divisions uh basically what what I've doing is uh

building our uh infrastructure for Innovations so uh for example we uh

providing a Visa for for entrepreneurs uh last three years we brought a 70 over

70 entrepreneurs to Shia and also we've been trying to make our startup friendly

services with the corporations uh we I we have done we haven't done anything

about uh web three qu funding yet unfortunately uh that's a sad part of

but uh uh last two years we actively uh invit web3 Tech blockchain events to

shria and then that's how we brought ocon to uh shria this time and then I'm

glad that finding commment also happening uh this time uh yeah thank you

right go so um for of the speaker have background which is working in the

government what what the government so how do you spend your money as a government maybe

uh all almost guys came from the like a nonprofit or public sector however uh

they didn't know about how government spend the money uh from the budget like

uh government going to be the taxation as a like insurance or income

like that but where money going on so can you explain about

what is the typical uh public purchase of the government sure uh so in Taiwan

um the digital uh investments from the government falls into two different uh

Pockets uh one is called infrastructure uh pocket and the infrastructure is like

building airports Building train stations and so on uh because the ministry of digital Affairs is in the

transportation committee uh in the parliament so so if we can prove that there is some digital investment that is

good generally like a Highway uh except it's information highway but uh it's

good generally for the society then it qualifies for the uh public infrastructure kind of uh budget the

thing about this budget is that it's usually very longterm uh it's like four years 10 years or something like that uh

and you need to have a very clear uh social return on investment uh knowing that for each dollar you put into it how

much time will be saved uh how much um Commerce will be created and things like that so it needs to be very measurable

uh even from the first year onward uh so that you can allocate very long-term budget but there's also uh the more

Dynamic uh science uh and research budget uh for a science research and Technology budget it is more Dynamic uh

you can change um the expected output every year uh you can use procurement uh

proposals that are more agile uh but the problem is that there is no guaranteed uh so every year if it doesn't uh pass

the review uh then maybe the budget goes uh elsewhere uh and so usually these are the two kind of trade-offs uh but a lot

of the use of quadratic voting and quadratic funding uh is to start from smaller experiments and quickly uh

figure out which ones are infrastructure in nature which ones are general purpose in nature and this is something that the

quadratic uh mechanisms can really help I think many people now uh want to

move to Taiwan now but uh but uh yeah probably everybody knows

but uh Japan doesn't have such a budget especially the local government and then but uh I guess each local government has

ICT department and then that have probably the small budget for their uh digitalization but uh it's not

systematic like Taiwan so unfortunately unfortunately um I have a question for

the uh tasaka San um is there money for the uh governance or

execution I mean like uh I wish the government should be focused on the

governance however almost uh especially like a local government spend the money

for the execution to to spend day by day or year by year so what's the current

situation maybe I I just want to hear about your criticism for the your

organization right there uh probably if your Japanese you're so familiar with it but uh uh

yeah yeah yeah uh so uh yeah I'm not the proper uh employee for the sh City uh I

was uh assigned by mayor to start startup divisions uh four years ago so

uh I was very surprised to see how the budget was uh built and then basically

uh uh as you know uh uh uh each government each local government tend to

uh just uh do whatever they did first 50 60 years so uh that's why uh we don't

have a prible budget and then and then we don't have a uh way to assess what we

have done much and then uh CB city uh under mayor's initiative we Tred to kind

of you know uh kind of uh you know try to kind of check what we have done and

what we were wrong but uh uh not really critical ways that's why uh you know uh

we we cannot use the money like Taiwan

does got got it um in my opinion uh the

order is work looks like focus on the how to governance by the

government um or uh can go to the next right um this is my uh impressive

example uh by thawan J minister of government uh this is quadratic funding

experiment by Taiwan model um it's uh kind of the crowdfunding platform uh

powered by web 2 uh crowdfunding platform so in Taiwan they are trying to

uh figure out how quadratic funding could be useful for the uh resource

allocation for the Civic take or kind of the NPO project so hard to I'm just

wondering uh this project is hard to start it or hard to stock or if you have

any criticism or yeah sure yeah Insight yeah as I mentioned uh the collaboration

uh with uh Ean foundation and the local Taiwan web3 Community was really the

beginning uh in the September of 2022 uh they work with uh some winners of the

presidential hackathon to try a very small scale uh round of quadratic funding just to uh let people understand

uh what that actually means uh and so just a very quick primer uh it means

that instead of counting just the total amount of donation you receive and then

matching the same donation uh we count instead the square root of each

individual donation added uh together uh the good thing about taking the square

root is that uh you cannot just have one single donor to donate like $5 million

and then Force the government to match $5 million right you have to actually convince a lot more people uh to uh

donate small amounts of money uh and so similar uh to a gitcoin uh Grant ground

uh we need to have some Focus some uh topic uh in the experimentation and so

uh one we learned from that small uh experiment with the etherum foundation uh was that uh we really want the ones

that corresponds uh to the sustainable development goals uh and so because that's like public good is universally

more recognized this way instead of the project saying I'm a public good it is better if you can prove uh in which of

the 17 uh categories uh you can actually make measurable uh impact um and so uh

there's almost a thousand applications when we started this round of uh the public interest Innovation uh

and then we chose uh 100 of them that clearly has uh some potentially future

measurable value uh in uh the social return of investment sroi scheme and

each of them uh receive uh 500,000 Yen uh as just kind of getting them into the

mood of starting their pilot or experiments uh and once they do that then we give them a few months and then

each of them receive uh 1.3 million uh if they make the cut of 50 uh

projects and so the quadratic funding actually only works with those 50 projects and the reason why is that uh

we are not building our own platform we're working with existing uh crowdfunding Platforms in Taiwan the

three largest ones uh W Flying V and zza uh and they have their own way uh to

tell a story of a project of coaching the project to reach a wider audience so

we do not want to reinvent the wheel uh we instead re rely on kind of multi-party computation thing uh to uh

make sure that if you're a single individual and you contribute uh to all the three cor funding sites uh you're

still only counted as one person uh but then at the end of the day uh we choose the top 20 uh based on the Sorting of

quadratic funding and allocate uh the Final prices to them uh that's ranging from 23 million yen uh to or 9 million

yen uh and so on so as you can see this is not a pure quadratic funding uh

formula it is more like staggered uh so the ones that are the best uh no matter

what the formula says will only get at most 23 million yen it is the ceiling is Set uh in the beginning and the uh

people who are come on the 20 uh the last uh will nevertheless have 9 million

yen if they did meet uh their social return on investment values so you can see it as a kind of midway between

voting and funding it is not exactly matching the funding but it is trying to approximate the matching funding but the

reason why is that this is uh in the policym uh structur as a prize and the

prize money uh cannot be fluctuate and so we have to start uh designing the stagered uh steps and so the lesson the

main lesson we learned uh is that it is quite intuitive if you work with existing uh crowdfunding sites uh they

already have a way to explain this kind of things uh and you do not need a crypto wallet or something like that uh

the loog in is already very easy so working with existing web 2 infrastructure turns out to be one of

the better decisions uh that we have made uh the main challenge is that not many people have heard of sroi social

return on investment is not yet a mainstream practice so we spend a lot of time to coach them into calculating

sroi interesting interesting uh I also have a question for the

AY um what is the most different point

Point um compare the typical public purchases and uh quad funding are

allocation because it seems like a quadratic funding the structure looks

like a crow fund sorry quad funding like a a crowdfunding it is so a kind of

crowdfunding yeah um that's made a like a application radier project could be

attract more than infrastructure project so what the project should be putting on

the this kind of the quadratic funding run so yeah yeah I mean it's a mix right if

you get uh a lot of people from from crowdfunding at least it means that your

story touches a lot more people but it doesn't automatically mean that your project delivers uh on the

infrastructure level that is for the sroi to proof so the both comp components are equally important you

have to get the story out because that is what led the people actually try out the service so you can have a good sroi

calculation if there's only five people using the service you cannot make a sroi calculation uh but on the end of the day

maybe um you know the top 50 maybe 30 of them did not actually match uh the sroi

targets if you invest one uh dollar but the entire Society only save half a

dollar then you might as well just give the money back to the society right you're not achieving a positive more

than one sroi uh and so I think uh whether something is infrastructural can

only be seen after a small Scale Pilot and this is what this quadratic funding round is trying to do is just to get the

sufficient Buy in from the population so that we can have a sizable try

out maybe uh T we should be exper our experiment as a dig and the C can you go

that next TR thanks uh actually uh one the project

manager uh of digal marching donation uh this is kind of We are

following the Taiwan experiment as a quadratic funding round for the Civic Tech Technologies so maybe some of the

Japanese people could be understand like it's mean like we can uh join

showing the decision making uh how to allocate our Capital our taxation our

tax to the AIC Tech projects so that's the concept is uh for the qu funding

also the next SL now we are working on this is uh on

live right now so you can search dig Ming donation you can find our project

so uh we said the like 800 user as a

matching pool and then we attract 100 for the this experiment this is the

first time experiment quadratic funding to distribute money uh for the Civic Tech project uh without like a

cryptocurrency or something any e ecosystem so we could see like a how can

I say like a long tail graph uh allocation distribution meaning like

um typical uh public purchases only provide uh one provider like a

government gonna decide oh we're GNA buy this Services we're GNA trade we're gonna uh like that however when we going

to using the quadratic funding um we could be distribute money based on the

our democracy like kind of opinion that based on the skin that how much you skin

the game for the your fav project so that's the uh we how to do that and uh

go to the next SL uh here is a real data uh we are on live so we have like 1880 18 projects on

live at our initial stage so uh we're going to publish the anal rater but

maybe uh I'm just wondering to Audrey uh what's the uh um Insight after you try

to experiment in the quadratic fun round in the Taiwan yeah I mean next next

month uh there will be a final report uh so the final report is not out yet so I

cannot uh say that much uh but we do see a very similar uh long tail uh

distribution uh the ones that tells the story very well receive a lot of crowdfunding for a lot of people uh and

the ones that didn't tell the story so well maybe they have one or to wealthy contributors but they cannot uh spread

that message uh that that well so something like that is usually seen but I think one other thing that is useful

and that we have seen from the presidential hackathon quadratic voting as well is that you can also analyze uh

like the kind of people who vote uh for uh different projects and to find a

Synergy uh between those projects so even the ones that did not make the cut uh the final 20 or the final 10 in the

Pres presidential hackathon uh you can still find the teams that are good Synergy with them just based on the

quadratic voting or quadratic funding materials uh and then suggest uh those team that didn't make the cut uh to join

the ecosystem to join the project that was uh chosen uh by the quadratic voting

or funding uh mechanisms so I think that part uh we don't see that from the graph yet uh but that was very useful uh when

I served uh in the public sector to see kind of a radar of what what kind of

project is a good hub for other project to build on means that it's more infrastructural uh in nature because

many people consider it has more Synergy uh with other projects toally totally um maybe some of

the uh Ro government people is really interesting about oh how we can start this quadratic funding experiment in my

rocker town so I'm just curious about like uh vasaka uh which is uh how to

start kind of this experiment in their uh own roer area or how to

coordinate uh internal like organization as a government right there uh yeah so

uh actually last year I wanted to secure a budget for CTIC funding and

actually so kindly he made an estimate and I uh proposed the budget but

rejected last year unfortunately uh but uh uh uh I think uh

uh uh because we've been doing a lot of web eventss like this and then uh thanks

to uh gr and a uh yesterday actually they had a lunch with the mayor thank

you and then so uh I think uh now decision makers are now like you know uh

motivated to do it so I'm I'm hoping next year we can try uh quod atic funding

so this is a r question what is the future of De

government actually I asked the same question with c and a

andan so I just want to hear about your perspective what's the future should be

sorry uh what what should be by the future of the government like a like a

pro uh government as a platform or just experimenting right there yeah yeah I

think um I really see um ideas like this

uh as expanding uh the kind of uh continuous smooth uh zone between the uh

Civic sector uh and the public sector uh in previous ways like procurement it it

is very uh zero and one right only one uh vendor gets the tender and everybody

else uh don't get a tender uh and then only the procured solution provider provide a solution at least for the next

year uh but uh this kind of experiment because it is structured as a prize so

uh in Taiwan when you win the quadratic funding the matching um fund is not

structured as a subsidy because in quadratic funding it is possible if you get a lot of people donating a very

small amount of money then the matching fund you will get will be more than 50 %

uh of your entire uh budget right uh and so uh but if it is a uh kind State

subsidy it means that your company become state owned company or that uh

your project become a state control project uh which is why we don't structure it this way uh because then it

will go back uh to the old like the state must control the future of the project uh uh very discret uh and so

instead we say no this is a prize uh award that we give you for um

successfully attracting these many people to support you and for successfully demonstrating you have a

positive uh social return on investment uh your success in demonstrating this is like writing a good novel or uh having a

good film or something like that uh and so whatever matching funding we give you is a prize a recognition uh and so prize

money uh does not carry any strings right you don't have to change your course your your governance uh because

you receive a prize uh from the government and so because it's structured this way it's then much more smooth because then the governance from

those projects stay with the governance Community uh in those projects and so if

we can discover uh more ways that can be structured like prizes uh and things

that are awarded kind of uh retrospectively uh after the fact uh and then I believe gradu funding or

retroactive funding and things like that uh will enable a much better interface

between the government uh and the Civil Society so that the government can support the ones that just happens to

have infrastructural value or just happens to deliver public value without necessarily having to control the

direction of where the Civil Society is going uh and then the public goods that are built upon such infrastructure

become much more fluid because they're not locked in to specific uh procurement

winners do you have any opin uh uh not opinion but but uh uh so uh

it's been four years in our government and then it's very difficult to uh create a new things but uh uh uh but

meantime uh of course the the capitalism you know go so first and then our society has a lot of issues and the city

has a lot of issues and then we have to tackle on and then definitely uh Shia wants to uh do something you have done

in Taiwan like a small version of Taiwan so uh I hope we can do that with your

help yeah perfect maybe we can answer some

question by the participate so if you have any question raise your hand only

two minutes yeah only two minutes right go there is a all right let's go let

take you hi um I'm haliki from kot Japan and

thank you for sharing the Great uh exper uh use cases uh my question is how can

we find a good area to work with the government I think it's really important

to not just explain this kind of Technical Solutions uh because the

government officials have their priorities they want to solve the

problems not they they don't want just want to use the fancy Tech things so we

need the space for collaboration uh and how we can find the the the very nice

area to work with that collaboration is needed yeah I think uh ultimately very

small scale experiments have its place because uh for the government that is

not much to lose anyway uh and so if you start many such smaller experiments and

get people into a mood of experimenting uh most governments should be okay if as

I said we only started uh with like 10K USD uh with the ethereum foundations

help right uh and so for most governments if it's very very small scale uh but then it raises the profile

of the government then each government agency each government Department also have their relative priorities compared

to other departments right so in a sense uh if trying out a new mechanism is a

effective way to uh uplift their relative priority compared to other

departments or compared to other cities or compared to other uh jurisdictions uh then that by itself increase the

legitimacy uh of the decision maker of that Ministry or that department of that

jurisdiction so I in a sense I I don't think uh this way of crowfunding and so

on is necessarily just because it's a good mechanism uh for decision- making it is also a um popularity and

legitimacy uh mechanism so I think it's important to frame it as such like you

can then let these many people know about your priority these many people

now know about the digital public infrastructure these many people now know uh the importance of this sdg uh

and then you can uplift that voice and so compared to the uh money uh that they

spent on advertisement agency or something uh this small experiments are nothing right and so it's always easier

uh to frame it this way thank you very much all

right first I want to say you are my hero you are amazing thank you so much

for the work that you do we're trying to do the same thing in New York and it's very very hard so really appreciate the

of the success of quadratic funding is actually based on the model itself you talked a little bit about creating a ceiling a floor Etc and I'd love for you

to give us a little insight into how you expect to iterate on that model and how we can uh perfect that model for for

this use case yes thank you so I think the the ceiling and steps

uh are necessary uh because we structure it as a price uh and so people don't

like a price which value is only calculated when you issue the price it is doesn't sound like a price at all

right but I think this stepwise is also useful in setting expectations so that people do not um monopolize uh the most

of the areas if they really have something truly very very successful Nationwide uh then everybody else will

be uh kind of compressed if you have a allocated a total budget so I think the

stepwise uh in retrospect uh served also as a function of people feeling it's

more fair it's a more fair playing field than the pure quadratic funding area calculation